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Behind the Badge is a collection of true stories and stories drawn from true experience and fictionalized for narrative purposes by a cop who worked the streets for 30 years.

You will experience what it’s like to go on some of the funniest, saddest, and most exciting radio calls that can be imagined. This is about how physically dangerous and mentally draining a cop’s world can be.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. Some incidents have been adapted to protect privacy while still conveying the essence of a police officer’s life and work.

CAUTION: Adult language and graphic, sometimes very disturbing, content.

Behind the Badge is dedicated to all those who have ever worn a badge, to all cops who have seen the horrible things and experienced the close calls with death that the public just reads about in the morning paper.

God bless all officers who have been killed on duty. A true hero is the cop who gives their life to their community they swore to protect. A special thanks to the families of cops who worried if they would ever see their loved ones again once they left for work. This book is also dedicated to the children of cops who were picked on in school because of their parents’ chosen profession.

A dying man wrote this book with only one wish. Let those who read it gain a better insight of what it’s like to be a cop. The good, bad, and ugly calls will be looked at, from one old, broken down, retired cop’s perspective.

When any nation faces bad times, the citizens often fight the police in protest. This action gets the needed publicity for their cause. but it hurts innocent police officers who were just doing their job. Cops have a hard enough time catching crooks and protecting property in today’s world.

The last thing any police department needs is to spend valuable resources on keeping the peace at potentially violent demonstrations.

Some of the cops may agree with the demonstrators’ point of view; however their job is keep the peace and stay neutral. Police officers are the public. They have the same problems many others have.

If you have to demonstrate, please keep it peaceful. Remember the cop you throw a rock or bottle at is someone’s son, daughter, or next door neighbor. Police officers must do their job and keep their personal feelings to themselves in order to be fair and impartial to all sides.

Every day, citizens of some other country riot with their police. The reasons for the violent outbreaks vary, from a bad economy to an unjust killing by an officer. We have to be better than that.

It’s crazy to think that you threw a bottle at the cop who may later have to respond to your house during an emergency in order to save your life. It’s a cop’s job to protect all citizens. Wouldn’t you only be hurting the society you live in when there are fewer cops on the street because of injuries sustained during a violent demonstration?

Most cops’ intentions are pure. They do the job because they want to help people, not because they want to get rich. Being spit on and attacked by fellow citizens is not the way our country should treat police officers under any circumstance.

This book will tell you about one cop’s career working the streets for 30 years. You will learn the cold truth of what it’s like to be a cop. The author is terminally ill and has no reason to hold anything back.

The humility of a cop’s life will be examined like never before. You will be able to relate to the situations as if you were there yourself, being the cop in charge. The book has a surprise jaw-dropping ending that could change the way you look at your own life.

One purpose of this book is to let the public know who cops really are. The public has seen a thousand police shootouts on television, when in real life most cops never get into a shooting in their entire career.

The public rarely has personal contact with the police. When the public is contacted by the police, it’s almost always as a result of some bad experience. Either they have been the victim of a crime, been involved in a car accident, or they are getting a ticket. The public has no idea what a cop’s life is all about. You will read who really is behind the badge you see every day.

The author taught Bomb and K-9 classes for 20 years, to thousands of students. He learned his classes had to be fun as well as informative in order for the students to retain the given information. Behind the Badge is written in the same manner. The author picked the best calls from his career, fictionalizing where necessary. The book is fun to read, at the same time evoking the emotions of sadness that cops go through.

Cops are not that different than the public, even though they act like self righteous assholes at times. You can be assured they have the same frailties and weaknesses as everyone else. Cops have family problems and substance abuse issues and worry about how to pay their bills. You will read about problems that ultimately led to two of the author’s close friends’ suicides.

Another reason for this book is to give young cops advice. The author made many mistakes in his life. His only wish is to prevent other cops from making some of the same foolish choices he made. Being a cop is the best job in the world. In what other job can you get free food and drive like a madman?

Some cops pay a heavy price in many ways if not vigilant over the inherent hazards of the job. Going home alive after your shift is over should be your first and most important lesson learned as a cop.

