Second Careers For Street Cops

Use your experience as a police officer to start a second career. A practical guide for law enforcement officers.

Police officers today face unprecedented challenges--anti-police sentiment, increased danger, massive public scrutiny, and the ever-present threat of terrorism. Now thoroughly updated, this trusted resource has already helped over 125,000 police families manage the stress of the job and create a supportive home environment where everyone can thrive. The third edition includes new stories from police families, new chapters on relationships and living through troubled times, and fully updated resources. Discussions of trauma and resilience, domestic abuse, and addictions have been expanded with the latest information and practical advice. Whether they read the book cover to cover or refer to it when problems arise, families will find no-nonsense guidance they can depend on. Mental health professionals, see also Counseling Cops: What Clinicians Need to Know, by Ellen Kirschman, Mark Kamena, and Joel Fay.

Ferguson's Careers in Focus books are a valuable career exploration tool for libraries and career centers. Written in an easy-to-understand yet informative style, this series surveys a wide array of commonly held jobs and is arranged into volumes organized by specific industries and interests. Each of these informative books is loaded with up-to-date career information presented in a featured industry article and a selection of detailed professions articles. The information here has been researched, vetted, and analyzed by Ferguson's editors, drawing from government and industry sources, professional groups, news reports, career and job-search resources, and a variety of other sources. For readers making career choices, these books offer a wealth of helpful information and resources. Each profession article includes: Quick Facts: a snapshot of important job facts Overview: briefly introduces duties and responsibilities History: describes the origins and history of the job The Job: describes primary and secondary goals and duties Earnings: discusses salary ranges and typical fringe benefits Work Environment: looks at typical work conditions and surroundings associated with the job Exploring: offers suggestions on how to gain experience and knowledge about—or even test drive—a career before making a commitment Education and Training Requirements: discusses required high school and post-secondary education and training Certification, Licensing, and Special Requirements: explains recommended and required certifications or prerequisites for the job Experience, Skills, and Personality Traits: summarizes the personal traits and skills and professional experience needed to get started and succeed Employer Prospects: gives an overview of typical places of employment and the best ways to land a job Advancement Prospects: presents an expected career path and how to travel it Outlook: summarizes the job's potential growth or decline in terms of the general economy and industry projections Unions and Associations: lists essential and helpful professional groups Tips for Entry: additional tips for preparing for a career and getting a foot in the door For More Information: lists organizations that provide career information, networking, and professional development Sidebars: short features showcasing stats, trivia, and insight about a profession or industry Careers in Focus: Public Safety, Second Edition covers the following 29 jobs: Airport Security Personnel Bail Bondsmen Bodyguards Border Patrol Agents Bounty Hunters Corrections Officers Crime Analysts Customs Officials Deputy U.S. Marshals Detectives Directors of Security Emergency Medical Technicians Emergency Services Dispatchers FBI Agents Fire Inspectors Fire Investigators Fire Protection Engineers Fire Safety Directors Fire Safety Technicians Firefighters Forensic Experts Fraud Examiners, Investigators, and Analysts Intelligence Officers Park Rangers Parole Officers Police Officers Polygraph Examiners Secret Service Special Agents Security Consultants and Guards

This book provides an ethnography of street-level policing in the United States and offers an analysis with valuable lessons for today’s law enforcement officers. Author George C. Klein, sociologist and former police officer, explores the characteristics of policing in a suburb outside of large Midwestern city in the United States. As a participant-observation fieldworker, he functioned as an ethnographic researcher, recording with a sociological eye the "real world" tasks of policing, including the ordinary as well as the more remarkable aspects of day-to-day law enforcement. He approaches the data with three levels of analysis, looking at embedded issues in policing, such as discretion, danger, corruption, cynicism, race, and class; a mid-range analysis that examines police work as an example of street-level bureaucracy; and a global analysis assessing the entrenched roles of race, class, and demography in police work, as well as, society, in the U.S. This book focuses on the need for police officers to solve social problems that other institutions in society are unwilling, or unable, to solve. It examines a myriad of issues, such as police socialization, the use of force by police officers, stress levels and suicide risk factors, disparate styles of policing, police militarization, de-escalation, and more. With compelling detail, the author helps the reader understand the turmoil regarding policing in the United States today. It is ideal for police professionals as well as students and scholars of criminal justice, criminology, sociology, psychology, history, political science and journalism.

