Introduction
What’s in it for me? Understand how it feels to be a US police officer.
Is there any subject more controversial than policing in the United States?
Protests to defund the police have been met by equally passionate calls to expand their reach. Policing is a sensitive and often violent topic, but far from the politics are the men and women who believe they’re doing their best possible to keep communities safe.
Sometimes, it’s the daily hunt for hardened criminals. Other times, officers intervene to protect citizens against themselves. Police officers might remind you to wear your seatbelt, but they can also be the midwife during an unexpected delivery.
In this article, we’ve put together some of the best stories from Walk the Blue Line. Whatever you feel about the uniform, you’ll get an immersive insight into the vocation and the people navigating that thin line between good judgment and the risk of public outrage.
You’ll obviously make your own judgments about what police officers go through but you’ll also learn about how they’ve been transformed by their experiences.
Key idea 1
An alcoholic, a brave dog, and respect
Jock Condon is a police officer working in the Midwest. Before coming to the US the Scot served as a cop in the UK’s Royal Air Force.
On this occasion, he’s sitting alone in his car, in the pouring rain at 2:00 a.m., when he’s dispatched to an ongoing burglary in a home close to where he’s parked.
As he steps out of his car he hears gunshots from inside the house. As he goes in, he’s gripped by images of the time he served in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He wonders if this time, his luck will run out? His mind racing through images of his son waking up the next day without a father.
He looks inside a Jack and Jill bathroom and sees a chubby guy with a huge white beard lying inside, bleeding through a wound in his chest. He doesn’t look like a threat. Jock walks into a bedroom where an inconsolable man is lying on the bed, his terrified wife by his side.
It turns out the man with the white beard is an alcoholic who got drunk and walked into the wrong house! Jock manages to keep him alive till the medics come. Thankfully, he lives.
Seven months before the house incident Jack was called to put a fatally-wounded deer out of its misery and was transported back to Afghanistan as he pulled the trigger. It wasn’t his first flashback – they kept coming – and he knew they’d continue. He sought help from a psychologist and was diagnosed with PTSD. The medication and therapy he received help him recover. Now he’s helping other cops get help, too.
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Brian Sturgeon is a K9 handler – he uses dogs to find and arrest offenders.
One particular night, he’s outside a house waiting for a suspect with Argo, a brave police dog, when the suspect appears. Argo darts over a fence and drags him down. As they tussle on the ground the craziest thing happens – another dog appears and attacks Argo. Brian tries to shoot the other dog but his weapon malfunctions and then the other dog starts to attack Brian too.
As the two men and two dogs struggle, the suspect takes out a box cutter and starts tearing at Argo. Eventually, Brian manages to shoot the other dog. Brian’s team arrives on the scene and arrests the suspect.
Argo is taken to a vet where he’s treated for his bad wounds. Ten days later, he’s back to work.
<pause>
Tim O’Brien left the mortgage business to join law enforcement. As a Boston kid who knew a lot of people in the civil service growing up, he’s drilled his sense of respect into his kids. If they ever disrespect a cop, he tells them, this strict policeman and his wife won’t take it.
Tim’s sitting at his mother-in-law’s house one dinnertime waiting for his wife when he gets a call. The officer on the phone tells him that his son was inside a car that’s been pulled over. There were five kids in the car but Tim’s son wasn’t driving, and he was respectful.
Relief.
Fifteen minutes later Tim’s phone rings again. It’s the same cop. He sounds amused. The reason? He’s just pulled over Tim’s wife and daughter for overspeeding on the same road.
Key idea 2
A gorilla, a pep talk, a fire, and the aftermath of a shooting
Meet Laura McCord. She works for a police department in the South. After Laura McCord was the victim of a violent crime in high school, it was the female investigator on her case that inspired her to become a police officer.
Today she’s observing keenly as the lead investigator interviews a 12-year-old whose stepdad shot his mom. The boy, Trevor, is in shock and keeps staring at a small stuffed purple gorilla on the sergeant’s desk.
Laura asks Trevor if he wants the gorilla. He says no. During the interview, they learn that Trevor’s mom hasn’t made it. Laura offers Trevor the gorilla again and this time he accepts. He rocks the toy gently as he sobs.
When Trevor’s stepdad is arrested, he claims that Trevor killed his own mother. Trevor is forced to testify. His testimony helps convict his stepdad.
<pause>
In Dayton, Ohio, Pat Welsh is facing another 12-year-old boy called Junior from a low-income Black neighborhood. His parents have reported him missing, but when Pat gets there, he finds Junior at home.
Pat cancels the dispatch and is about to leave when Junior’s parents ask him to give Junior a talk – the boy’s been running with the wrong crowd.
What can Pat, a thirty-something white male possibly tell Junior? He’s not sure, but does it anyway. Junior’s eyes look down at the floor the whole time Pat’s talking. Pat leaves thinking he’s wasted his time.
Several years later Pat’s standing in line at a supermarket. He hears someone call him by his last name. In Dayton, the seventh most dangerous city per capita in the US at the time, there’s a big chance it’s someone he’s put in prison. Should he reach for that gun holstered against his ankle?
But it turns out to be Junior. He graduated from college and now he’s a married man with two daughters. He just wants to thank Pat for giving him that talk when he was 12.
<pause>
For Nicole Powell, life’s a bit more complicated. As a Black woman in the New Orleans Police Department, her career isn’t going anywhere. She’s restricted to boring work and has no female mentors to learn from.
Luckily for Nicole, a new sergeant comes in and shakes things up. He edits Nicole’s reports with a red pen. Nicole takes this badly at first but then learns that Sergeant Cyril Davillier wants her to improve her writing and her reports. This, he says, will help her become a better investigator. He also advises her to go back to school – education will get her promoted.
