"I Got Better Than I Deserved"- A Cop Story
I almost took this post down. It's very personal but I think it's worth retelling.
My childhood was a trainwreck. My apologies- but this story must start here for context.
Just a series of awful events. Strep throat every year, chicken pox, mumps, whooping cough. Whatever pathogen happened to be floating by- it seemed to land on my shoulders. And when covid found me decades later, I got a nice shiny ventilator in the ICU for 9 days. But I survived.
My family moved 6 times by the time I graduated from high school. My folks fought daily, sometimes physically. Throughout my teen years, I just began to develop a bad attitude. The attitude that thinks this shit is never going to change. Parents taking their problems out on their kids. People know when you have a bad attitude. It's like blood in the water. Folks don't care why you have a bad attitude so much, most people just think you were born some sort of asshole- and they react to that.
People would often tell me, "you have a bad attitude." Like it was some sort of news flash. But you know what- not one of those judgers ever offered a solution.
I managed to get in a few scrapes with the law with that bad attitude of mine. I was an easy target. I wanted to tell you about one of those episodes in particular.
I worked in the grocery store bagging groceries in high school. One of my co-workers was a girl my age, about 16, named Kayleen. Kayleen worked in the bakery. I never really had any run ins with Kayleen, or bad words, so what happened to me was always a mystery. Kayleen started stealing other people's payroll checks, driving about 25 miles away, and cashing them at another one of our stores. That was long before cameras. Each week, the store manager just left the payroll checks on the managers desk and people came in and grabbed theirs. Because Kayleen was not a master criminal she repeated the behavior often enough- that the manager and the cops were waiting for her when she cashed her last stolen check.
When they nabbed Kayleen, Kayleen told the police that I stole the checks, gave them to her to cash, and then we split the money. I had no clue about any of this or why she would say that. All I knew was that someone was stealing checks in our store. But when Kayleen the thief threw my name into that mess- all hell rained down on me. That night when I went to work, the manager was there. He never stayed past 5. He was there at 7 when I arrived. He took me into the cooler and nearly beat the shit out of me- convinced I was guilty. My father also landed on Kayleen's side. The union rep, to which I paid dues, would not defend me because I was a juvenile. When the cops finally asked me to take a polygraph- I said bring it.
Somebody actually did some police work and found out that I was still in school or at football practice when the checks were stolen. The police exonerated me before I took the polygraph and Kayleen finally admitted she had made the whole thing up. That was one of several incidents I was implicated in during my teenage years. I should tell you that I never saw a courtroom.
I never received an apology from anyone in the Kayleen drama. Kayleen was fired and I never talked to her again.
What Kayleen did for me, was cause me to wonder, "why?" Why had she picked me out of the 50 or so store employees? I barely knew her and rarely talked to her. I had no clue and after careful self-examination- I figured with my attitude, I would make a believable target while taking some heat off her. That's why Kayleen picked me. I tried to change my attitude. But it was impossible. My house was a daily war zone and to cope, I just began leaving the house, drinking until midnight. The whole thing melted down the night before high school graduation. My mother had caught my father with another woman and finally this war zone of a marriage was over.
I never failed to take responsibility for my attitude. I knew it was bad. But I had no therapists, nobody to help me, and I tried a number of things that simply didn't work. I couldn't fix me. I was like the walking wounded after the plane crashes.
The only people that ever helped me- were cops. They listened to me and actually investigated. They were my heroes. They exonerated me. In 1982, I decided to become a cop. Did I still have a few issues? Oh yea. They would not disappear overnight either. So I was one of those rare people, that actually liked cops. They brought sanity to my chaotic life. I switched majors and went into law enforcement.
I had a couple failures in law enforcement too. Same culprit, same outcome.
I worked 25 years, more or less. I locked up every wife beater I came across. A few women also. Toward the end of my career, and during my Chief of Police phase, my attitude began to deteriorate once again. Eventually I got divorced and then retired, traveling the US on my bulletproof Valkyrie, and settled into New Orleans where I would finally find some peace and serenity.
Throughout all those years, I always knew what the problem was. I just had no way to cure it. I had a few other unjust situations happen but again- it was always my bad attitude that attracted those vultures. People don't pick on nice people. They pick on people they don't like.
In the end, I found an old sweetheart and married her. She just ignores my moodiness. She is an honest, wonderful, and nice person. My finances were secured with a decent state retirement and two grandfathers in the Bakken oil patch who tried to scratch a living out of the earth but were wise enough to keep their mineral rights. I have wanted for very little and my wife and I haven't had to work. It has been a blessing.
Steve Jobs once said at a college commencement ceremony, that you cannot connect dots that haven't happened yet. You can only connect the dots that have happened as you look back and reflect. It is true. When I connect those dots, I understand that people were simply behaving in a way that reflected the way I was. What they saw.
I know well adjusted people who have had relatively normal lives. Loving parents, good choices, support, productive lives, nice houses. I'm not jealous of those folks. I'm sincerely happy for them because I know what makes the difference.
It doesn't matter if it was fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. It just is.
In that cloud of chaos which was much of my life- I am eternally grateful for what I have now.
I got better than I deserved.
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