Long Post Warning
First of all, let me reiterate that June of this year will be 13 years since the last time I got pulled over by the police.
I interacted with a lot of police officers while I was working as a security guard. The OVERWHELMING majority of them were just like me. PZutting in the hours, going through the motions, trying to make the rent.
Most of them didn't seem particularly interested in whether or not I was carrying a gun.
I remember one instance that I got surrounded by cops at Parks and Rec because they were responding to a man with a gun call.
I was in uniform, they knew who I was. The MWAG was actually in the woods across the street. They stopped to ask me if I'd seen anything. They were standing around me in a circle, arm's length away at best. The senior cop asked me if I was armed he was standing right in front of me broad daylight it was in uniform and he asked me if I was armed.
I saw the cop on my right side look at my hip. That's the first time any of that group even thought to question it. I wasn't armed on that particular assignment.
Most of the cops that I encountered I'm not going to say this right but it was like having a gun and...
If you're acting squirrely or you're acting belligerent or you're just acting weird then they start to wonder if you are armed or carrying any weapons on you.
Most of them that I encountered it really didn't seem like a priority.
But, that one crazy State Trooper ruined all cops for me. If a cop approaches me I'm on my guard.
My favorite job in security was a job that I had doing security checks and electrical substations in El Paso County. I had a cop follow me into an electrical substation on Highway 24 one night and claim that I was a suspicious person.
I've told the story before. I was parked under a light I was driving a marked vehicle with a G4S security logo on it that you could read from 50 feet away. There was a light bar on top of the car. I was standing next to the car in a uniform. The cop knew I was a security guard and decided to roust me.
His supervisor showed up shortly thereafter and I, acting as the agent of the property owner asked the jerk cop to leave. The supervisor cop told him to go. If that's not clear it's an indication to me that the supervisor also thought that the other cop was out of line.
That one jerk made the job of every cop that I interacted with afterwards that much harder.
Last story, I was working at Aspen Point in Colorado Springs it's a crisis Treatment Center it's where they put people who are on a 72 hour hold. They brought in a lady named Heidi* one night, she was a frequent flyer, we saw her at least once a month. The cop who brought her in was walking up and down the hallway outside of her room. His name was Gary we all knew him we saw him all the time. He was retired from 1/12 Infantry on Fort Carson. Basically decent guy.
I guess he was having a bad night that night. Because he would walk up and down the hallway outside of Heidi's room and he would grab his gun and PRETEND he was drawing it. Then he would point a finger gun at her and pretend to shoot her in the head. He thought that was okay behavior for other people to see him do.
*FWIW before I go on with this story Heidi wasn't as crazy as people thought she was.
We we had her sitting in there on a 72-hour hold one night waiting for transport and she spent the whole time telling me and my partner about how the Federal Reserve was rigged and our money was worthless and now they were causing inflation to devalue the dollar so they could bring in a unified world currency. And I mean she laid it out in an orderly, logical, coherent and reasoned fashion. This was not some delusional, phsyco homeless woman. She just every once in a while got off of her meds and decided to run around downtown naked and any guy she ran into was getting lucky that night and probably getting herpes too.
I know this is already a long post I'm going to draw this last correlation.
I worked as a security guard for 15 years.
I spent 15 years overcoming people's previous interactions with Paul Bart type security guards.
I spent 15 years overcoming people's previous interactions with security guards who thought that security badge actually gave them some authority.
I spent 15 years overcoming people's previous interactions with security guards who thought that they were "Part of the law enforcement team" that is a direct quote BTW.
And every cop that I interact with for the rest of my life will be dealing with my previous interaction with the three cops that I mentioned above.
It is what it is that's the way the world works.
