I was nineteen when I went to London to join the Metropolitan Police. I left the police force twenty years later, combining my leaving do with reaching forty.
They say life begins at forty. Mine didn’t begin but it did change. I look back and wonder: that person, that police officer, was she me?
It’s easy to see why cops feel battered when the people they deal with are often the bad people, the sick of mind people, and the victims and witnesses who are often distressed. And there are those who for whatever reason blame the police for everything.
Police officers can become embittered working in areas of high crime, populated by people with an abhorrent dislike of the law and those who try to enforce it. It’s easy to understand the cynicism and jaded outlook when the days are filled with endless abuse and violence and grief.