Retirement

Well, that's it. I've retired.

I am by far (more than 10 years) the oldest guy on my department - and it's time for me to go.

After many years in another profession, I became a police officer at an age when many other guys are thinking about retiring. A lot of people thought I was crazy. But it was something I really wanted to do.

I loved it, and it showed. I was as proactive as I possibly could be - looking for crooks every minute of every day - and finding quite a few in the process. I ran up numbers no one else on my department could touch. I took a lot of grief for that. Somebody once said, "You're always into something; you're a total shit magnet". He was correct. Some guys are happy to take as few calls as possible, and hide in their squads the rest of the shift. I would've gone crazy doing that. I stayed busy all the time. I never even considered applying for promotion. The street was where I belonged and where I wanted to stay.

I got to see and do things most people never get to. You know how, when you're looking at some taped-off crime scene or huge auto accident, and you think to yourself: wow, I wonder what's going on over there? Well, I got to be "over there". I was one of the ones in the middle of it. It was fun. It was exciting. It was the very best time of my life.

And the friendships. Oh, boy. I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things in my life. But I've never had friendships like those I've had with some of my fellow officers. Guys I would do absolutely anything for - and who I could count on for absolutely anything. Guys I backed up on calls and who backed me up, fought bad guys with, drank with, laughed and cried with. The most wonderful guys in the world. I don't know how I'll go on without them. Yeats said it exactly right.

But when you do the job the way I've done it, you eventually get hurt. And stuff doesn't heal the way it used to. I'm told I likely will never heal from nerve damage I sustained in a fall during a foot pursuit over a year ago (yes, I caught him). I have chronic tendonitis in one elbow from a fight with a drunk. My back is screwed up and "goes out" regularly. I'm looking at shoulder replacement surgery, once the cortisone injections stop working, from decades of pushing too much weight in the gym. To continue would put me at risk of really hurting myself, or, God forbid, getting someone else hurt. I can't and won't let that happen. It's time for me to go.

Plus, I'm just not political enough. So much of police work has become show. I think that's due to the backlash against a few bad cops who've made bad decisions that became national news, and against good decisions by good cops that have been spun to the dark side before all the facts were known. Whatever, I just don't fit in what's become such a politically charged environment. I'm genuinely willing to help those in need, but I don't get all touchy-feely about it. I'm not politically correct or semantically paranoid. I call a spade a spade. I'm sarcastic and cynical most the time, and pissed off a lot. It's time for me to go.

Then there's the bullshit calls. I'm both blessed and cursed to work in a fairly low crime city. The likelihood of me getting killed at work is substantially lower than in a place like Chicago or St. Louis or Baltimore. But the flip side of that is we take calls that cops in other agencies would never get dispatched to. Animal calls. Civil matters. Parking lot fender benders. Snow complaints. Lawn complaints. Parents wanting us to discipline their kids. Calls from people that simply cannot run their own lives and want cops to do it for them. This stuff eventually just bleeds the life out of you. It's time for me to go

So, that's it. I'm going to continue this blog until I run out of things to write. I don't know how long that will be. I'll keep you posted.