An expansion of Dr. Rudofossi's theory of Police and Public Safety Complex Trauma, this text integrates other models of trauma and loss into a one-of-a-kind intervention model. It offers insider perspectives from police psychologists, police managers, and clinicians describing what police personnel experience on the job, along with expert intervent

For the "Retired Blues Crew", a small group of retired LAPD police officers that meet once a month to share old war stories and enjoy each other's company, accepting retirement was a hard pill to swallow. Once considered savvy street warriors who risked life and limb protecting the good citizens of Los Angeles, they were now the forgotten hero's whose past heroic deeds were now only remembrances visited through their colorful story telling during their once a month get-togethers. Like all things in life, they were all expendable and the guys in the "Retired Blues Crew" had been replaced by a new generation of street warriors. To the old dogs who were put out to pasture, the new centurions were taking their places with new technology and a confidence that bordered on disrespect for those who had paved the way before them. The argument that the old days of crushing crime without the benefit of all the new-fangled gadgets was more rewarding than the technology of the future was a misconception of the new breed that were now in charge of protecting the citizens of Los Angeles. For the select group of old story tellers, they needed to add one more chapter in their lives, something for the street warriors of the present to remember them by when their time finally came and they were reduced to second class citizens too old to do the job anymore. This small tight knit group of old street warriors had enough and it was time to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they weren't too old to out-smart and out-wit the high tech rouges who have now taken their places. Proving that computers and gadgets could never replace the wisdom and experience that the old dogs were blessed with wouldn't be an easy task, but they were determined to challenge the new breed and beat them at their own game. They knew whatever it was they were going to do couldn't replicate anything like the violent movies you see were people die, get hurt or cars get wrecked and buildings are blown up, after all they were cops or at least they were once. That being said, the old dogs had to pull off the perfect caper and they had to do it without claiming any of the bragging rights they so much yearned for. It would have to be for no other reason than "For Greater Glory." In that one of their own had been diagnosed with cancer with less than six months to live, they only had a small window of opportunity to get it done. Since he was the architect behind the perfect crime referred to as "Operation Blue Eclipse," their success would depend on how well the plan was executed with no room for error. If all went as planned and after all was said and done, the Retired Blues Crew would truly know who the best of the best was.

The book, Conflict in Blue: The Marissa Ortega Story begins where D. E. Grays second book, True to the Blue left off. Marissa Ortega, the daughter of deceased police officer, Sergio Ortega, who was fired from the Los Angeles Police Department for a bogus charge of filing a false police report, a charge he was later cleared of, is now an L.A.P.D. officer herself. After witnessing the murder of her father by a ruthless Hispanic gangbanger when she was just nine years old, she now has a score to settle, not just with the notorious Avenues Street Gang who reins down terror on the citizens in LAs Northeast Division where she works, but with the LAPD itself. With her aggressive approach in dealing with the local street gangs, she soon finds herself, along with her partner, on a Mexican Mafia hit list after three Avenues Street Gang members die, one of them the little brother of an imprisoned Mafioso, at the conclusion of a violent police pursuit. Even though she is on a Mafia hit list, Marissa sets out to find the gang member who killed her uncle back before she was born and who is now out of prison and back on the streets with EMERO status and who is now considered a parolee at large. Things get worse when the hit on Marissa and her partner, by gang members, goes awry and one of her family members is murdered by accident as well as her partners wife. Marissa eventually teams up with a Bryce Stevens, a detective assigned to the Robbery Homicide Division of the LAPD. Together they devise a plan to trick Emilio Soto, aka Whitey, a bumbling Avenues gang member, into becoming a confidential informant hoping he will lead them to the individual who killed her uncle and to the gang members who killed her family member and her partners wife. It becomes a race between Marissa Ortega and Jorge Mendoza, the Avenues Street Gang leader, to see who will stay alive long enough before the other is brought to justice.

The emergence and functioning of two competing and sometimes conflicting cultures within police departments demonstrates how competition between street cops and "bosses" is at the heart of the organizational dilemma of modern urban policing. Unlike other works in this field that focus on the monolithic culture or familial quality of policing, this study demonstrates that which might look cohesive from the point of view of outsiders has its own internal dynamics and conflicts. The book shows that police departments are not immune to the conflict inherent in any large-scale bureaucracy, when externally imposed management schemes for increasing efficiency and effectiveness are imposed on an existing social organization. Based upon two years of extensive field work, in which the author covered every major aspect of policing at the precinct level in the New York City police department from manning the complaint desk to riding in squad cars. Ianni shows how the organized structure of the police department is disintegrating. The new "Management Cop Culture" is bureaucratically juxtaposed to the precinct level "Street Cop Culture," and bosses' loyalties to the social and political networks of management cops rather than to the men on the street causes a sharp division with grave consequences for the departments. The study concentrates on a series of dramatic events, such as the suicide of a police officer charged with corruption, a major riot, and the trial of an officer accused of killing a prisoner while in police custody. Ianni traces how these events affected relationships among fellow officers and between officers and "bosses."