Officer.com Police Blogs & Podcasts

Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

The opening ceremonies for IACP (that’s the International Association of Chiefs of Police) in Boston took place this afternoon. In keeping with tradition, I watched them from a TV monitor in the conference center lobby. If you have ever been to a police conference and attended the opening ceremonies, then you know that they line up more or less as follows:

• The Big Cheese of the association tells everyone how welcome they are.
• The color guard from the [Host City] Police Department brings in the flags.
• There is a moment of silence for everybody that died in the last year and before.
• The Big Cheese and the Lesser Cheeses are introduced. Everyone has a big round of clap.
• The local chief/sheriff/mayor/whatever (pick two or more) reminds everyone how welcome they are, in case they forgot. At least one will tell a bad joke.
• The Big Cheese thanks all of the local honchos for coming, then gives his/her own speech about what a wonderful job everyone is doing, but that it won’t be enough for the future, and how everyone will have to work harder for success. “Success” is never defined, so I guess we’ll never know whether we got there or not.
• There is another big round of clap, and everyone files out.

Other reporters will be much more specific, but that’s as much as most of you need or want to know.

I did go to a couple of the educational sessions today. Both of these were in the police psychologists’ track, not because I’m a police psychologist, but becauser their stuff seems to be the most interesting. Norm Stamper (former chief of police in Seattle) was supposed to talk on “A Former Chief Looks Back on Police Psychological Services.” His talk wasn’t bad, but it had nothing to do with the topic. He did come up with a memorable statement:

“Combining paramilitary and civil service mentalities inevitably creates obsequious, butt-kissing, deaf people.“

The other session was on the use of psychotropic drugs by police officers. That was very interesting, and it would have been even more so had the inconsiderate oaf that was in the room just before finished his speech on time (Inconsiderate Oafs of the World, take note: please do not presume that what you have to say is more important than what the next guy has to say, just because they scheduled you first. At the end of the hour, shut up and leave). Antidepressants are now the #1 prescribed drug in the country, and I expect that there are a lot more cops taking these, and other psychoactive drugs, than their departments know about. The presenters, Drs. Robert Davis and Cary Rostow, did an excellent job of explaining the hazards and mechanisms of the various drugs, and gave practical considerations and suggested safeguards to protect both the affected officer and his or her agency. They also offered a model policy for departments that want to pre-plan for such an eventuality.

The trade show floor (IACP wants me to call it a “Technology Exposition”) is, as always, huge and crowded. Today, one had to be careful not to get run over by a cherry picker or a forklift. BY tomorrow morning, when the floor opens to the attendees, all should be in readiness.

Recruiting Problems

I had an interesting conversation with the chief of a medium-sized agency in California while on the shuttle bus back to the hotel yesterday. He told me that he had to go through at least one hundred applicants to get one viable recruit. Those that could make it to the background investigation stage were getting dropped mostly for DUI convictions, or drug use, or bad credit.

If any of you reading this are trying to become cops, there’s something which I thought was commonly known, but maybe not: every decision you make in life is going to affect your viability as a police recruit. There are no “do overs,” no clean slates, once you’ve marked on them. If you decide to drink while underage, or drink to excess at any age, your endangering your career of choice. If you max out your credit card(s) at the mall, someone is going to notice. If you decide that smoking marijuana isn’t really using drugs, so it must be okay to do, you’re adding at least five years onto the clock counting down to when you can apply again.

If you’re a cop, and you want to stay a cop, you have to live right. You can’t drive drunk, or slap your wife around, or spend money you don’t and won’t have. The foreman on the assembly line at International Widget might not care, but Anytown PD will. A similar situation exists about aspiring to be a cop. If you’re mindset is “I better do all this wild stuff now, before I become a cop,” you’re closing the door in front of you. Cops have to obey the laws, pay their bills, and be good citizens. So do people who want to be cops. If you think that it ought to be okay for you to do all that radical stuff now, then it’s clear that you don’t want it badly enough.