by oldedude on November 12, 2024 8:50 pm
My son is a cop in Las Vegas. Yes, there is a lot regimentation, policy and procedure to follow. But most of the time he is on his own with no supervisor looking over his shoulder. He often is required to make split second consequential decisions, sometimes life and death decisions. He likes the autonomy of his job and the fact that everyday brings different challenges.
Curt- I think about your son and his safety a lot. If he's in north vegas, it's a shithole. Lots of death there. Drive-bys, etc. straight up gang issues. That oozes to downtown. So just know that. Obviously you're not reading or remembering what I did for 40 years. I actually did his job except it was on steroids. We were actually targeted at $25K for each time they could bring us out of the field (wounded or dead). A couple of us were gunned down on a main base. No one could rest, or sleep for seven months because people got a lifetime of money (literally in the shitholes we were in) just for killing us.
My autonomy. When on a mission, it was complete. There were things you knew. Advising you were starting a line into a vein, and not so common, like opening up a trach tube, or advising on a tourniquet, deciding who dies and who lives, people The standard things: 9 line reports, requests for ammo, fixed wing, rotary wing, just someone to fucking cover from whomever could respond as we were being chewed to pieces because of some asshole in the COC chose their unit QRF over yours, even though the QRF was dedicated to you. which I'm sure your son has the same issues. The biggest issue on both ends are "shoot-don't shoot- situations. That's a lot different other than the obomber years. Once I received my "master" badge, I could make those calls in the field. And of course I was pulled back to making decisions for those at the LZ.I was also used for identifying HVTs killed by the seal, or other teams carrying out missions.
So my life wasn't "what font to choose." We had a standard font. and we all filled in the form as prescribed, when we got back from a sketchy gunfight against small arms (AKs, PKs, AKMsm, RPKs) and dodging RPGs and simplex clusters, the vests loaded with 16kg of Semtex, or the vehicles loaded with a combo of semtex, and RDX/ C4. We had to know all their attributes. Obviously, our folks didn't give a shit what "font" we used. What they cared about was the impact on global terrorism, and to save lives in the real world.
Like you, my big decisions at work included what type font to use or the wording of a headline.Bold
