The Working Man.

On Monday, a man named Bob will get out of bed before the sun comes up.  He will get dressed and fix some coffee and set off for his days routine.  Bob will drive off to spend the day on the second floor of a run down office building in Jacksonville Florida.  Usually there is a whole office full of people that work to manage the 500 or so employees in the company where he works, but today he is the only one here.  Bob is a dispatcher for Cypress Trucking.  Bob covers the weekends most times.  He has been doing this way too long and usually works a 60 hour week. He is that one guy that goes above and beyond to keep the ship afloat and takes the most grief for his commitment. Management is constantly on Bob’s case about logistics while drivers call and whine about the load assignments and getting home.  A couple months ago, Bob had to take a week off work.  It was almost instantly visible to the drivers he deals with that things weren't being handled quite the same.  Bob left because his brother passed away.  He had to take care of some things, including how to handle an invalid family member that his brother had been taking care of.  That responsibility now falls to him. It’s wearing on him, and the stress is reflected in his eyes.  It might be easy to mistake Bob for a grumpy guy, but he deals with a disproportionate amount of grief—especially lately.

Across the country, a man named Kevin will be awakened by a beeping coming from his computer.  It’s an email from Bob wishing him a happy holiday.  Kevin drives a truck.  He is also working today, in Texas, halfway across the country from his wife and child. Kevin is sharing the cab of his truck, which is smaller than a jail cell with a trainee for the next 4 weeks.   Kevin is the sole breadwinner for his family and despite the extra pay he gets for training the new guys, it’s hard to make ends meet. He stays out on the road on weekends and holidays like this because it provides a little extra income for his wife and 12 year old daughter.  She is growing up while he is away and he knows it. But the responsibility of providing for them far outweighs his desire to be home today grilling up some burgers and having a beer.  He needs this extra holiday pay to cover the cost of a new mini fridge for his truck.  His old one died and he cant carry food with him right now to save money, so he is forced to eat out at a lot of fast food joints.  Kevin will wake up his rookie and hit the road.  He has a delivery of construction materials to make on Tuesday morning.  Those materials will insure that the folks home celebrating the holiday will have work to come back to tomorrow.

Back in Illinois, a young woman in her 20’s named Amanda is already moving.  She has two young children to take care of, but she wont be able to see them long this morning.  She has to get to the Flying J across the county where she works as a manager.  Truck drivers like Kevin are out there in her lot.  They will need fuel and clean showers and most definitely coffee—LOTS of coffee.  Sometimes she wonders if they don’t just pour it in their radiators and come in for another thermos. Amanda is working to make her own ends meet.  She lost her dad two weeks ago to cancer.  He died too young and he left her in charge of handling his affairs and his tiny estate.  She still has a lot of things she needs to work through, but it will have to wait.  She has a job to do and she needs to get to it. Despite the overwhelming grief she feels, she picks herself and heads off to work for the day.

Down near Cleveland Florida, a woman named Leslie is checking on her husband Raymond.  Ray was also a truck driver, but he has fallen ill with age and can no longer get behind the wheel.  Leslie is working hard to take care of him and she loves him dearly.  Ray’s truck is up for sale.  That might help cover some of the medical bills, but there have been no serious offers yet.  So Leslie needs to get in to cover her shift today at the grocery store in town.  Like Amanda, she works retail and has to deal with all manner of ill tempered patrons.  Today is going to be especially bad and she knows it.  The mud park down the road is open for the holiday and that always leads to intoxicated, self serving idiots running through the store tearing things up.  She has enough to worry about with Raymond.  She should not have to be babysitting these people.  Quite frankly she has earned this holiday with her ailing husband.  But she has a responsibility, and a job, and bills.  So Ray will have to spend the holiday without her.

Across town, a man named Dylan is slipping into his bullet proof vest.  He does not want to wear it.  It’s hot in Florida this time of year and that vest is a sweat box.  But there have been so many random attacks on police officers these days that there is no way in hell his wife would let him leave without seeing it on him.  Dylan has four beautiful young daughters.  He wants to work this 12 hour shift today because its holiday pay.  He too can use the extra money.  The police Department where he works has not offered up a decent pay raise to officers for nearly a decade.  After paying into his medical plan and his retirement, he brings home a pretty small paycheck for what we ask him to do.  Christmas is right around the corner though, and Dylan knows that the extra money will help put a few items under the tree this season.  Dylan will spend most of the day keeping an eye out for intoxicated drivers.  Revelers who don't know their limits and head out on the road possibly endangering the lives of people like Leslie Amanda and Kevin.

In Wichita Kansas, a woman named Abby is also stirring.  She is slipping into her scrubs and talking to her husband.  Abby is an RN.  She works taking care of people like Raymond.  During her down time, she has been studying to get her doctorate.  Abby’s husband has a pretty good job.  They don’t want for much, and they would probably be just fine if Abby chose to stay home and focus on trying to raise a family while he worked.  But Abby feels a deep sense of responsibility for the people that she cares for.  It’s a thankless job that no one really wants to do.  But it absolutely needs to be done and she knows it.  So while her husband is firing up the grill and watching football, Abby is probably going to be cleaning up vomit and other nasty stuff.  RN’s all across the country just like her are also preparing for their shifts today, just in case something goes wrong.  Dylan and Kevin are working today at jobs that are consistently listed in the top ten most dangerous professions.  Someone needs to be on standby—just in case.