Nicole decides to heed his advice and studies. She graduates with a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s in criminal justice. Nicole now excels in her work and enjoys working with her peers to build trust between communities and law enforcement.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, Nicole remembers how she and her colleagues felt completely helpless in the face of the devastation it caused. Unable to handle the situation psychologically, some officers simply left, and two officers took their own lives. She recalls finding a woman trapped in a hotel with her children. The woman begged Nicole to save her newborn baby but Nicole helped save them all.
<pause>
It’s April 20, 1999. One of the worst shootings in US history has just happened at Columbine High School, Colorado. At the time, Mitchell Wido was attending a peer support workshop in St. Louis. The next day he travels to the school with a team of counselors and a chaplain.
Mitchell helps officers on the crime scene secure evidence, find unexploded devices, and identify bodies. The cops manage to identify the bodies of the two shooters. The chaplain says prayers for the victims, but when it comes to the shooters, he can’t bring himself to do it. God will take care of them, he tells his colleagues.
The police officers put the shooters’ bodies away from those of the victims. They refuse to allow the bodies of the shooters to be carried in the same ambulance as any of the victims. They feel helpless, but they can at least show some respect to the families of the victims even if the families can’t see it.
Key idea 3
A family business, a case of sexual abuse, and a waiting game
For Patrick Dugan, police work runs in the family. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, and cousin were all cops. On his first day of work as an FBI agent, he’s sent to work with a team investigating a bank robbery in Baltimore.
Bank robbers, he finds out, relish in the execution of their crimes. Bank robbery also runs in the family, often passing down from father to child. This particular bank robbery in Baltimore is part of a series of hits across the state.
The investigators get a lucky break: a woman called Karen has called to report a case of domestic abuse. When Patrick gets there he spots a four-door sedan that’s been linked to the robbery drive off.
Karen tells Patrick that the driver, Brad Young, is her boyfriend. They’ve been robbing banks together but Brad didn’t give Karen her cut from the last heist.
Even more intriguing is the news that Karen has been an administrator with a government agency for over 20 years. She helped Brad set up the robberies, even acting as a getaway driver during some robberies. Brad is later involved in an accident and is arrested.
Another member of the gang, Sandy, is a bank teller. The FBI tracks the fifth member of the gang through an informant and knocks on his door. He knows his time is up and surrenders without a fight.
<pause>
Illegal migrant women are easy targets of sexual abuse. Their abusers know they won’t risk exposing themselves to the police as the abused women fear deportation.
But one of the women breaks ranks and tells the police she’s been sexually assaulted by one of the most respected doctors in Chicago’s Hispanic community.
Dr. Alvarez is an immigrant himself, originally from Peru, and the police have heard allegations of rape against him, but they need evidence to bring him down.
Lissette Rivero, an undercover officer, specializes in prostitution and human trafficking. She dresses the part and visits Dr. Alvarez at his clinic. The doctor doesn’t disappoint. He touches Lissette inappropriately and then a second visit produces even more damning evidence.
Dr. Alvarez is charged, but the community rallies behind him. His supporters argue he’s a kind-hearted doctor who offers free consultations and hands out free medication. He’s ready to fight his case, but when he sees Lissette walk into court, he knows his time’s up.
<pause>
There are quite a few police officers who join the force because of the impression other officers left on their young minds. Shawn Patterson, who works in the South, is one of them. He was a wayward kid but changed when an officer took him under his wing. They’d go out to lunch together and ride around town.
In this incident, Shawn is dispatched to a stabbing scene. When he gets there, two women are screaming in the dark as a man stands over another, a knife in his hand. He’s covered in the blood of his victim. Shawn orders the man to drop the knife, but the assailant refuses. He takes a step toward the police. They don’t want to shoot him but might have to.
Shawn is about to pull the trigger when the man drops the knife. He’s arrested and appears in court three months later. The assailant’s two kids are in the courtroom, too. Shawn stares in shock. He almost killed their drunk father.
On another night out, Shawn is called to intervene over a driver who’s running away from the police. He was driving under the influence when he crashed his car and had now been arrested, cuffed, and put in the back of a police vehicle.
As Shawn tries to talk to him, the driver smashes his forehead against the plexiglass that separates the front and back seats. Then he sucks the blood that’s dripping down his face and spits it into Shawn’s face.
The blood gets into Shawn’s mouth and eyes and the driver then tells Shawn that he’s infected him with HIV.
Shawn sees red and jumps on the offender, but the other officers pull them apart. Shawn is cleaned and sent to the hospital where he’s given antiretroviral treatment and monitored. The treatment and the trauma cause him to start vomiting.
Tests on the offender return positive for hepatitis C. Shawn’s terrified. He loses weight and he’s worried about passing the virus to his wife and kids. Did he have a cut on his face or mouth when the offender spat at him?
It turns out to be a miserable waiting game, but fortunately for Shawn, he’s given the all-clear.
Final Summary
Although these stories only scratch the surface of what it’s like to be a police officer in the US, we’ve covered quite a range of occurrences – from encounters like Pat Welsh’s talk to a boy running with the wrong crowd to Mitchell Wido helping colleagues and parents deal with the aftermath of the Columbine shooting.
The officers’ stories raise issues which range from coping with PTSD to communities that don’t trust them and sometimes even side with suspects.
The next time you encounter a police officer, maybe you’ll remember Argo the brave police dog who returned to work ten days after sustaining severe injuries; Lissette Rivero, the undercover agent trying to protect immigrant women from sexual assault; and Shawn Patterson, the officer who had to wait anxiously to learn if a suspect had deliberately infected him with HIV. Whatever the case, one thing’s clear, the officers in these stories are all committed to their jobs and walk that thin blue line between life and death.
