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 A rookie cop is easy to spot: Everything is shiny and new. His clothes are pressed and neat (and everything still fits). He’s fresh-faced and eager to please: “The sarge wants five tags [summonses] today? Well, by God, I will give him six—I’ll probably make detective this way!” A rookie takes the late jobs, skips meals, and never stays out sick. For a rookie, everything is new. They are really feeling, for the first time, what it is like to be a cop: The stares when they enter a location and the overt hostility of many people they’ve sworn to protect. Even their own friends sometimes regard them with suspicion, which they couch as lame jokes: “If I (insert semi-illegal behavior here), are you gonna lock me up?” If, like many cops, a rookie grew up in a middle-class area and gets assigned to a less-than-middle-class area, he’ll experience a side of life that was heretofore hidden from him. Shootings, stabbings, dead bodies, and drunken family disputes… apartments so filthy and vermin-infested, it’ll make you dry heave… crackheads, junkies, whores, the mentally ill, drug dealers, and hustlers of every stripe. Welcome to the NYPD, rookie. Rookies learn to do things like buy their pants a little bigger and their shirts a little looser so their gun fits in the waistband without too much of a bump. They also learn about the tedious parts of the job, like standing on a foot post at 1 AM on a cold winter’s night, when the only sound you can hear is the click of the traffic lights changing. Rookies go to large details, like New Year’s Eve or parades, and spend 80 percent of their time standing around and the rest getting yelled at by a succession of passing supervisors who feel the need to look useful. New cops always get the same clichéd mottos thrown at them by older cops: “Hey kid, a good cop is never cold or hungry.” “Hey kid, always have an answer, good or bad.” “Hey kid, we don’t give up other cops.” Rookies also learn how to speak to people: When to bully, when to cajole, and when it’s time to fight. And rookies definitely get into fights—they are often shocked to discover that lots of folks have no fucking problem with hitting a cop. Rookies also get to see the rest of the criminal justice system: Judges and assistant district attorneys who are under the assumption that getting punched, kicked, and spit at are just parts of a cop’s job, and top brass who don’t support street cops when they come under fire from the public. Rookies basically spend 90 percent of their time on the job taking in massive doses of heavy, heavy shit. Not to be a total bummer but the bitterness and the burnout starts here… CONTINUED: A Cop's Life: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next>
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