Thursday, March 05, 2009

The Boys in Blue

I found a new blog when I was surfing around tonight. Actually, I found a few new ones. I'm having a lot of fun reading the police blogs and looking at things from their point of view (which is often shared by little ol' me).

One of the blog posts caught my eye. The officer at Cop 'n Attitude wrote about Ticketing Doctors and Nurses. I must say that I am thoroughly embarrassed to be associated with the people in this story. They were complete and total assholes.

That being said, I must admit my downfall. I am a speeder. Oh how I love to push that gas pedal down to the floor. 50 in a35? Not a problem for me. It is a problem for the local boys in blue though. I constantly get appropriate lectures from them when they are in the ER (and they are the BEST smart asses in the world, better than me which is a near impossible feat). I've been pulled over by a few of them, getting put through the verbal wringer, and they are right - every time. I'm trying to do better, I truly am. It's a hard habit to break though.

But I must say with 100% conviction, I have NEVER used my position to get out of a ticket. Never. My father is an officer (the Chief in fact), my ex was an officer, one of my best friends is an officer. I know the shit they have to deal with. I know how people can be complete and total jerks. I also know that being nice and respectable goes a long way.

Honestly though, many of us medical professionals do get a "PASS" from Law Enforcement. Living in a small town we get it more often. Do we deserve it? Not really......... but we're all a team. Is that an excuse? No. It just is what it is. We all see each other quite often carrying out the duties of our jobs and that develops into a relationship that is truly unique.

We see them bringing in an out of control schizophrenic who has been threatening people on the street. We see them helping us restrain someone who is trying to harm themselves or others. We see them with broken hands, broken ankles, or God-forbid - Gunshot wounds. They see us dripping with sweat trying to resuscitate the 10 year old who was ejected from the car during the rollover. They see us telling wives that their husbands didn't survive the wreck even though we did everything we could. They see us helping out their buddies when they've been injured.

We all see that we share the same sense of humor to deal with the horrors and stress of our jobs.
And they take the doughnut jokes really well, too.

3 comments:

Sabra said...

Now see, I've never understood the attitude some people take with police officers. Lesson I learned at a young age: You call the guy with the gun "Sir."

I've only been pulled over once, and I was polite & respectful, and wasn't issued a citation.

Anonymous said...

On a holiday, I was sent home on-call around midnight and ended up having a lovely chat with the young officer about working the night shift. He was really extremely apologetic when he gave me a ticket for failure to show proof of insurance (I had it, it was just in my stack of things to do and hadn't made it into the car yet). I think it helps an awful lot to be friendly and courteous to people -- I don't get how people think having an attitude will do them any favours.

Anonymous said...

But it's an understood respect. When I worked in a north Miami ER, one officer actually told us to let them know that you work in the ER, if pulled over. It's the same that when an off-duty (or on-duty) police officer brings himself or his family into our ER, we would do everything possible to get them in, right away. Same with Firefighters. It's not playing cards, it's simply respect for those that do the worst/hardest jobs out there.