If you've ever wanted to get inside the mind of a police officer, then this candid book written by a former Chicago cop will take you there. Terrence Howard, who retired from the force after twenty-four years, recalls an adventurous career that includes the good, bad, and ugly sides of law enforcement. Whether you are considering becoming a police officer or just curious about how they think, Howard offers answers. This Gun's for Hire identifies the three models of police officers; examines the forty golden rules of police survival; and provides advice on how to work with police so you can steer clear of trouble. When encountering a police officer, it's important to know the difference between the laws of the courts and the laws of the streets. Figure out how police officers really think, and take the necessary steps to ensure a more positive experience the next time you meet one.
THIS GUN'S FOR HIRE
A Look inside the Mind of a Street CopBy Terrence HowardiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Terrence Howard
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-2852-5Contents
Dedication...................................................................................viiAcknowledgments..............................................................................ixIntroduction.................................................................................xiDisclaimer...................................................................................xvChapter 1 The Forty Commandments.............................................................1Chapter 2 The Model Police Officer...........................................................5Chapter 3 Five People........................................................................15Chapter 4 Don't Say It And Don't Ask.........................................................23Chapter 5 The Traffic Ticket.................................................................31Chapter 6 The Department.....................................................................35Chapter 7 The Media..........................................................................43Chapter 8 Does Racism Still Exist In Law Enforcement?........................................57Chapter 9 The Transformation From Civilian To Police Officer (21 Essays).....................65
Chapter One
The Forty Commandments
The Bible tells the story of the Ten Commandments. A police officer must battle gangs, handguns, assault weapons, murderers, armed violence, rapist, crack heads, heroin addicts, politicians seeking re-election, public opinion, civil litigation, community activist, the Internal Affairs Division, the Police Review Board and the video camera. Moses only had to fight Pharaoh. Who did Moses call when he needed back up? God. Moses couldn't lose. When you have more opponents, you'll need more commandments.
Police work is just like anything else you learn in life. Start with the basics and learn as you go. Certain tactics an officer will learn from the veterans that train him and others he will learn through personal experience. Shit happens fast on the streets. A police officer needs to have a game plan drawn up ahead of time. This ain't no dress rehearsal. This is real life.
These Forty Commandments are the "golden rules" for the police officer. The officer on the street needs to learn them all by memory. Learn them all and he might win the game. Ignore them and he's on his own. Good luck.
1. Nobody(I do mean nobody!!) wants a police officer around them until they need a police officer around them.
2. On the streets, he must always know his location. If he doesn't know where he's at, how can he get help to arrive if he needs help?
3. The police radio is what makes a police officer "The Police." Not his badge, his uniform or his gun.
4. Wherever he takes his gun, take his baton too. It's better to have it and don't need it than to need it and don't have it. He can't beat everybody with his fist and he can't shoot everybody with his gun.
5. Drive slow and think fast. Hurry up and slow down.
6. The public doesn't have a problem with gambling as long as they are gambling with someone else's life. Your life, officer.
7. When he checks prisoners for weapons, check for all their weapons.
8. Take his job serious. Don't take it personal.
9. If he stops drivers for traffic violations, he should give them a ticket or a lecture. Don't give both. If he does, he might hear this: "Officer, just write me my ticket and shut the fuck up!"
10. The public must take all of the police service or they shouldn't take any of it. If they don't want the police to write them tickets, they shouldn't call 911 when someone is stealing their car.
11. Stay alert and he'll stay alive.
12. The risk he takes should never outweigh the reward.
13. Be a hero. But, only by accident.
14. When a police officer checks off at the end of his tour of duty, check off with his life. The hell with how many tickets he wrote.
15. There's a difference between what he thinks, what he knows, and what he can prove. If he can't prove it, forget it. Leave it alone.
16. The police department is not a family. It's a business. An officer is welcome only as long as he proves to be an asset to the company. When he becomes a liability, he has to go.
17. Listen to what the public tells him. Then, try to figure out what it is they're not telling him. Trust me, that's what he really wants to know.
18. An officer doesn't get paid on commission. Write ten tickets or get shot two times. He still gets the same pay.
19. Come to work to make money, not to make friends.
20. An understanding last longer than fear.
21. Just because "it" ain't happened in the last 10 years doesn't mean "it" won't happen in the next 10 minutes. What is "it?" He never knows.
22. A policeman can not be friends with people he has to "police."
23. The right tools make his job easy. Use them. Police officers don't search abandoned buildings. Police canine units do.
24. He should look before he leaps.
25. It's better to be judged by 12 than carried to his grave by 6.
26. When off-duty, avoid the on-duty police. When on-duty, avoid the off-duty police. Off-duty police officers will make him want to kill them.
27. If he doesn't know what he's doing, ask someone that does know. There is no shame in asking for help. (Note: On the CPD, ask Officer Virginia Johnston.)
28. Everybody wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die.
29. If the public wants him to make them a hamburger, they shouldn't complain about how he treats the cow.
30. He should forget about Rodney King. He didn't beat him up.
31. His job title is Policeman. Not Superman, Spider Man or Aqua Man. He's not faster than a speeding bullet nor is he able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can't spin a web any size, catching thieves just like flies. And, he don't get wet.