Starting out, young cops often get an attitude that they are morally superior to the public because of their high values and ethics. The public also expects all cops to be the epitome of a model citizen, because they enforce society’s rules and laws. Most cops lose this attitude with time, being replaced with the humility and the self realization that they are no better than anyone else.

Good or bad morality can come from any segment of society, rich or poor. Cops should never think they are better than the drunk lying in the gutter, because they have not walked in their shoes, if they are wearing any at all.

To all the young cops who read this book, please always think of your family first and the job second. You will live longer and have a happier life. Life is what you make out of it, good or bad.

Each story contained in this book, whether literally true or constructed from the author’s life’s work, has a hidden moral or lesson learned. Try to figure out what the author learned from the experience or radio call. At the end of the book the lessons learned from each story are concisely summarized.

I grew up in a small town, much like countless others throughout the country. I had a very happy childhood, but it ended much too soon. I had one older brother, Billy.

I was the quintessential tattletale. Getting my brother in trouble when our dad came home from work was a common occurrence. Billy’s only dream was to become a professional baseball player. He would have made it into the big leagues, if he was only three seconds faster in the 40-yard dash.

Since I often snitched on my brother, I got my share of back room beatings from him when our dad wasn’t home. Using me as a human piñata was his favorite way to get his baseball practice in for the day. Billy also had a great imagination. He was good at thinking up innovative medieval techniques of torturing me.

Billy played mostly innocent pranks, but at times he went too far, like the time he made me eat an oleander pod. Our father was a lab technician and knew that I had to vomit the poisonous plant up immediately. I was traumatized for life and never liked vegetables after that.

Once Billy told me to stick my finger in an empty light bulb socket. Being the obedient little brother, I did what I was told to do, at which time Billy turned on the light switch. I lit up like a human Christmas tree. You could have heard my scream several miles away.

On another occasion of sibling torture, Billy told me to stick to my head in an air vent at the bottom of our garage’s rear wall. Billy told me that he climbed through the vent the day before. Billy further explained his technique. He said that if I could get my head through the vent, then my whole body would be able to squeeze through, just as his did the day before.

I was never the smartest kid on the block, and I believed my brother much too often, as in this case. Billy left for school and I stayed home because I was not of school age yet. My mom was vacuuming the house and singing as usual, when I tried to crawl through the vent. It only took a few seconds and I got my head stuck in the vent. I could not get loose and began to cry.

My cries for help went unnoticed for 30 minutes. My mom was vacuuming and could not hear me. She later said, she thought she heard a cat crying when she was vacuuming. My mom went outside to find the poor cat and found her son’s head wedged in the vent. My little body was twisting around trying to get free.

She used a bar of soap for lubrication and pulled my head out from the vent, ripping part of my scalp off. Needless to say Billy got a good spanking with a belt when Dad got home. We only got a few spankings with a belt growing up, but it didn’t take many, as they hurt like hell.

I took my lumps for years, until one day when I tried to get even. I almost killed my brother that day. I just got a brand new Schwinn stingray bicycle for my birthday. The single-speed bike had a banana seat, sissy bar, and a coaster brake on the rear tire sprocket. The bike was the envy of every kid on the block, including my jealous brother, who didn’t have one yet.

One hot summer evening, we were doing broadies on my bike in the driveway, in front of our house. A broadie is when you raise your foot up and slam on the rear coaster brake, spinning the rear of the bike in a half circle. (Sometimes it is called a “donut.”)

We were racing as fast as we could from across the street, towards the front of our house. At the last second, we would do a broadie, coming as close as we could to the front wall. Gilligan’s Island came on TV, at which time Billy threw my bike down and said it was his turn when he came back out.

I was no angel at this time in my life, not that I ever was. I had enough and it was time to get even with my brother, once and for all. It only took me a few seconds to remove the bike’s rear coaster brake.

When Billy came outside, he grabbed the bike and raced off across the street. He was standing up pedaling as fast as he could go, when he tried to slam on the brake. He was only a few feet from the wall and was going at least 25 mph when he tried to stop. The look of surprise on his face just before he hit the wall was one I will never forget.

