Lately I’ve been thinking about my first job in high school. I was a waitress at a family-run restaurant that was a good blend of personalities, both in management and the almost exclusively teenage staff.
My primary manager, a guy by the name of Jim, was hardcore. With Jim you showed you were using your elbow grease when mopping the floor, windows were left spotless with the aid of Windex and newspaper and there was a certain art of unclogging a toilet. (As a teen I did not realize how much janitorial work was involved in waitressing. As it turns out, there’s a lot.)
While I admired his desire for cleanliness, I didn’t particularly care for Jim. His delivery was poor, he was prone to yelling and oftentimes he was outright mean to the staff. There was scarce a person who enjoyed his company and as a teen simply looking to make a few bucks for gas money, it was rough.
When I look back over my work history, there have been people I admire and those I don’t. Those who have challenged me in good ways to grow and develop in my career — and those who have made me dread the work day. In my newspaper career there have been those who represented our profession well, and those who didn’t.
Following the recent national wave of criticism of the law enforcement profession, I thought of the dozens of officers I’ve worked with over the years. I bet they’ve also worked with some good cops, and some bad cops.
As a journalist I’ve almost always found law enforcement officers to be helpful. I’ve waded through police reports with them, watched them give testimony in courtrooms, sat on committees with them for community initiatives, called them in the middle of the night for breaking news and watched as they worked crime scenes and fatal car crashes with unmatched professionalism.
I’ve also listened to a great deal of scanner traffic and read many police reports — enough to know that any day is a roll of the dice. Officers are spit on, sworn at and flipped off. They are challenged to fights and sometimes shot at; they are sometimes killed while doing their jobs.
Often I’ve asked officers how they became interested in the profession, and almost always get the same response — because they wanted to help people. And law enforcement helping people is exactly what I’ve experienced in the small Iowa communities in which I’ve worked.
Here in Newton you can look at officers like Aaron Groves, who has established a group aimed at helping those struggling with substance abuse at his church. Having formed a strong friendship with a former addict, Groves is looking for solutions in our community even when he’s off the clock.
Last week, I received two letters from community members who had completed the citizen’s academy at the Newton Police Department. Both were so moved by the experience they felt inclined to take pen to paper and let people know how hard our officers work to keep the community safe.
So this broad stroke in which the nation seems to be painting our police officers in such a dim and unfavorable light just doesn’t reflect what I’ve experienced.
What I’ve seen is officers working tirelessly, during routine events and during tragedies. The long hours, heartbreaking cases and dangerous work — that’s almost always under scrutiny — doesn’t deter them.
I know there are bad cops out there, just as I know there are bad restaurant managers, doctors, teachers and journalists. I just have to believe the majority of police officers are like the folks I know — working a challenging job because they want to help people.
Contact Abigail Pelzer at
541-792-3121 ext. 6530
or apelzer@newtondailynews.com