William R. Randolph
University of Arkansas Fort Smith
Dream Big and Patrol Strong
As a little boy growing up in a small town of Arkansas, I always wanted to become an authoritative figure that someone would look up to someday. Now when I say authoritative I don’t mean be “Billybadass”, I mean someone who not only gains the respect of the public, but being someone that the public can look up to and count on to be there in their time of need. As a kid I always enjoyed watching anything to do with law enforcement on television. One of my favorite times of the year in my small town is fair time. The law enforcement sets up special activities on certain days of the week during the local fair. I would …show more content…
When you are born, you spend all your life trying to make something of yourself. When you start college to earn a degree, you spend more time trying to figure out who you are as a person and what you want to do with your life. So I finally settled on the selection of going into law enforcement for my career field of choice. I would like to be part of a K9 unit, then work toward SWAT, then reach my final step on where I really want to be a United States Marshall. In order for me to do the things I want, I am getting my bachelor degree in criminal justice first. Then I will go to a police academy and learn what I need to, in order to become a Patrol man. I would like to learn and fulfill the duties of this job for a few years then move on. Every job you have to start at the bottom of the totem pole and in my case the Patrol man would be it. According to this quote, “About 70% of the millions of daily calls to 9-1-1 systems across the country are directed to the police” (Schmalleger, 2015, p. 165). What I hate about the Patrol unit is the amount of respect they don’t receive. The patrol unit is known for “Being described as the backbone of the police department” (Hess, Orthmann, & Cho, 2014, p.126). They perform the most dangerous tasks and are always patrolling the towns looking for danger, they put themselves out there to the public not only to keep it safe, but many people that don’t like them makes their job very difficult and …show more content…
Officers make numerous choices in their encounters with citizens: to stop and question; to frisk or search; to arrest; to cite; to use any of a variety of forms of physical or verbal force (Dunham & Alpert, 2015, p. 59).
So after hearing all this, I bet your opinion on the Patrol man has changed. If so that is great and if not that is okay to, but I hope you will look at them and treat them with the respect that they deserve. I want to be a Patrol man someday and move on toward my dream job. This may sound crazy with all the stuff that the Patrol man puts up with and goes through, but I believe that in order for the outlook on this job to be better off in the future there needs to be more people out there who truly cares and will carry out the motto to Serve and Protect. That is how I think as a college freshman who is on their way to someday supporting a family and proudly defending and helping the public who have mixed feelings on the Patrol unit. So remember all these things a Patrol man does and try to change your feelings about them if you can. Not all of Patrol men are as bad as the media makes them out to be. So thank a Police officer and support the thin blue line, because you never know when you may need help from