32. Beware of what he writes on police reports, what he says on police audio tapes and what he does on police video tapes. Once he writes it, says it, or gets caught on tape doing it, he can't undo it.
33. Always think like a police officer because he will be tried and convicted as a police officer in a court of law.
34. A police officer can do whatever he wants to do. Until he gets caught.
35. Try to hurt him and he's gonna do whatever he has to do to stop you. He won't care what it looks like on the 6 o'clock news.
36. He will never walk into a fighting crowd of people. He can't see in front of him and behind him at the same time.
37. Women carry weapons too. Keep his eyes on her hands, not her ass.
38. He doesn't win a street fight on the street. He wins it in the gym. Same with a shoot-out. He wins it at the gun range.
39. People will gladly accept their rewards in life, but not their punishment.
40. There can never (I do mean never!!) be too many police officers at the scene of anything. There can be too few.
Chapter Two
The Model Police Officer
There are three models. They are assembled in the police academy. After the recruits are trained and sworn in, they leave the academy and are assigned to a district or precinct where more modifications are made. The community they train in and the veterans that train them will become the recruit's foundation. Kind of like the caterpillar stage in a butterfly's development. What develops when the rookies comes out of the cocoon will be one of three models. They will become either: 1. A Police Officer (nonactive). 2. The Police (reactive). 3. The Real Police (proactive). Warning! There is one other kind of cop.
A police officer
A Police Officer applied for the job, his application for hire was accepted, he took and passed the entrance exam, entered the police academy and stayed out of trouble. In the academy, he passed all the required testing, became state certified, was sworn in and graduated. Upon graduation, he was sent to a district, on probation, for street training. A Police Officer has an "every man for himself" approach to police work. He only does the work that he has to do. The radio calls he handles are the ones he gets assigned. If you don't call him, you don't see him. A Police Officer doesn't want to do the job. A Police Officer only wants to get paid on the 1st and the 16th of the month.
When an officer gets into a squad car with a DVD player and a stack of movies, a Play station or a Steven King novel, police work is not his main focus. A Police Officer will complain about how many jobs he gets during his tour of duty and brag about how much sleep he gets. There is a difference between sleeping on the job and coming to work to sleep. (Note: I worked the midnight shift for 17 years. Yes, I slept sometimes.) The difference was when the shit was hitting the fan, A Police Officer would sleep right through it. If the police dispatcher didn't call his radio number, no one would see him at the scene. He didn't come to work to help out. He came to work to sleep.
A Police Officer's rationale of a crime victim is, "Oh well. Shit happens." He takes no personal responsibility and will put the blame on the victim of the crime. Sometimes, he will come to work and predict that he won't do any work at all. This is dangerous thinking. A policeman never knows who it is that he's pulling over at a traffic stop or who's on the other side of the door he's knocking on. A Police Officer may have applied for the job thinking about the pay, the benefits, and the pension. The twice convicted felon who's looking at life in prison if you arrest him may be thinking you took the job to send him back to the penitentiary. A three time loser ain't got shit to lose and may see murdering a policeman as his only way out.
The young rookie is like a teenager with his first hard-on. He's got it and can't wait to use it. Like a teenager, the rookie really doesn't know what to do with it. Young officers want to do everything they've seen done in the cop movies or they want to police like old Uncle Pete, the retired cop, told them he used to back in the day. Bad guys die in the end of the movie. The cop lives. In real life, there is no script. Try to police like Uncle Pete and your ass might end up indicted, sued, fired or locked up. Rookies think that the veteran officers are lazy. Veteran officers don't want to score a lot of points. They just want to win the game.
Recruits, fresh out of the academy, want action. They want to receive department commendations, citations for bravery and awards for valor. There are a lot of fancy awards on the CPD. Rookies don't realize that some of those awards they won't receive until after they leave the intensive care unit. The best way to get a rookie's attention is to ask him, "What were you doing 10-15 years ago today? You were in grade school." Veterans let them know: "I was doing the same thing that I'm doing now, rookie." The good news for a recruit is the job is new and exciting. The bad news? The feeling doesn't last long. A few years on the force and he learns it's just a job.
Rookies that get assigned to work with A Police Officer caught a bad break. The rookies doesn't know anything and A Police Officer doesn't want to do anything. If they spends their probation period on the streets avoiding police work, what happens when the C/O says that they're not on probation anymore? The C/O puts them in a car, alone, and tells them, "Go to work."
The young officer is in trouble now because all he learned from A Police Officer was how to duck and dodge police work. Now, the rookie cop is supposed to know what he's doing on the streets and he doesn't know. No one took the time to show him.
(On a personal note: I didn't look forward to working with rookies late in my career. Oh, what the hell. Someone had to train me, so now it's my turn. I never talked to my recruits about writing tickets or making arrests. I tried to accelerate their training about the only thing that was important to me. Commandment 14. All the other bullshit will come with doing time on the streets. If they wrote a report wrong, they could write it over. If they failed the sergeant's exam, they could take it again. Fail the street survival test and that's their ass.)
