This is it. The end of the road. The retiree buys a nice car, takes the family on a little vacation, then starts to focus on his second gig. Within a year all the memories of the bad things start to fade away: The petty annoyances, the pressures from both inside and outside the department, the harsh discipline, the holidays and family events spent chasing the radio instead of with loved ones. Suddenly, retirees remember only the camaraderie and the crazy things they saw and did with their partners and buddies.
A cop’s pension is 50 percent of his final average salary. The department takes your last three years on the job, averages those years’ pay and halves it. If you take the full 50-percent option, it goes on for the rest of your life. Your pension ends when you end.
There’s another pension option. It’s called the “death gamble.” If you die within five or six years of retiring, a big lump sum goes to your next of kin. That’s a good option for cops who've been behind a desk living on cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes for the last ten years of their career.
But cops don’t start collecting pension the day they retire. First they have the golden time known as “terminal leave.” For the first six months after retirement, you collect full salary. You get a grace period on the books, which would be well spent setting up a new source of full-time income.
Any retired cop still has friends on the force, so retirees are often stopping by the station house to shoot the shit, coming to cop parties, and hanging out in cop bars. But five years after retirement, a cop will find that all his old buddies are starting to retire, too. One day he’ll stop by the precinct to say hello and be like, “Who the hell are all these strangers in my house?”
A career as a cop is a weird thing. It’s a lot like childbirth—every second spent in it is a nightmare, but the second it’s over, you look back and see it as the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Ask any ex-cop how he likes retirement. He’ll say, “You know what? I kind of miss the job.”
CONTINUED:
A Cop's Life:
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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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