A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away ( it seemed like),I graduated from the San Francisco Police Academy . My entire 40 person class got assigned to the Mission Police Station Field Training Program. At that time,...

If you want to make good money, for regular hours, don’t become a cop! If you want to have a life, when you’re not working, don’t become a cop! If you want to wear snazzy outfits and drive fast cars (except...

Sometimes you go to training because you are interested in the topic or cynically feel it will help you get a better job or even a promotion. Sometimes, however, it’s get out of town on a paid-for vacation, with a...

At the Golden Gate Law School graduation that I went to a few years back, the keynote speaker, the Dean of the school, started his address thusly: "Congratulations, Graduates, you have made it! Welcome to the ranks of the unemployed."...

Mission Police Station was a dump. Unlike its predecessor over in the industrial part of the District that had its visual  and police cultural foundations in the Gothic Pillar examples of the Boston or New York City police precinct houses...

Being on the first San Francisco BART subway train on any given morning can sometimes be interesting. Most regular commuters are half awake, drinking hot coffee out of carefully concealed paper cups, reading newspapers, or sleeping. However... At that period...

NOTE:  In the Law Enforcement profession, as in many other endeavors , sometimes fiction is more interesting than the truth, and big salacious rumors are sometimes more fun to relate , especially if they involve high ranking  mucky-mucks, our so-called...

Specifically, during my long career in Law enforcement, as in my life in general, if something appears to be easy, fun, and occasionally profitable, it turns out to be anything but. Scene: San Francisco’s Potrero Police Station My first hint:...

Like any of the three-dimensional characters in a classic Bogart movie, or from a persona in a stage play once fleshed out in a darkened theatre, some of the people you meet working as a big city foot-beat cop stay...

In 1980, the city of San Francisco announced that it was opening up unrestricted applications for police officers. Over 3,000 people responded, which led to block long lines of applicants waiting to take written exams, physical agility testing, and weird...