I found this great clip and want to share it with my copper friends. This is Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday explaining what it is to be a cop to the young rookie, played by actor Kent McCord.
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3 comments:
Great!!
Guys like Jack Webb and his television show Dragnet as well as Kent Mc Cord in Adam -12 are what drew me into Police work.
The best part of that monologue, the last, was for some reason cut out. I have the whole thing on an audio file. Since I don't know how to post it, I transcribed it. Feel free to paste it to your post if you want:
“If you like to fly by the seat of your pants, this is where you belong. For every crime that is committed you’ve got 3 million suspects to choose from.
Most of the time you’ll have few facts and a lot of hunches. You’ll run down leads that dead-end on you- people who saw it happen, but really didn’t; people who insist they did it, but really didn’t; people who remember; those who try to forget; those who tell the truth, those who lie. You’ll run the files until your eyes ache.
And the paper work? Oh, you’ll fill out a report when you’re right, you’ll fill out a report when you’re wrong, you’ll fill one out when you’re not sure, you’ll fill one out listing your leads, you’ll fill one out when you have no leads, you’ll make out reports on the reports you’ve made. You’ll write enough words in your lifetime to stock a library.
You’ll learn to live with doubt, anxiety, frustration, court decisions that tend to hurt you rather than help you. You’ll learn to live with the District Attorney, testifying in court, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, judges, juries, witnesses, and sometimes you’re not going to be happy with the outcome.
But there’s also this: there are over 5,000 men in this city who know that being a policemen is an endless, glamour-less, thankless job that’s got to be done. I know it, too. And I’m damn glad to be one of them.”
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