It’s ironic that a relatively short time ago I published Things Have Changed and Things Have Changed, Redux. Maybe this entry should be titled, “Things Have Changed Back.”

Through a set of circumstances, repeated too many times to count for a lot of cops that get out of the business for a shot at normalcy, I find myself back in uniform, pushing a patrol car and hustling calls. And although if you’d asked me a year ago if this was in the cards I might have become nauseous, the transition back has been unexpectedly smooth thus far. While I’d been out of a patrol car and serving in adminstrative and supervisory roles for the last few years prior to leaving, I’ve found that being back on the street is a little like a breath of fresh air. I’m enjoying the simplicity and relative purity of it; answer the calls, keep the peace, find the bad guys, go home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I guess one of the main things about the life of a patrolman that appeals to me, and maybe a lot of us, is the fact that we’re out there on a daily basis as active participants in the human condition. That is to say, ours is a role that interjects us into a wide range of life’s experiences- good or bad, traumatic or mundane, joyous or sad. It would be ridiculous to say that we would willingly choose to participate in some of those things, but we accept the overall task as a whole and hopefully recognize it for the uniqueness that it holds. Ours is not a daily pattern of defined tasks, mechanically checking off the boxes and enjoying a relatively consistent emotional state throughout the day. It’s an existence of highs and lows, ranging from mind-numbing boredom to heart-pounding adrenaline dumps.

But there has to be a balance, and historically that has been a challenge for a lot of people in law enforcement, myself included. Too many long hours, too many off-duty jobs in uniform, and too much identification with the job can easily and subtly alter one’s persona to the point that he or she lives their life with an attitude like some cheesy TV cop show character. We… meaning I, have to make a concerted effort to live a portion of our lives as the “regular guy,” as I used to refer to it. After all, we have our own human condition to live.