Dear Bullethead,
I went way back and read a lot of your articles from before I knew of Law Officer. I’ve found a lot of answers in your writing—except for why an agency would go so far as to cancel our employee assistance program and disband the peer-support group. This happened recently at our department and, for me, the message is clear: “We don’t care about cops who work the streets.” I feel more down than ever.
I have my own family to go home to—they’re my priority when I’m home. I’m also facing my own demons about age and the loss of a family member before her time. I’m very limited financially and there’s nothing I can do about it right now (I’m on light duty due to an injury). I want to provide better for them than living paycheck to paycheck, and I want everything set in case something happens to me. But the council members and mayor are into deeply changing our retirement and blaming the cops for the city’s financial problems.
I thought they were bluffing, threatening layoffs to our fellow employees, until they laid off almost 50 new employees last year and never hired them back even after we took a cut. Facing age and nearing the end of my career with possible altered retirement funds weighs heavily. I can usually push those thoughts away, but not lately.
—An Old Timer
Old Timer,
I hear you, brother. Cops are closer to being the number one public enemy than we’ve ever been. Citizens and elected officials expect more or better service with massively reduced pay and benefits. Have you ever eaten at a restaurant when the staff gets an unexpected rush and doesn’t have enough servers to cover all the tables? Well, that’s what’s happening in public service.
Where I work, they want to continue public works and beautification projects, but make the cops pay twice as much for the same benefits we had the previous year. For some of us, particularly the youngsters, that can mean a loss of hundreds of dollars from our paychecks. I get that every elected official wants to stay elected, but the math there doesn’t make any sense. They can hold off on one project and cover all our benefits, which is much more likely to produce a happy, service-oriented and hardworking group of cops. The problem: Those elected clowns don’t count dollars, they just subtract them. The only thing they count is votes and we don’t have enough for them to care about us. This is the first time Ol’ Bullethead can remember it being good politics to publicly bash the cops.
Quicker than our vice unit gets hookers, I get grey hairs every time I think of our retirement. The state has money problems that they pass along to the city and the politicians want nothing more than to crack into our retirement funds. If that happens, I’ll be living on bread and water long into my twilight years.
Keep the Faith
I’ve been in those places where you are now. Sometimes it’s about the idiot politicians. Other times it’s about the idiot prosecutors. But mostly it’s about the internal politics and crazy decisions coming from the head shed. All I can suggest is that you remember that they don’t see the world the way we do, but we work for them. Some of their decisions are there to control us, others are there for reasons I can’t imagine. I tell myself they aren’t evil people and they must know something I don’t know or they wouldn’t have made such a crazy decision.
Keep the faith, Old Timer. We need contemplative senior people out there keeping the youngsters safe. You have a good start by looking after your family first. While you’re on light duty, head to school and figure out what else you’re good at so you’re ready when this ride ends. Maintain an informal peer-support group. You still have the people so set it up where you help each other because if we don’t have each other’s backs, we’re lost.
I’m sorry for your loss. I remember when both my parents left us before their times. I had so many questions I hadn’t asked them yet—hell, most of them I hadn’t even thought up yet. Heal quickly and get back to work so you can jump into doing what you do best and get a vacation from the worrying. Chasing bad guys and sticking them in a pit gives me the best rest from my worries because all I can think about is what’s important now.
