Why I Loved the Work

I loved being a police officer. The work fit abilities I had spent years rebuilding, and I eventually gave it more power over my identity than any job should have.

The pull started before I wore the badge

I did not start out in law enforcement. After I got sober in August 2015, I went back to work as a security supervisor. It was January 2016, and being responsible for people and facilities again meant something to me. I knew what it was like to make promises and fail to keep them. Going to work, handling problems, and being counted on were part of putting my life back together.

Loss prevention was where the interest became real. I worked first at a clothing retailer and later at a grocery store in downtown Indianapolis. I watched people, made apprehensions, dealt with resistance, and worked directly with police officers when an incident required it. I enjoyed being involved from the first observation through the contact and whatever needed to happen afterward. The job required me to pay attention, make decisions, and be prepared for someone else’s reaction.

Some of the officers I worked with treated me like one of their own. I respected them, and their respect mattered to me. I could see myself doing that work. I wanted to serve the community in a broader role, and the people I was meeting made that possibility feel real.

I also spent time working inside Brown County Jail. A jail shift brought a different kind of responsibility. After a difficult interaction, the person was still there, and so were you. You had to maintain order and keep dealing with people long after the immediate problem was over. I learned from it, but I missed being out in the field. When a road-deputy opportunity did not open, I returned to grocery-store loss prevention.

That second period at the grocery store included the violence and unrest of 2020. I was stabbed twice during loss-prevention apprehensions. I learned how quickly physical contact could turn dangerous and how an injury could remain after the apprehension was over. I knew there was a risk in the work I was pursuing, but I still wanted to be in the field. When a friend helped open the door to Johnson County Court Services, I took it.

By then I knew something about myself. I liked work where I could get involved, use my judgment, and do something about the problem in front of me. Becoming a Field Officer with Special Deputy authority gave those instincts a place to go.

I loved the whole process of finding someone

At Johnson County Court Services, my responsibilities included checking on people under court supervision at home and at work. I also served warrants and conducted investigations throughout Indiana, especially in Indianapolis and Johnson County. The work I loved most involved finding people who needed to be located and bringing an assignment to its conclusion.

I loved the hunt, the chase, and the adrenaline. I will not pretend otherwise. If there was someone to find, I wanted to be working on it. But the part I enjoyed began well before an arrest. I liked receiving information, figuring out what it meant, following leads, and deciding what was worth checking next. I liked the combination of thinking and movement. There was a problem to solve, and I had a legitimate role in solving it.

The work did not always reward the first attempt. You could try to contact someone, check a location, and come up empty. Then you had to decide what the information supported instead of acting as though wanting an answer was the same as having one. I enjoyed that part too. Finding people required persistence, but it also required enough discipline to separate what you knew from what you hoped was true. I liked an assignment that kept asking something of me after the first answer came up empty. The work was rarely as clean as somebody handing you an address and waiting for you to bring a person back. When you found a lead that was worth checking, you still had to do the next part of the job.

The arrest itself was only one piece. There were other officers to coordinate with, reports to finish, evidence to preserve, and people whose custody or safety became your responsibility. Sometimes the contact ended without a fight, and that was a good outcome. I liked the action, but I did not need an encounter to turn violent for the assignment to matter.

Not every investigation was dramatic. In December 2022, I handled a report that a pack of cigarettes had been stolen from a locker at the work-release facility. I read the account from the officer who initially reviewed the incident, then watched the surveillance footage myself. I interviewed the person who reported the theft, who said she did not want to seek criminal charges, and I later interviewed the person shown taking the cigarettes. I gave the Miranda warning, recorded the interview with my body camera, and attached the supporting material to my report.

It was a pack of cigarettes. That was all. The complainant did not want charges, and I could document her decision without pretending the evidence did not exist. I still had to establish what happened, hear the people involved, and leave a record that accurately showed what I did. I enjoyed that kind of work because I could follow an allegation through the evidence and account for the result. You did not have to be chasing somebody through Indianapolis for an investigation to deserve your full attention.

