Police and Law Enforcement News

So, I just want to get this right:  Are municipal cops still above sheriffs officers?  I mean, since some sheriffs’ officers have begun making more money than municipal officers, they move up a notch, right?  And campus cops, how do they compare to park rangers?  And, the whole corrections thing still confuses me.  They are below troopers but above bridge and tunnel cops?   What about Port Authority?  Those friggin guys always throw off the whole thing.

In one of the noblest of professions, it is incredible how we eat our own. 

For some, it’s not good enough to consider us all as cops patrolling different beats.   We need to differentiate between a tier, a dorm, a hood, and a highway.  Somewhere along the line, a caste system was created placing all of us on various levels of a law enforcement hierarchy, one which defines our worth and our importance.

We fight about titles, clientele, salaries, and even uniforms.

Some of this may be natural sibling rivalry. 

For instance, the network of sub-cultures within law enforcement sometimes battle over bragging rights. 

Narcotics officers ride traffic guys who ride detectives who ride patrol guys.  D.A.R.E. officers and K-9 officers watch each other in utter amazement pondering, “how can they do that job?”  Motor cops and mounted officers are cut from the same cloth, but would consider early retirement or even a bullet before manning a bicycle post.  And the bike guys quietly laugh at everyone certain they have the best gig of all.

Sibling competition can be fun and even healthy when not taken too far.  It’s inevitable in a setting with such fragmented responsibilities and division of work.

But when the conversation evolves to just plain berating the chosen field of a fellow law officer, it fractures our entire unity.

In an age where some question whether the brotherhood of old still exists, it serves no purpose whatsoever to begin splitting up into separate and unequal entities. 

It divides us and it makes us little.

And in the end, when you’re alone and fighting with some street animal and you hear a siren screaming toward you, do you really care about the patch on the shoulder of the officer driving the car? 

When you’re at a funeral and the first three notes of taps ring out on the trumpet and you get a glimpse of a mom dressed in black holding the hand of a little boy, do you care which agency is standing next to you?

When we stand as one, we are colossal, we are noble, and we are magnificent.

When we engage in class warfare on the beat, we’re just a bunch of civil servants.

NJLawman.com