Later in the day, Dylan may just take a quick lunch break at the restaurant where an attractive young lady named Felicia is working her shift.   She gets the unenviable job of serving drinks and food to holiday patrons all day.  Felicia is a magician when it comes to dealing with horses. She has an unrivaled love of everything equine. She has a couple of her own, but horses are an expensive habit.  She needs to work through the holiday in hopes of landing a few extra tips to keep her animals in feed.  Ideally, she would be working a career training horses and the people who want to ride them.  But fewer people these days can afford the luxury of time and money that it takes to care for such an animal, and horse training jobs are hard to come by.  So Felicia works full time serving drinks and part time with her passion—when she can find the work. She is working tonight because holiday customers will usually tip a little better.

At the Crossties farm and garden store across town, where Felicia buys her feed, Kerry is fixing to close up shop for the day.  Kerry has been struggling the last few years to keep her small business afloat.  She came in with her most loyal employee Velvet today to open the store in case any of her regular customers like Felicia needed anything.  Kerry has been running her store for years.  Lately business has taken a swift hit in the gut.  The down turned economy means that fewer and fewer people can afford to take care of farm animals, especially horses.  She has seen her customer base dwindle off over time.  She wonders how long she can hold on, but she feels a driving need to be there for the people who have loyally shopped at her business for years.  She came in to work today herself so that several of her employees could enjoy the holiday.

While we take time this Monday to celebrate the working men and women who built our great nation, lets not forget that scenarios like this are playing out all around the country all day.  I’ts not hard to look around and see the people working on the working mans holiday.  People who should be celebrating with their own families, but have commitments and responsibilities that take greater precedence.   It wouldn’t hurt to say thanks to Kevin, Leslie, Amanda, Dylan or Abby if you see them. Tip Felicia an extra 5 and find a reason to spend some money at that locally owned business… They earned it.   

Me?  I chose to work the holiday simply because I wanted to.  If I read my cards correctly, I will probably be sitting at the Hooters in Waco Texas about a hundred miles up the road from my trainer Kevin, waiting to make my own delivery of construction materials on Tuesday morning.  I think that maybe I will have a pizza, breadsticks and a 2 liter of soda delivered to our dispatcher Bob in Jacksonville--and have them put Kevins name on the receipt......

Happy Labor day my friends.

A few bad apples

I am not going to beat around the bush this time, and you will not find my usual dry humor in this blog.  But I have remained silent on this issue long enough, and its tearing me up inside thinking about it all day long.  Every day I am reading or hearing about another law enforcement professional in this country being killed or attacked in a cowardly manner by thugs.  The outcries on the internet are vast and sad.  There are too many officers out there now who fear for their safety.  And there has been a whole lot of finger pointing about why this is happening.  I am going to take some time today to point out the obvious for the many masses who cant seem to see it or say it.  I am also going to tell you how to fix it, but no one is going to listen.

I want to start by saying that I IN NO WAY SUPPORT OR AGREE WITH ANYONE ATTACKING A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER EVER!  I really don’t feel the need to explain my mentality on that, but what I have to say may come out sounding at times like I agree with these attacks- I do not. But at times, I honestly feel like I am the only one who understands why it's happening.

I recently watched a video of a female police officer on Facebook questioning these attacks and stating her concerns for herself and her fellow officers.  In 4 minutes, she repeated the phrase “a few bad apples” no less than 4 times.  “Every profession has a few bad apples”  The implication being that people should not be attacking law enforcement because of the actions of a few bad officers.   I agree with this, however lets deconstruct the bad apple scenario.  If you have a bad apple in a pile of apples, the approach to fixing this problem is you remove the bad apple from the pile and toss it.  If you remove the bad apple, set it on the shelf for a few days, then proceed to place it back in the pile, it not only does not solve your problem, but it makes the problem worse by corrupting the apples around it.

Law enforcement is the only profession in this country that we trust to police themselves in the matter of removing bad apples.  Over the last 30 years, just about every agency in this country has shown a nearly complete inability to handle this task with any reliability.  We have historically trusted the media to hold them to task on this issue, but in that arena the media has also failed.  Corrupted officers who have shown a continual disregard for the rights of the citizens they serve, are punished (if they are ever punished) by being given a few days of paid vacation and returning to work, committing the acts on more people.  The administrations of these agencies have continually failed to show good judgement in regards to handling these kinds of people.  Most news organizations will sit silently and speak little of this practice for fear of alienating the very agencies they rely on for their news stories and soundbites.