The police
The Police have all the qualifications of A Police Officer. He just takes his game to a higher level. He comes to work to work. He thinks like the police and also like the criminal. Doesn't need much motivating and very little supervision. He does the job right because he applied for the job, the City of Chicago hired him and now, he has a job to do. The Police do not work recklessly or fail to use due caution. He's not foolish, but he's not the faint of heart either. The Police will show up when a fellow officer needs assistance without being called to the scene by the dispatcher. He just shows up.
In the mind of The Police: "We're all in this together." His strongest attribute is a commitment to the team effort. He believes in Commandment 40 ("I might not be your best friend but I'll be the first one to back you up"). The rationale of The Police is, "Ain't shit gonna happen on my beat while I'm out here." He takes no personal responsibility for the crime victim's situation. However, he will put the blame on the offender of the crime, not the victim. The Police understands that he can't be at all places at all times. Shit does happen and that's life. No matter how many police are on the street, innocent people will be robbed, shot and killed in a large city like Chicago.
The Police always feels: "I wish I had been there. I could have made a difference."
The Real police
Hollywood makes movies about this police officer. The wild and the crazy. He comes at the criminal hard. Wants the toughest assignments and works in the most dangerous neighborhoods. The Real Police make the big arrest. He is the shit magnet of the police department. Shit just finds him or he is finding shit. The patrol division is too slow for him. He prefers to work in plainclothes, in gang and drug units, buying drugs from dealers and getting weapons off the street. The Real Police want to get down and dirty. Run from him and he will chase you. Fight with him and he will fight you back. And yes, he will search your car without a warrant. Damn the ACLU.
The Real Police hunt for criminals like Arnold Schwarzenegger was looking for Sarah Conners. Search, locate and terminate. He does police work because he wants to. His rationale is, "I want some shit to happen." He takes personal responsibility and will be pissed off if some shit jumps off and he misses it. The community he works in despises him without realizing that the worst your community is, the more you need him. There are some neighborhoods that A Police Officer is not the best candidate to work the area. Not the case with The Police or The Real Police. They can work anywhere.
Rookies that want to learn the job should spend some time working with The Real Police. Police Officers write case reports. The Real Police write arrest reports. Lots of them. Real Police don't waste their time writing traffic tickets. Real Police are looking for hard core criminals that steal cars, sell drugs, break in homes and rob innocent people at gunpoint. It's a catch-a-mouse vs catch-a-rat mentality. Real Police catch rats and they throw mice away.
Every recruit that successfully graduates from the police academy is A Police Officer. Every recruit that graduates is not The Police. Some are just not cut out to be The Real Police. Try though he might, a cop is gonna be what he's gonna be. Understand this fact. You can not take a donkey and turn it into a race horse.
The Crooked police
The Crooked Cop was not assembled in the police academy. He was assembled on the streets by other crooked cops or he was a crook before he got hired. A rookie, fresh out of the academy, can earn $40-$45,000.00 a year. Within a year, that officer can be earning thousands of dollars more. More than enough money to provide for himself and his family. Why do honest policemen cross the line and turn crooked? Two reasons. Reason #1 is pressure. Reason #2 is the most common. Greed.
Some policemen have pressure placed on them to produce results. The pressure may come from the Department, City Hall, the media, the C/O, public outcry, even from their peers. Certain crimes are high profile, shockingly violent and must have closure. A happy ending is required here. When a police officer is put into a pressure cooker to produce results (or else), he may start to bend the rules to get the results he needs. ("If you want to stay in my unit officer, get me the results I need.")
Policemen assigned to gang units must make gang related arrest. Officers assigned to gun units must make gun arrest. An officer assigned to those units can not stay in the unit if he's writing parking tickets every day ("What are you? The Police or a meter maid!"). When a cop starts to fold under the pressure to produce, he may start to break the rules instead of just bending the rules. Plant drugs on suspects. Violate their civil rights. Use excessive force. Go to court and "test the lie" instead of testify.
Money is still the root of all evil. Greed is the most common denominator. Most officers who fall do so because of greed or envy. Drug dealers have lots of money, nice cars, expensive clothes, jewelry, and fine ass women. Cops see this and they envy the drug dealer. The officer is thinking, "I work everyday and I can't afford a car like that." (Note: When you envy someone, you have to envy everything about them. What about the fact that the drug dealer is looking at prison time when (not if) he get busted, the other drug dealers that want to kill him, the people in his own organization that want to kill him and take his place. Plus, he can't walk the streets without looking over his shoulder every single second of the day. Now, that's pressure.)
Drug money looks very tempting on the evening news. It looks a lot more tempting staring you in the face. No one gets more jail time than a murderer, a drug dealer or a corrupt public official. That judge on the bench is gonna give away prison time like he's giving away Halloween candy. A crooked cop is gonna do all day in jail. When the police are locking up police officers, it's only one thing. Bad news.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THIS GUN'S FOR HIREby Terrence Howard Copyright © 2012 by Terrence Howard. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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