The sound of him hitting the house was like a sonic boom. Our living room windows even shook from the collision. Billy was knocked unconscious. Our dad then ran outside and saw him lying on the pavement.

While picking him up in his arms, in order to take him to the hospital, my dad asked me what happened. Being the ever truthful kid I said, “I don’t know what happened. He just wrecked.”

Billy was brought to the hospital emergency room and received seven stitches above his left eye and had a slight concussion. I replaced the coaster brake in seconds, as soon as they left. I never told my dad how the accident happened, and Billy was not told the truth for 25 years. Billy still has a small chip in his front tooth and a big scar from the incident.

Billy made me tough in a lot of ways. I later hung around a rough crowd of older guys who liked to look for fights every weekend after we got drunk and high. One hot summer night I was going to go out to the county fair with one of my best friends, “Rick.” Rick wasn’t big or strong but he loved to fight. He didn’t lose many fights because he was one mean mother f- - -r.

On this rare occasion, I got a date with a girl who didn’t look like a sheep, as I was never the lady’s man. I took my date to dinner and a show but still didn’t get very far with her.

Rick’s sister answered the phone. Judging by the sad tone of her broken voice, it was obvious she had just been crying. She went on to explain that Rick got into a fight with a guy at the fair. He was drunk and beat the shit out of him as usual.

As the guy was driving away in a car, Rick had to get in one more punch. He reached through the front passenger window and punched the guy in the face. To Rick’s surprise, the guy came up with a .25 caliber handgun and shot him once in the chest. Rick died at the hospital several hours later.

I had many childhood friends who died violent deaths. Dying in a car crash or going to prison was common in my small town. I am sure I would have followed in their paths if I didn’t become a cop, as strange as that may sound.

I never liked to fight, because being punched in the nose hurt like hell. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was more fun to get high and drink with the girls than to hang around with the guys. I never went all the way with any high school girls, but in my junior year I got an “A” from my friend’s older sister. She was home from college, and taught me things for the first time. I was a fast learner.

Living across the street from a school ground provided me with the biggest front yard a kid could have. I played many years of pick-up tackle football games. We also played many years of basketball and my favorite sport, baseball.

I started first string in three sports my freshman year in high school. I couldn’t afford to get in trouble with the law or I would be kicked off the teams. I went on to be a pretty good player for my high school’s football and baseball teams. I played first string, all four years, in both sports. I also played ten years of baseball in various leagues as I grew up.

Playing sports was always a big part of my life. I learned very important lessons from the many coaches that I admired. I will always happily remember many of my teammates, of all colors, for the rest of my life.

Sports coaches are like cops in several ways. When it came to a person’s race, the coaches were color blind. They only wanted the fastest, toughest kid for any given position, not caring what color his skin was. I know the coaches all had their own personal thoughts on different races but they kept them to themselves.

Cops are the same way, or at least we should be. Cops should also always keep their personal opinion or attitude to themselves when it comes to controversial issues like abortion, religion, or gay rights.

Our mom was the nicest person in the world. She never drank, smoked, or cursed in her life. She always went to church on Sundays and had the prettiest voice in the church choir. Our mom, however, had little control over us, and we were more than rude to her on many occasions.

One night my dad bought my mom a new typewriter. Playing around, he typed his last will and testament. As usual, he wrote something funny. He left everything to our family cat, “Boots,” and to “Jimmy,” the 17-year-old next door neighbor boy, who was severely retarded.

Jimmy’s favorite practice was masturbating while sitting on his front lawn when people walked or drove by. Having visitors or relatives from out of town come to our house for the first time was always interesting, to say the least. Jimmy was not a small boy, in many ways.

Early the next morning, I heard my dad use the bathroom several times. A loud noise and my mother’s scream were then heard from my parent’s room. I rushed in, only to see my dad having a massive heart attack, which lasted for several minutes. I ordered my mom out of the room and told her to call for an ambulance. I had to begin CPR on my father, who had stopped breathing and had no pulse. I thought I was having a bad dream and would soon wake up.

