Editor’s Note: This week’s essay comes from PoliceOne Member Sean Gallagher. In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. If you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members, simply send us an e-mail with your story.
By Sean Gallagher
Police1 Member
Over the past few years we have seen many law enforcement officers injured and killed and the law enforcement community is struggling with it. A great effort is being made to answer the question “why” and a number of solutions are being offered, whether it is better training, requiring protective armor, or better weapons.
I think one solution is being overlooked. Traditionally cops are resistant to change. We are resistant to being told that we may have done something wrong as we are always required to do what is right. We can become defensive and avoid making a change that may benefit us in the long term, especially when it comes to surviving.
I’m retired now, but I spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, with a sheriff’s department in California, a rather large police department in New York, and as a police chief in a small town in Washington State.
As a result, I could not resist change, I could not afford to not learn new things, and I had to be open to information. It wasn’t always easy, and I recall that there was a point in my career, at about the eight year mark, that I figured I knew it all because I had been there and done that.
That was when I left California for New York and was forced to learn policing all over.
After twenty years in New York I moved to Washington, and again I had to learn a different method of law enforcement. After having been out of a patrol car for a number of years, I climbed into my newly assigned patrol car in Washington and realized that things had changed.
When I was last in a patrol car there was a radio, lights, siren and an interior dome light. Now there was a computer, a camera, radar, a radio, blue tooth for my phone, a phone, a dozen push buttons for light settings, a shotgun, a rifle, and the list goes on. Things were different in patrol.
This leads me to the topic at hand. I didn’t and still do not know everything. When I was a younger cop I listened to the veteran officers talk about their experiences. They had been there and done that, and I wanted to know more of what they knew.
I may have had the latest training, but they had learned on the street and in the trenches.
As I moved on in my career, I challenged myself to always be open to new information. My theory was that if I stopped learning I would stop getting better. As much as new officers would listen to me I would listen to them.
They had been taught the newest techniques and had the latest information. I could learn from that and in return share my experiences with them in the hope that they would learn little nuggets of information from me. Especially when I was in Washington, I counted on my officers to teach me what they knew and that made me a better cop.
We all have our style of how we approach police work. No one style is right or wrong as long as it is safe and within the law, but we should always be open for improving that style.
Adapting to new ideas and principles, whether those ideas come from veteran officers or from the latest training, is a key to surviving until retirement with as little damage to ourselves as possible.
So many law enforcement officers are new to policing and have yet to perfect the art. Many departments are so understaffed that having more that one or two officers on a shift is the norm and we rarely see our peers except in a training environment or for very short periods of time.
Work loads have increased and where there was time to converse with other officers, sharing ideas and “war stories” this does not seem to be the case nowadays.
Then there are the veteran officers, ready and willing to share their ideas and philosophies, but it seems that our younger officers are less than willing to entertain them. Young officers leave their academies with the idea that what they learned is the only way to operate, and this leaves veteran officers perceived as out of date.
That is the farthest from the truth.
I think the veterans are a valuable resource that may help a younger officer at least do his or her job better, and at the most prevent themselves from being placed in a dangerous position.
What I would like to pass on to all law enforcement officers — young and old — rookie and veteran is this: be open and be willing to listen.
Take what is said as sage advice or information that could make you better at your profession. Use what you have heard and determine if it can be integrated into your style, and what doesn’t fit disregard it, but do it all knowing that your fellow officer, veteran or rookie may have that one piece of information that may one day keep you from getting hurt.
