{"id":1328,"date":"2012-04-21T19:13:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T23:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2012-04-21T19:13:15","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T23:13:15","slug":"memories-and-police-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=1328","title":{"rendered":"Memories and Police Patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I hate to be a big buzz kill, but you will not be doing these cool law enforcement things forever.\u00a0 Just as your equipment gets old and weathered, so will you.\u00a0 And like your gear, you will be obsolete one day.\u00a0 Reality check.<\/p>\n

I am writing these mean words to remind you to enjoy these times of your life.\u00a0 I was once in my twenties, lean and invincible.\u00a0 Professionally, I had it all:\u00a0 Midnight Shift, SWAT, and K9.\u00a0 I didn’t know how well off I was.\u00a0 My work days consisted of speeding from one adrenaline rush to the next.<\/p>\n

It is all a blur now, though.\u00a0 I’m twice as old as I was then.\u00a0 Probably twice as slow, despite decades of physical maintenance.\u00a0 So many of those critical incidents are not quite lost in my head, but buried in the past and difficult to dig up.<\/p>\n

In some ways, I am lucky in memory.\u00a0 I have meticulous K9 records, which benefitted me in Court then and aid my recollections now.\u00a0 I also wrote the majority of the after action debriefings from the 12 years of SWAT operations while I was Team Leader, so those missions are archived.<\/p>\n

Nothing will bring back the slide show of daily amusements and frustrations from the last 25 years.\u00a0 I wish I could remember all the quirky happenings from thousands of shifts.\u00a0 I\u2019m certain I\u2019ve forgotten an encyclopedia of interesting events.<\/p>\n

The thing is, you get older and see your options narrow.\u00a0 More seems to be behind than ahead.\u00a0 While you walk tall with experience, you limp a little from all the years.\u00a0 “It’s not the age, it’s the mileage,” I have heard.<\/p>\n

I know that you young guys won’t get this, because I didn’t when I was your age and I guess I’m just indulging in a little self pity now that I am a victim of time, but I hope you find a great satisfaction in your present skills and adventures.\u00a0 Few get to walk in our boots and serve society the way we do.<\/p>\n

We should be able do these great things forever, but that would only serve to lessen their importance.\u00a0 My advice is to be cognizant that there limits to your youth.\u00a0 Take lots of pictures and video now. \u00a0Write things down.\u00a0 Keep records and letters and notes and mementos.<\/p>\n

These things won’t replace the the electricity of the action, but as you become more seasoned, they will serve to make you just a little bit smug about what a badass you used to be…<\/p>\n

Randall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to be a big buzz kill, but you will not be doing these cool law enforcement things forever.\u00a0 Just as your equipment gets old and weathered, so will you.\u00a0 And like your gear, you will be obsolete one day.\u00a0 Reality check. I am writing these mean words to remind you to enjoy these times of your life.\u00a0 I was once in my twenties, lean and invincible.\u00a0 Professionally, I had it all:\u00a0 Midnight Shift, SWAT, and K9.\u00a0 I didn’t know how well off I was.\u00a0 My work days consisted of speeding from one adrenaline rush to the next. It is all a blur now, though.\u00a0 I’m twice as old … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[241],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-street","tag-police-patrol"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28xkp-lq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}