There was one particular officer that worked at the Police Department where I live for over a decade.  “Officer X” was very well known in the community.  I distinctly remember sitting at a bar one night downtown as he drove by in his cruiser.  “There goes crooked cop Officer X” I heard one patron say to another.  Now, almost the entire community knew that this guy was dirty.  He had a very long history of abuses and crimes he had committed on the job.  Administration did very little if anything to curtail it because he was a “good producer”.  They let him go on violating peoples civil rights for almost 10 years in my community and did nothing to stop it until he got himself into such a pickle legally, they had no choice but to fire him.

The Sheriff in my county is no better.  Several years ago, two of his deputies leveled allegations against my wife of interfering with an official investigation.  After six months of internal affairs work and investigations, these two deputies finally revealed that she had not in fact interfered with their investigation, and they admitted that they both lied under oath.  The Under Sheriff’s response to this: A shoulder shrug. I guess these things happen huh?  I caught that same Under Sheriff stealing from the citizens on election night several months later.  He had just been elected the new Sheriff of the county, and he celebrated the victory by having the Sheriff’s office helicopter do three flyovers at his party.  This being a violation of several election laws in Florida, I took the footage of the event that I shot to my then supervisor in the news business.  I was assured the story would be “handled” and then,  it quietly went away.  This happens because the news organizations do not wish to stir bad blood with the law enforcement agencies that they deal with.  It happens every day folks.  It happens in every agency, in every community in this country.

Offten times, when a foreseen disciplinary action is appearing to actually be a severe one, the officer is allowed to resign with no mark on his record.  That way he can move to another law enforcement agency and continue his disregard for laws.  This activity got so bad, that the Sarasota Herald Tribune built and maintains an entire website dedicated to tracking these officers in Florida and the agencies they move to.  You can check it out here:  Unfit For Duty.  When we take this back to our “Bad apple” analogy, if you remove all the bad apples from one pile and put them into another pile, well then you have still solved nothing. 

If you think that citizens have not noticed, that people who act more like the law,  than law enforcement officers, are being protected, then think again.  People see it, they talk about it, they share it.  It angers them.  That anger has been building and bubbling for years.  The recent trend in violence against law enforcers was not an overnight decision.  The people we have trusted for years to to be responsible for throwing out the “bad apples” have failed time and again.  Citizens know it, and they are letting that anger manifest itself in the most horrific way possible.  And it needs to stop-right now!

From where I sit, I can tell you the things that I can see that we need to do to.  It would probably go a long way if we formed some kind of organization that deals exclusively with allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations.  This agency should contain no current law enforcement officers-I’m sorry, but you have proven yourselves inept at policing your own.   It will take money.  It will take time.  It will take the commitment of retired law enforcement professionals with a track record of honesty.  Next, we need to seriously strengthen the whistle blower laws.  The first hand witnesses to these events are usually other law enforcement officers who are great at their jobs, and terrified to speak up.  Lets get them some real protection and let them speak out to help end this.   Affirmative action laws that insure that unqualified candidates are being hired to fill empty positions need to be repealed.  I know for a fact that there is a man working in my community as a law enforcement officer who can not read or write.  He was hired because he is black.  He was hired to fill a quota. Lastly, we need to abandon this unconstitutional war on drugs.  During prohibition, it didn’t take us nearly this long to figure out why gangsters were shooting at cops with Tommy guns.  Do the math people. Moving to make these changes would show people that we understand the problem, and we are trying to fix it.  But instead, we are standing around scratching our heads and pretending to wonder why people are so pissed off.

We have our officers operating under guidelines to fill Universal Crime Reports, quotas, mandatory minimum actions for maintaining federal grants and conviction rates for our county and state attorneys.  Hey, here is a novel idea: How about we let our law enforcement officers be law enforcement officers?  Make no mistake, EVERY single agency in this country has quotas for their officers to fill, despite the fact that numerous courts have found it to be unconstitutional.   Just because you don't call it a quota does not change what it is.  I have actually had it explained to me from a sitting Sheriff that there is no other way to gauge an officers performance.  Really? Here is another novel idea: How about you get off your lazy ass and review your officers performance individually. I thought that's what we were paying you for in the first place.  Quotas force officers to make bad judgement calls because they fear for their own "performance" and need to keep someone in handcuffs to make the boss happy.  That leads down the road to rotten apples. 

“The administrations” silence on this issue speaks volumes.  From our inept President down to our inept Police Chiefs and Sheriffs.  It really sucks that I feel like I have to be the one to point all this out, but I have been waiting, and no one else seems to want to.   The recent actions of these people, if escalated could possibly lead to either a mass abandonment of law enforcement officers, or a civil uprising or both.  I fear both scenarios, but I can tell you without hesitating, that if it comes to the latter, I will proudly stand on the blue line and defend my officers to the death.  I still believe that a vast majority of them are great people and deserve our support.  However, the apple cart needs to be upended.  We need to pick through the apples and toss the bad ones once and for all, and we need to save and protect the good apples for our future.  The apple of my eye is a law enforcement professional.  She is one of the good ones.  I write this today because I fear for her safety, and the safety of her peers.  I honestly hope that it will pry peoples eyes open just a little…. But I fear that it wont.