At year five, a cop hits a massive milestone: top pay. All through the rookie years, every cop has told himself that life will get better once he reaches top pay. “I’ll be able to pay my bills once I reach top pay,” rookies repeat like a mantra. “Life will be all milk and honey once I reach top pay.”
At first, this seems true. The pay jump is fairly significant for year five, and for a few paychecks most guys feel like they’re doing great. Then reality sets in. They see that even at top pay they’re not making all that much money. For the first five years of the career they have put off a lot of stuff, and now it’s starting to show. They’re driving the same car they drove in the academy. A lot of cops want to start a family and buy a house by this point—you know, like grownups do. And guess what? It’s hard as fuck. Every cop eventually realizes that struggling for money is just part of being a cop.
If a cop is going to get promoted, that whole process begins in this stage of the career. Some guys sacrifice six months of their lives studying, and they get promoted to sergeant. Others have made good connections during their rookie time and get promoted to detective. After a promotion, everything is new again—it’s like rookie redux. But that soon wears off, and they realize: Same bullshit, different shield.
The cop learning curve, which is steep over the first few years of a career, slows down alarmingly at this point. A cop at this stage is the kind of cop he will be for the rest of his career. Even promotions won’t change that. A sergeant always gives preference to the cops who are most like he was at their age. If he was an active guy, he favors the gung-ho cops. After all, they do most of the work, and they should get something for it. If he was a zero, he’ll favor the young zeroes. After all, those guys are least likely to force him to make any type of decision. They probably won’t be involved in a shootout or anything that would end up in front of Internal Affairs.
The main thing about this stage, though, is that the excitement has worn off. A lot of cops start to feel like glorified civil servants at the whims of politicians. By this time, every cop has seen people’s lives and careers ruined for political gain. He’s seen fellow cops subjected to unjust discipline and miscarriages of justice.
Want me to sum up years five through ten with a good old cliché? No problem: You start out trying to change the world, but eventually the world just changes you.
CONTINUED:
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Anonymous, on Jun 9, 2009 wrote:
4 years ago I loved this job. Now I can’t stand to come to work. I get in the shower to come to work and think, "how is the brass gonna fuck the silver badge today?" My chief is a pussy who was never a cop, and anybody over Sgt has a gaping vagina that spits out discipline for the most minor of infractions. Morale is in the toilet, haven’t had a raise in 6 years, no new equipment for years, and were the 2nd biggest department in the state. I can’t wait to retire or even find a new job. |
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Anonymous, on Apr 15, 2009 wrote:
this was great, I really enjoyed reading this. |
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Anonymous, on Apr 15, 2009 wrote:
this was great, I really enjoyed reading this. |
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