Please welcome Recruit Tyler. He is from Ft. Collins, and recently joined the Lakewood Police Department as a recruit.
The corporate world of consulting can be fast-paced and
hectic. There is always an urgent proposal, a contract that needed to be signed
yesterday, and a regulator demanding your immediate attention. However, this
may not be apparent when walking into the office most days. Half the staff may
be missing because they are out to lunch with a client or telecommuting from
home. The other half at the office may be dressed down to jeans and polo shirts
most days of the week.
There is also an air of informality
among all levels of authority. Employees typically engage in conversation without
using titles. For example, most workers could get on the phone with an
executive member of the company and converse on a first-name basis. This isn't
a description of all corporate cultures, but it is the collegial environment
from which I came into law enforcement
My professional
background consists of working for in-house legal departments, supporting
professionals within architecture, engineering, and medicine. Did I have any
idea of what to expect of a police academy? No! The anxiety made it difficult to
sleep before that first week. How do I polish boots? How do I properly press a
dress shirt? Thankfully, there are forty-seven fellow recruits to ask. So I set
out to make a number of purchases for the first time: boots, polish, and, yes,
an ironing board.
The first
attempt at polishing boots was rather disappointing. I thought I had purchased
a glossy polish but the can might better have read "Lusterless Barn Boot.”
With the help of several YouTube videos and a hairdryer on the fritz, the toes finally
started to shine. My appearance was still far from satisfactory. While standing
in morning lineup, my tie was pointed out as being "all goofed up."
The fat knot of the corporate world was apparently not acceptable to a cast of
instructors prone to uniformity – hence, the uniforms. That night I revisited
YouTube to learn to fashion an appropriate tie for law enforcement. My tie didn't
look too bad except the little indent was mediocre, according to the keen eye
of Jefferson County Sergeant Swavely.
The cultural symbolism of law enforcement was closing in
on me. What would I miss next? Of course, titles. I inadvertently reverted to
that first-name basis style of communication and failed to recognize a title. I
needed to speak with academy staff and said I was here for Beers. No, I did not
have a six pack in hand. I intended to speak with my training instructor,
Lakewood Police Agent Beers. This error resulted in subjecting the class to our
first disciplinary run to ensure a light pole 200 yards away was still there.
We were subsequently able to report that the light pole was exactly where it had
been the day before.
Symbols,
hierarchy, and discipline: together these function to develop a common
discourse among recruits and academy staff. Such a discourse develops good law
enforcement professionals who serve and protect as called upon. We are becoming
“Agents,” men and women considered highly crucial by the community, including
the marginalized, people experiencing the worst day of their lives, and all
walks of life. Maybe, as one of our instructors pointed out, we might even be police
agents as viewed from the eyes of a child. By chance, my daughter had drawn a
picture of me as a police agent the previous week. It is pictures like that
which make me grateful to be in the academy; to become a police agent with the
Lakewood Police Department.
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