I Am Not A Hero

I AM NOT A HERO

I cannot really remember a time that I did not want to be a police officer. I remember being 6 or 7 years old and playing "Cops and Robbers" with my brother Matt. Luckily he liked to be the robber as much as I liked to be the good guy.

Certain events and situations held me back long past the point that I wanted to reach to getting to that goal. Then the events of 9/11 occurred. On that date there were two regrets that I had. The first was that I wasn't in the military like my brother, the former "robber". The second was that I was not a police officer like I had always wanted to be.

On 9/11/2001, 60 police officers were killed in the attacks on America. That number is now up to 72 as those who risked their lives (and lived) went through even further pain and suffering.

I began working two and three jobs at a time to pay for the academy and finally graduated in 2004. I finally reached my goal of being a police officer.

I truly believe that nearly all men and women who become police officers do so because they want to make a difference in society. They want to genuinely help people. I also believe that a large portion of those, in some way or another, want to be a hero. Maybe they will save someone from a burning car or a building. Perhaps they will do life-saving CPR on a person who suffered a heart attack. Maybe they will locate a missing child and save them from danger. Whatever it takes, most officers would try to get it done.

The hard part of being a police officer is when you come to the hard realization that you won't be a hero. The majority of police officers never save a life. They never pull a person out of a burning skyscraper. They find out that CPR rarely works. They discover that in many cases, missing kids are not safely located. They discover they cannot be a hero.

At that point police officers just come to work like everyone else does. They get up to an alarm, just like you. They come to work and spend the day wishing they were elsewhere, just like you.

Now when they are off-duty they spend their time away from work still thinking about their job. They cannot act like normal people act. They cannot do what normal people do. If they do act or do things differently, they are "bad cops". A "Bad cop" can't be a hero.

There comes a time when a police officer comes to grip with the knowledge that he is only "serving and protecting" because it is his job. The dream of actually making a difference is long gone and now only actual dreams exist.

Then there are those occasions when ice cream turns to crap and it hits the fan. The majority of all police, firefighters, first responders, EMT's, and so on will never face what those faced on 9/11. As much as we all want to be a hero, trust me when I say that none of us want to be a hero that bad. If we did, it would mean thousands of people would have to die just so we can be remembered.

I don't exactly know what everyone thinks of when they think of a hero. Maybe they think of those who sacrificed their lives racing into those burning skyscrapers. Maybe it is the crew of United 93 who rushed a group of terrorists in order to save hundreds, or perhaps thousands of lives. It might even be that paramedic who saved your grandparent / parent / friend's life. To an 8 year old child, I am sure that they consider a hero the firefighter who saved their kitten from a tree.

All I know is I have never had the honor or the privilege of any of those things, nor may I never. The point of this note, blog, letter, or whatever you want to call it, is to tell everyone else that not all police officers consider themselves something special to society. We are not all special. We have a job like everyone else's.

I am not a hero.