Looking Back: Young Officers These Days – By Scott Reitz

I recently attended an academy class to observe what was being taught these days. There is an old adage that when the police look young, you are getting up there in age.

Some of these recruits inspired confidence while others did not. Four or five of their numbers had already been fired/dismissed from the class within the first two weeks. One wonders about the initial selection process. It seems to me that my academy class was bit more squared away. We all had life experience, many of us had degrees from Universities and many had military experience. We had long since been separated from our parents and had to figure life out on our own. There is some real benefit to this sort of maturation process.

It’s rather hard to effectively settle a family dispute when you’ve been living in your mother’s basement. Without life’s lessons there is nothing to draw from.

We were not cut a lot of slack in my academy class. One single misstep and you were sent packing off the academy grounds within 30 minutes. We looked on it as a career as opposed to a job and most certainly it was not ‘welfare with a gun.’ Perhaps this is why so many of my classmates went the full distance of twenty years or more. I do not mean to be cynical, but there seems to be a more apathetic approach to police work today than in the past. I have spoken to supervisors who continually tell me that I left at the right time. I believe them. There are some really solid police officers out there and we come across these guys in our classes… I like them. Police are a reflection of society and with societal change – there will be changes in the gene pool from which we select our officers. Maybe If I shed some light on these changes it can be a step in the right direction for the future of our LEO youth.