Author’s note: I wrote this piece for an internally published, quarterly newsletter for the Hall County (GA) Sheriff’s Office, a department of about 450 personnel. I was a Sergeant serving as the Public Information Officer at the time, so I was in charge of the rag and ended up being the primary writer. Getting cops to write much of anything other than an incident report was quite the chore.

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Standing in the Gap

“To expose oneself for the protection of something; to make defense against any assailing danger; to take the place of a fallen defender or supporter.”

Question: Do these words strike a chord with you? Should they? More directly, how seriously do you take your job? Taken at face value, that’s an easy question. But how serious do you really take it? Is it just a paycheck, a means to retirement, or a source of job security in a tough economy? Taken as a meaningful question, it’s not one to be answered lightly.

I think a great number of us probably entered this profession with a starry-eyed vision of greatness. And that’s okay; there’s no shame in thinking that we could make the world a better place by putting bad guys in jail. That’s why little boys (and girls) grow up playing cops and robbers, and we should all take pride in wanting to be the good guys.

But as the shine has worn off our badges, the reality is evident. We can’t save everyone– some don’t want to be saved. We won’t change a lot of neighborhoods– some don’t even want us around. The public won’t always hail us as heroes and praise our actions– sometimes they will hate us and condemn our actions. Then there’s the bad politics and disappointments in the justice system to drag us all down.

Does it wear on you? Do you sometimes wonder why you continue to do it? I don’t mind admitting that I sometimes grow weary of it. I think it comes with the territory, and that it’s merely human nature. But it’s what we do with that fatigue and those doubts that define us. How do we acknowledge all of these things and continue to carry out our sworn duties?

Any number of people will have their own individual answers. For me, I sleep soundly at night knowing that in a world that’s far from black and white, I don’t operate in the gray area. At the end of the day, I can say unequivocally that I’m on the right side of things. As I raise my two young sons and try my best to teach them right from wrong, I can look them squarely in the eyes and tell them that their Dad is one of the good guys. I never want the shame of knowing that they might question that.

Life is easy. Go get a job, earn a living, pay your bills, live honorably, and look out for you and yours. Nothing wrong with any of that. But for some of us, at some point, we decided that we would be the ones to stand in the gap. We knew that someone had to do the job, and we asked ourselves a very simple question: If not me, then who? And we stepped up.

Take pride in that, and never forget why we do what we do.