After several minutes of giving mouth to mouth breathing and numerous chest compressions, a strange thing occurred. My dad bolted upright, only for a second, and said, “Take care of your mom.” He then collapsed and stopped breathing for the last time. A dying man’s last wish, and then he was gone.

I was 16 at the time, but I can still vividly remember how my childhood had just vanished that morning. The weight of taking care of my mother was now on my shoulders for life.

I finished high school and started to date my very beautiful future wife while we were in college together. Marriage was soon talked about and a good paying job would be needed. My mother told me she would look in the paper for a job. A few days later she told me about a city police officer job, in the state’s capital.

I laughed at the idea of being a cop because I was used to running from them as a teenager, for various minor offences. I gave it some thought and knew I had to have a good job if I wanted to get married. Plus, it sounded like it might be a fun job.

I took the written test along with 2,500 other applicants. I thought I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to pass, as I was not good at taking tests. Luckily for me the test was only pass/fail. I passed and went to the next testing stage.

I then went to an oral board interview. A variety of hypothetical questions were fired at me, from several people sitting at a table. I must have answered correctly because I scored 100 percent.

The next test I took was a five-hour-long written psychological test, which left me feeling like a sexual deviant and fire bug. To my relief, I passed the psychology test. I had always questioned my own sanity. Luckily, in 1978 no polygraph test was administered as part of the testing procedure, because I was still occasionally smoking marijuana at the time.

The last part of the hiring process was the Chief’s interview. I heard that the Chief would just ask me some simple questions to find out what type of person I was. I thought this was just a preliminary talk before I got the job.

For some reason, I was extremely nervous waiting outside the Chief’s office for my turn for the interview. Once I entered the office, I became twice as nervous and felt like I was going to puke on the Chief. The Chief’s face looked like it went through a meat grinder at some point in his life. The room was filled with heavy cigarette smoke because the Chief was a chain smoker.

He didn’t look up once or offer to shake my hand. The Chief told me to sit down while he looked over my paperwork. He asked about my family and other seemingly innocent questions. I thought I had the job in the bag, as this interview was the easiest of all the testing procedures, I had gone through.

The Chief for the first time looked up at me. I thought the interview was now over. Out of the blue he asked, if I ever smoked marijuana. After almost shitting down both my legs, I took a deep breath and said “yes.” Thinking I should have said no, I now thought I would never be hired.

Then the old bastard asked me to tell him about the time I smoked marijuana. Thinking as fast as I could on my feet, I made up some innocent sounding story. I told him my brother came home from college and offered me some on Christmas Eve, in our back yard.

I couldn’t believe my ears when I was asked if there were any other times. I again took a breath and said yes. That sadistic old fart then asked me to tell him about that time. I again made up some naïve sounding story. I told him my senior high school football team had a party after we won our championship. Some of the guys were passing a joint around, and I took a few puffs.

The Chief asked me one more question that I honestly think got me the job. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked if there were any other times I smoked pot. I didn’t blink, and stared right back at his steel blue eyes, and said yes, there were other times.

I walked out of the department and headed for the first bar, because I knew I had just fucked that interview up. I knew the Chief wasn’t going to hire a pothead. I entered one of the most sleazy, low-life street bars a person could imagine. The smell of urine hit me as soon as I entered. It was in that disgusting bar that I met one of the most insightful people of my entire life.

I was sitting at the bar when an old guy struck up a conversation. Drunks love to make new friends when they are low on money. The man’s name was Patrick McCahan. He had an amazing command of the English language for a street drunk. During the course of our three-hour conversation, I learned that Patrick indeed was an educated man.

As I continued to buy him beer, I learned his life story. He had a great job and loving wife. All was good for several years, until his daily drinking caused him to lose control of his life. Patrick lost his job, and his wife divorced him soon afterwards. I realized this man was at rock bottom, asking people to buy him drinks at such a sleazy bar. Something was very different about this guy. He seemed happy and contented for a flat broke derelict.

Patrick had the dignity and charisma of a president or movie star. He was one of those kinds of people you could listen to for hours, which I did. I learned he was a past English professor at a prestigious Ivy League college.

