How I spent Christmas:

rallyraid said:

Good on you RIS for maintaining your sanity and humanity. :thumbsup:

Aren't some professionals like doctors and police officers supposed to detach themselves from their work? From personal experience, doctors don't like to be friendly, and definitely not ER doctors. They do their jobs and try not to have a personal connection with their "clients". Maybe it's my personality, or I've watched too much teevee, but I thought that was the case.

The people you're dealing with don't seem hurt for material things, maybe an attitude adjustment and a swift kick in the ass. Police in other parts of the world don't try to gain community trust. They show up in armored vehicles, bullet proof vests and an AR-15 to serve an arrest warrant. Same results, no drop in crime rates but a sense of justice for someone out there.

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[100% Kona coffee]

Thanks for the kind words, but I don't know how to answer that. I'm certainly nothing special, but I do care a great deal about people. People have great value. I'd think there was something wrong if I didn't care.

Like any job, you get used to it. It seems like a normal thing to do for me to call on my cell phone to order an all-meat pizza while standing over the body of a guy that blew his head off with a 12-guage. I mean, my co-workers and I are going to be stuck on scene for quite a while, and we're going to need to eat at some point.

I guess everybody deals with it differently, but I can tell you that there is an awful lot of very dark first responder humor that the average person would probably find offensive beyond words.

And you're right, a lot of us tend to hold people at a distance. It's a conditioned response, probably as a result of having to deal with people who have not experienced what we have, acting strangely.

Like any emotionally healthy human being, I only kick somone's ass if they truly require it. I'll do it in the blink of an eye, and we may all have a good laugh about it afterwards, but it's not the kind of thing that we go looking for. I don't like getting other people's blood on me.

I do wear armor and take an AR-15 (an M4 actually) with me everywhere I go (on duty), but that's because the first rule in my line of work is to go home at the end of my shift. I was the breacher on our last drug raid- I have no problem with caving someone's door in, taking their drugs, arresting them, and taking their children from them, as long as it's done correctly.

A couple of raids ago we breached the door to make entry, and found ourselves stepping over and between about half a dozen infants and toddlers sleeping on broken down cardboard boxes just inside the door, while we ordered the drug dealers to become one with the carpet at gun point. That's the kind of stuff that I find really disappointing. Those kids didn't sign up for that.

I am committed to my community. I volunteer with my Church, providing hot meals, helping kids (mostly drug babies) after school with their homework, and being involved in youth programs. I also help out at school in the classroom (10th and 12th grade English). I volunteer with Special Olympics, the animal shelter, and I'm on the school council.

I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to how I spend my time. I'd like to help break the cycle of failure that generations of crappy parenting has caused.

I find it appalling that so many kids have been taught to just give up at the slightest hint of anything even remotely challenging. I don't have any "quit" in me, so it's an alien concept to me. When I was asked to ride 200 miles in one day on a full suspension mountain bike with knobby tires (carrying my pistol, cell phone, and a pair of cuffs), I just did it. When I did my ground fighting final during my academy, my scalp was split and sliding around- I couldn't see from the blood in my eyes. So I used a wad of paper towels to wipe the sweat and blood out of my eyes and off my head, and used silver duct tape to put my scalp back together, then went back in and won the fight. These kids don't have any concept of stuff like that.

[/100% Kona coffee]