Confidence meant being prepared, not just being willing

I had rebuilt my body after years of neglect, and physical readiness was important to me. I knew what it felt like to be overweight, out of shape, and unable to depend on myself. I also knew the work it took to become stronger. Being physically capable was something I had earned, and law enforcement gave that effort a practical purpose.

But strength could only do so much. It could not tell me whether a search was lawful, make an observation accurate, or replace sound judgment. If I was going to carry authority, I wanted to know how to use it. I took that responsibility seriously because the consequences could land on someone else, not just me.

My training record reflects that side of the job. In 2021 and 2022, I completed instruction on constitutional use of force, probation searches, GPS monitoring, investigations, domestic violence, de-escalation, firearms, defensive tactics, and field sobriety testing. The subjects were different, but they belonged together. An officer could be physically ready and still mishandle a situation through poor communication or bad judgment.

Training did not make me all-knowing, and experience did not remove the need to keep learning. What it gave me was more to draw on when a situation required a decision. That mattered to me. I wanted confidence that came from doing the work, practicing, and understanding my responsibilities, rather than simply believing I could handle anything.

I had already spent years rebuilding trust in my own word. Law enforcement gave me another place to test whether my habits and preparation held up when other people were depending on me. It felt good to become more capable at a job I genuinely wanted to do.

I liked having authority

I liked having authority. It is easy to dress that up with nicer words, but I would rather tell the truth. I liked being trusted to act, liked having a job with real responsibility, and liked knowing that I was expected to carry it out. A warrant was not a suggestion. Court supervision came with requirements. Investigations needed facts and documentation. My role gave me work to do, along with limits I had to respect.

There was something personal about that responsibility. Years earlier, addiction had made me unreliable and had damaged trust in my family. Now I was being trusted with work that could affect someone else’s freedom. I knew what a major change that was. The badge did not erase my past, but it showed how far I had come from it.

The authority was also where my judgment mattered most. I could be proud of the position without making every encounter about myself. Having the power to carry out a task did not give me permission to treat people as less than human. I had to know what the job required and stay inside that responsibility, even when the situation was tense.

It also forced me to recognize a difference between being able to make someone comply and knowing how to handle a contact properly. The badge was never supposed to be permission to win a personal argument. If a situation could be handled without humiliation or unnecessary escalation, that mattered. I had authority because of the job, and I was answerable for how I used it.

That combination appealed to me. I had spent years trying to regain control of my own behavior. I now had a role that required self-control while dealing with other people’s behavior. I loved being trusted with it, and I wanted to be worthy of that trust.

I could arrest someone and still see a person

My history with addiction did not disappear when I put on a badge. I knew what it was like to avoid responsibility, damage trust, and keep repeating destructive decisions. I also knew a person could change because I had changed. That experience affected the way I approached people who were struggling.

I did not assume every person I dealt with had my history, and understanding addiction did not excuse someone’s actions. If I had a warrant to serve, I still had the assignment. If someone violated a condition of supervision, consequences were part of the work. But I did not need to add contempt to those consequences.

During warrant work, I sometimes talked with the people I arrested about addiction and recovery. I could have an honest conversation while still doing my job. I did not have to pretend the situation was something other than it was, and I did not have to treat the person as though the arrest was the only fact about their life.

I valued those conversations. I enjoyed making arrests, and I cared about what happened to the people afterward. Those feelings were not opposites to me. I had been given a job to do, but I also knew the person would have to live with what happened long after my report was finished. I wanted people to face their responsibilities, and I wanted them to understand that their choices afterward still mattered. I could not make that decision for anyone. I could control the way I carried myself, the words I chose, and whether I treated someone with dignity during a difficult encounter.

That was another reason I loved police work. I could hold someone accountable and still believe there was more to that person’s life than what had brought us together. The badge gave me authority. My own past reminded me to pay attention to the person affected by it.

Being trusted gave me something to live up to

I felt respected in law enforcement. I wanted other officers to know I was capable and that they could count on me. I respected the people I worked alongside, so their opinion carried weight. It meant more to me than a compliment from someone who did not understand the job.

I also served as a Field Training Officer at Johnson County Court Services. That meant helping new field officers learn their responsibilities, applying policies and procedures in actual work, evaluating performance, and documenting what they were learning. I could no longer think only about how I handled my own assignment. I had to help someone else understand what good work required.

