pay attention to detail and never leave any haps. Make sure all your paperwork is done on time and to the letter and ALWAYS keep a personal copy of everything you do paperwork wise in a secure area. If it involves an incident with another officer wherever he or she was involved have them read your account of the incident and have them countersign that it is true and accurate on all your copies and keep them secure.

my biggest mistake I made while working here was to trust that my co-workers had the same work ethic that I had, or the love of the "work" we had to do. When you work in this field you dedicate yourself to the mission at hand and tend to develop side blinders and all your focus goes to getting the job done. There are others that bask in other peoples mistakes in things like paperwork, or they make notes and develop things to make themselves look better without doing anything themselves to elevate their position in the chain of command. Nepotism tended to play a big part also I went into this department from another county so I was an outsider, the majority were all relatives of higher ranking people within.

THE most stressful day for me at work was the day I made my decision to end my chosen career field and retire..due to some physical inadequacies, I felt after spinal surgery, rotator cuff repair, and a total knee replacement I was no longer a good candidate for someone to depend their life on the fact that I would be able to come to them rapidly and provide a physical force needed to subdue someone..I felt that I was too fragile and mortal after the surgeries.

many "customers" got angry and lashed out..I had to learn how to speak to a person and how to get along to survive in a jail setting. It develops a certain state of maturity over time.

police work in general was something that was a "natural" thing for me I did not have to struggle or work at making decisions as to how to handle a situation they came to me on my feet so to speak,