The Job and the Yuletide joy

Being a police officer usually means that you and doctors are the only people that get introduced at parties by their occupation.

"Hi, this is Mark, he's a doctor..."

“Hi, this is Simon, he’s a cop… Better behave!”

This usually results in a series of conversations that can start in a variety of ways. The best way is usually “My cousin is a cop, do you know him”, more often they start off like “Hey, I got a ticket the other day…” and they can range through to “I saw what you guys did to George Floyd, I fucking hate cops!” It also usually means that sometimes people end up just not talking to you at all and you spend the entire party talking to one person.

Let me be frank, I was never ashamed of being a police officer, I was and remain quite proud of being part of that profession. Even though it’s more than ten years since I left for personal reasons (insert PTSD, depression, and anxiety disorders here), most of my best friends remain current or former police. But when you’re in a social setting and you don’t want to get in an argument it’s just easier to not talk about or being judged because of your job, like most other people don’t have to do. That is why, for me at parties where I didn’t know people I was “Simon, I’m a database administrator with the Tax Department”. It was a shame though, because if you’ve spent any time with police you’ll know that we have some really cool and really funny stories (we usually keep the tragic ones to discuss with other police or eventually our psychologist).

Anyway, a few years into my career, I was stationed at a moderate sized country town. I’d been there about six months and met this girl in November, we hit it off and were getting along nicely. So, since I was away from my family, she invited me to her family’s house for Christmas dinner. A great way to meet her extended family, having met her parents just before Christmas. It was a town where it seemed most people knew everything about everyone, so no point inventing a false persona, and she’d already told them I was a cop, so along to Christmas dinner I went.

Upon arrival I realised that I should have asked more probing questions of my new girlfriend. You know basic questions like “Have any of your family had any run-ins with the law?” or even “In the short time that I’ve been in town have I arrested any of your family members?” This life lesson would be employed many times since off the back of this experience.

Let’s start with her Uncle Brian who had done a few years for drug production and trafficking. He had been a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang but for a couple of reasons was no longer a patched member. There is rarely any love lost between bikies and police, so we both kept our distance. I had no doubt that he could have snapped me like a twig if he’d wanted to, he was a man mountain.

We then go on to Uncle Tim, so it turns out I had been working when my partner had arrested him for drink driving. Tim was meek and mild, said hello sheepishly, and had only told some of his family about the drink driving charge, apparently it was not his first. I felt some empathy for Tim because his wife had left him, and he was having trouble getting to see his kids; the drink driving charge was not going to help that.

The grandfather it turns out was one of the dark horses. He had owned his own farm for years, until the bank foreclosed. When they came to take possession, he fired a few shots at the bank manager. A ricochet had grazed the bank manager in the leg, a charge of attempted murder was eventually downgraded to wounding with a weapon. He did eight months inside, but apparently again held the police responsible for his lot in life.

So, it was not a very festive Christmas for me, my girlfriend tried her best to keep the mood light, but there were very few people talking to me. I had some polite conversation with her parents, her Dad and I especially had a great chat about things. He wanted to talk guns and restoring old cars, so I was in my element. But when it was time to clean up, even though I offered to help I was told in no uncertain terms that I was a guest and I should not help. I sat there alone in the lounge room, until Aunty Kathy started to walk over to me.

Kathy sat on the chair next to me and gave me a smile. I thought to myself “Ah, finally someone who wants to embrace the spirit of Christmas”, again I was wrong. It turns out that Kathy’s nineteen-year-old son, who wasn’t there today, had been arrested by… ME! As soon as she started to recount the story, I remembered him immediately. He had been drunk in the main street and smashing bottles. When we went to talk to him, he got violent and started throwing hay makers left, right and centre. We wrestled him to the ground and got him cuffed, he ended up kicking out the window on our car and cut his leg.

I spent hours at the hospital with him getting patched up, then off to the watchhouse to charge him. Eventually he was released on bail, he left with a few scrapes to his face and arms from where we’d struggled to control him, and he had his neatly stitched cut leg that made him walk with a limp.

Apparently when he went home to his Mom, he gave her a different version of events. His version had us ambushing him out of nowhere, beating him and dragging him through the window of our police car, which led to the cut on his leg. Aunty Kathy was not happy that her innocent little boy had been treated so badly, and she was going to take this opportunity to tell me all about it. She didn’t think I understood country policing and that my attitude was terrible, she hated anyone who would hurt her son. She finalised our chat with “I would have had you killed if you weren’t dating Veronica”.

She wandered off and that was all we spoke for that day, or ever again.

The rest of the day is, to be honest, a bit of a blur. I drank a lot of whisky after dinner and went home. The girlfriend was not happy that I didn’t get on with her family, and apparently family is important to her.

I didn’t arrest any more of her family before I transferred back to a big city police station, but I’m sure we will always remember each other.

Photo credits:

Group of police by Pixabay

White flag by Tara Winstead from Pexels