Knowing how to do something yourself is one challenge. Explaining it clearly to someone who has not done it is another. You have to pay attention to what they understand, what they miss, and what needs to be corrected before it becomes their habit. I liked having experience that could be useful to another officer, and that responsibility made me take my own example seriously.

I did not want to ask someone else to meet standards I ignored. If I expected attention to detail, preparation, and sound judgment from a new officer, I needed those things to show up in my own work. Training other field officers made the connection between competence and responsibility even clearer.

The work kept giving me reasons to improve. I enjoyed what I did, I cared about being good at it, and I felt that people I respected saw value in what I brought to the job. That was a big part of why the profession meant so much to me.

Prince’s Lakes showed me another side of policing

While I was at Johnson County, I also worked part time with the Prince’s Lakes Police Department. That job gave me police responsibilities beyond locating people and serving warrants. I handled traffic duties and calls for service, along with investigations, interviews, evidence, emergency response, and the reporting that came with them.

The difference mattered. At Johnson County, I often began with a person to locate or a particular court-related responsibility. I could prepare for that assignment by working through available information and choosing the next step. At Prince’s Lakes, an ordinary call could begin with much less information. You had to listen, sort through competing accounts, and work out what action the situation called for. I could not choose a call based on which part of policing I found most exciting. It required judgment in a different way.

I enjoyed being part of a police department that served its community directly. It was not always about chasing somebody or following a lead across county lines. Sometimes the responsibility was simply to respond, pay attention, and handle the problem in front of you correctly. I valued doing that work too.

I could have loved warrant service and stopped there. Prince’s Lakes helped me see how much I also liked the broader role of being a police officer. The two positions were different, but together they gave me a working life I cared deeply about.

I believed I had found my people

The badge meant a lot to me, partly because of the work and partly because of the people beside me. I was doing assignments I wanted, developing abilities I had worked hard to build, and working alongside officers whose respect I cared about. I felt I belonged there.

I took the idea of brotherhood seriously. I believed the pressure, the responsibility, and the need to rely on one another created bonds that went beyond a shift or an employer. I did not see those relationships as temporary work friendships. They became part of the reason I wanted to show up.

I wanted my family to be proud of the man I had become. The badge was one visible sign of years spent changing my life. I had once been someone whose promises could not be trusted. Now I was trusted to carry responsibilities that mattered to a community. That contrast was never small to me.

Belonging was not an extra benefit I noticed after I already loved the job. It became part of what made me love it. Being on a team whose work I understood mattered to me. I liked having people who expected me to show up ready and who knew the difference between talking about the work and doing it. The friendships and the assignments began reinforcing one another.

There is a danger in having so many things you value come from one place. At the time, I mostly felt the good parts: the excitement, the pride, the respect, the assignments, and the people. I did not recognize how closely I was tying my identity to the profession until that identity began to come apart.

I still loved the work, even after learning its cost

I can see now that loving law enforcement and allowing it to consume too much of my life were different things. The work genuinely suited me. I loved the assignments and the responsibility. I also let my commitment take time and attention that the rest of my life needed. My family needed my presence, not just a reason to be proud of what I did for a living.

That realization does not require me to pretend the work was bad. It requires me to be accurate about the cost. I have written elsewhere about what happens when endurance starts working against your life. In law enforcement, the warning was harder for me to see because I enjoyed the job so much. Being able to carry more did not always mean I should give it more.

When my employment with Johnson County ended in 2023, I lost work I loved and much of the sense of belonging I had built around it. Many people I considered brothers stopped contacting me. I continued at Prince’s Lakes, but it was not the same. I resigned from that police position in September 2024 because the schedule no longer worked alongside my full-time jail job. Turning in that badge made the end of my police career real in a different way.

I have had to learn that a job can matter deeply without becoming the measure of who I am. That lesson came at a cost, but it does not erase the good work or the pride I took in doing it. I can still remember how much I loved being out there, figuring things out, making arrests, helping people, and working beside officers I respected.

I can tell the truth about how much it gave me, including the pride, without asking the badge to tell me who I am now.

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