Listening to this man’s view on life was life-altering. I now understood about things that words could not describe, but my heart could feel. I learned that poetry can be the truest form of philosophy. Both of us agreed that most people’s thoughts on religion were childlike and foolhardy.

The proof that God exists is in a flower. God is Nature. An energy source does exist that bonds all living things together for the common goal of survival. All living things are bonded with each other in ways which make them one entity.

Evolution is God’s way of making nature work. The will to live or to survive is what bonds all living creatures together, large or small.

I have experienced an incredible euphoria from having rare intellectual conversations with only a few people in my life. A flow of energy could be felt from one person to another during these talks. I only felt the soul of three people in my life, and Patrick was now one of them.

The good, bad and the ugly things in life were talked about that day, between two drunks who shared their souls over a few beers. I never forgot Patrick and the words he spoke that day. I always had a soft spot for old drunks, because I knew they all had their own stories to tell, just as important as mine.

Before we separated, Patrick gave me some advice that I did not take. He told me not to take the job because I had too big of a heart to be a cop. I later learned Patrick was right, as my heart was greatly weakened by the empathy I had for so many others during my career.

I received a letter from the department the next week. I didn’t want to open it and have to tell my mom that I didn’t get the job. To my surprise, I ranked number two out of over 2,500 applicants who originally started out. My mom was the proudest lady alive. She always had her suspicion about me cheating, because I wasn’t very book smart.

I had to go to a 16-week police academy after I was hired. It was a live-in school, recognized as one of the best police academies in the country. I found it difficult to room with a stranger. Some of the other students in my class became some of the closest lifelong friends I would ever have.

I learned to be seen and not heard while in the academy. The instructors ordered the students around like children. We were told if we can’t handle the pressure in the academy, we won’t be able to handle the stress of working the streets. The first day I wanted to punch out one of the instructors. He screamed at a female student for being late to class. She started to cry, and the instructor really gave her a bad time in front of the class. What an asshole, I thought.

The first week I wondered if I made a mistake taking the job, because I didn’t seem to fit in. I had to study twice as hard as the other students because my brain was already pickled from drinking so much beer in my life.

I was intimidated as hell, being around a bunch of instructors that acted like Marine drill sergeants. It was hard for me to get used to the idea of being a cop, because I grew up as a little juvenile delinquent.

One of our instructors I will never forget. He taught a courtroom testimony class, but his name was not on the schedule to teach. He showed up late to class, wearing a T-shirt and jeans.

The guy was a district attorney investigator. He told the class he was advised by his boss at the last damn minute that he had to teach. The instructor told us he was not happy about the late request. He continued to rant on about how unprofessional it was, being asked to teach with no notice. He then said he didn’t want to be there, teaching a bunch of dumb rookies.

After taking several minutes of verbal abuse from this jerk, one of our more outspoken students raised his hand. This student was a little older than the rest of us. He was a Vietnam combat veteran who killed more than his share of people.

The instructor rudely said, “Now what do you fucking want?” The student told the instructor he thought he was an asshole for treating them so unprofessionally. For a few seconds you could have heard a pin drop, it was so quiet. The instructor then flew into a rage and ordered the student to step outside the classroom. We all thought that they were going outside to fight.

After a several minutes, the academy sergeant walked into the room. We all thought we had seen the last of our fellow classmate, because of his behavior. The same student then walked in and took his seat. Not a word was said by the sergeant or the student. The tension in the classroom could be felt by all of us.

The same instructor then walked into the classroom. He now was dressed in a suit and tie. We soon learned the instructor was just trying to make a point about the importance of first impressions. I was completely fooled and a little scared by his performance.

He continued to teach the class, which was one of the best we had during the entire academy. The instructor turned out to be a hell of a nice guy with a great sense of humor. Nothing happened to the student who spoke out. We always respected him, for speaking up for the class.

Three months after he taught our class, the instructor and another investigator attempted to serve a misdemeanor warrant at a residence. The suspect was only wanted for a minor crime. As the two investigators were walking up a driveway, the suspect appeared out of nowhere, holding a rifle.