BlueSheepdog
10 Years Experience
Around the Way, FL
Male, 40
Cheating death and fighting communism: that is how a fellow officer once described our job. It was meant to be funny, but as time went on it seemed all too true.
I spent more than ten years in law enforcement, all of it on the street in uniform patrol. I've been a patrol officer, instructor, sergeant and lieutenant.
Do not report crimes here. Nothing here should be considered legal advice. All opinions are my own.
Except in unusual circumstances (police funeral, working a disaster, etc.) a detective never wears a uniform. They typically wear business attire.
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I was in college and was not happy in the aerospace engineering program I was in. I explored the possibility of police work, and after riding a few shifts with officers, I decided to go into law enforcement.
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I've not had the chance to observe the dispatch center of a very large agency (such as a NYPD, LAPD, Chicago, etc.) What I've seen in medium sized departments (100-200 officers), you would have a dispatcher on each channel. A single channel might be dedicated to a specific area or precinct, while another might be dedicated to records checks.
So if a department had three precincts, there might be four channels (a dispatcher for each of the three precincts plus one for running warrant checks, license checks, etc.) Then there would be at least one supervisor who would make sure everything is running smooth. There would be call takers (people answering the phones) who might be cross-trained to dispatch.
Typically, there will be extra people available to bring up an extra channel if a special event happened. For example, lets say you had a vehicle accident with a death. The traffic homicide unit plus the officers working that scene might go to an extra channel to work and keep their radio traffic off of the precinct channels.
I hope that helps.
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New officers go through a period of on the job training called Field Training. Experienced officers with specialized training take new officers and teach them how to employ the things they learned at the academy in the real world. This is also a time when the new officer is closely watched in an effort to determine if they are a good officer/person or if they should be terminated because they are unfit for the job.
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Zookeeper and Animal Trainer
Are a lot of people in your line of work vegetarian/vegan?
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I don't know. Contact an attorney in Michigan.
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Feel free to ask anything you like.
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