but
There are Five Indispensable Truths for
a Successful Police Career:
It's not just a job.  As a police officer, you'll be
entrusted with enormous power . . . no other
government official has the breadth of
authority as does a police officer.  
Self-evaluation for a police career
Recognizing and ignoring bad advice
Rapid advancement toward self-sufficiency
The immeasurable importance of integrity
Matters of life and death
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What's inside this book?
. . .
Browse the sample chapters.
Product Details:                      $12.95 US
ISBN: 0595380786
Format: Paperback, 6 x 9, 112 pp
Pub. Date: March 2006
Publisher: Iuniverse, Incorporated
Chapter   1         Are You Ready for a Career as a Police Officer?
Chapter   2         Choosing a Police Department
Chapter   3         Recruit Training
Chapter   4         Patrol... Your First Assignment
Chapter   5         Specialized Assignments
Chapter   6         
Promotions
Chapter   7         Never, Ever Lie
Chapter   8         The Police Report
Chapter   9         The Traffic Accident Report
Chapter  10        Police and Computers
Chapter  11        The Court Room
Chapter  12        The Prosecutor
Chapter  13        Sergeants... The Good, The Bad, The                        
                            Incompetent
Chapter  14        Supervisor's Complaint
Chapter  15        Internal Investigations
Chapter  16        Sexual Harassment
Chapter  17        Domestic Violence
Chapter  18        Emergency Response and Vehicle Pursuits
Chapter  19        Use of Force
Chapter  20        Deadly Force
Chapter  21        The Mental Case
Chapter  22        For Women Only
Chapter  23        Modern Community Policing
Chapter  24        The Media    
                                        
Disclaimer
In 1991, I was promoted to sergeant where I supervised a squad of fourteen
patrol officers. In 1994, I was promoted to lieutenant. As a lieutenant, I
served as a patrol shift commander and later as a special operations
commander. I ended my career in 2004 as a detective lieutenant where I
supervised three detective sergeants and sixteen detectives.

While all of my supervisory positions were most fulfilling, I look back fondly
on those twenty years as a patrol officer. While constant exposure to murder,
rape, and mayhem can have negative effects on some people, my experiences
from those years only fortified my beliefs in fate and one's destiny. When a
man tries to stab you several times, and he misses each time, it makes you
wonder. When a man tries to shoot you, but he fails, because his heavy
gloves prevent him from getting his index finger inside the revolver's trigger
guard, giving you time to grab the gun, you feel blessed. When a man points
a sawed-off rifle at you and pulls the trigger, and the gun misfires, you know
you're blessed.

When I sat down to write
Becoming a Police Officer: An Insider's Guide to a
Career in Law Enforcement
, I soon realized that I wanted to give young men
and women the best possible advice to help them avoid the pitfalls they'll
encounter as police officers. Police departments are younger than ever
before, and experienced leadership is sorely lacking.
Becoming a Police
Officer: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Law Enforcement
is not a collection
of war stories; it is a serious discussion of issues which will make or break a
police officer's career.

While
Becoming a Police: An Insider's Guide to a Career in Law Enforcement is
invaluable for those contemplating a career in police work, it's a most
informative and entertaining read that will appeal to anyone who is simply
interested in police work, and the perils faced by police officers.
Chapter One
Chapter Six
Becoming a Police Officer
An Insider's Guide to a Career in Law Enforcement
Barry M. Baker
"Barry Baker was a street cop for 20 years in a very tough town before taking
promotion. He accurately reflects the central role of patrol - street work - and
does not sugar-coat or avoid difficult issues. The conciseness of the book is a
strength. His advice to young people is genuine and not idealistic or poorly
informed. A nice job."
David Ziskin
St. John, WA  (USA)
David Ziskin is Author of The Real Police
Visit David's Website
Career
Police Officer
Book Store
Law Enforcement Career Books
In Association with Amazon.com
About the Author:
Detective Lieutenant Barry M. Baker retired from the Baltimore Police Department in
2004.  During his thirty-two year career, Baker served as a patrol officer, sergeant, and
lieutenant, as well as a special operations lieutenant and detective lieutenant.  Baker spent
the first twenty years of his career as a patrol officer, making him uniquely qualified to
speak from a breadth and depth of experience.
Perhaps it's true that nobody likes a cop, but what a wonderful adventure it is. In 1971, I embarked on that
adventure in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. I began my career walking a foot post where murder, robbery,
and every variation of violence was the order of the day. For twenty years thereafter, I remained where I
began. Of course, I eventually got four wheels beneath me and a blue light above me. The mobility of the radio
car only exposed me to more of
man's inhumanity to man. Early in my career, I dated a young woman who
insisted I should leave the police department and find a
real job. Fortunately, I chose the police department,
and ten years later, I found a
real woman.
"The question is, when would a person's use of an automobile
justify your use of deadly force to stop that person?  The word
never comes to mind; even though, one can never say never to the
use of deadly force when a dangerous person is in possession of,
and utilizing, any instrument of deadly force.  If you're sufficiently
confused, you should be, for shooting at a person utilizing no other
weapon than the automobile he or she is operating is the most
difficult use of deadly force justification you could ever attempt to
make."
From Chapter 20 - Deadly Force
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iUniverse.com
Police Author's Personal Website
As a police officer, you'll see and
experience things most people only read
about.  It's the best education on Earth . . .
Police and Law Enforcement Books
Police Career Information
A police officer's career
can end before it gets
started . . .
When young
men and women begin
their law enforcement
careers as police officers,
they have no idea just how
many pitfalls lay before
them.  Too many new
police officers listen to bad
advice, and they develop
bad working habits.  
Those bad habits can
result in career ending
consequences, sooner
than later, for a new police
officer.
Chapter
Six
Promotions
Police and Gun
Control
Field
Training
Officer
Police and the
Polygraph
Downgrading
Crime
Child Abuse
Neglect or Hysteria
About Stress
Money = Stress
Daniel Pipes
John R. Lott Jr.
Op-Ed Contributors to CareerPoliceOfficer.com
People often look back over their lives and think
about what they would have done differently.  I'm
one of the lucky ones.  I chose a police career, and
I've never regretted that decision.  In fact, I'd do it
all over again.  

Your entire existence is about life and living, and
there aren't that many careers you could consider
that will touch the lives of others as much as your
decision to become a police officer.
 

I often refer to a police career as the best education
on earth, because it simply is just that.  You'll
interact at every level of society, and you'll exert
your authority from minor to enormous effect.

I mention in my book introduction that I believe in
one's destiny.  I think it's a good belief for a police
officer since a police career is inherently dangerous.  
However, only a fool tempts fate.

Police work is a lot harder and more complicated
than many people believe.  Knowledge and courage
will be your most important allies...did I mention
knowledge?  While courage is an indispensable
character trait for police work, your continuous
pursuit of knowledge is indispensable for a
successful police career.

It just gets better.  I retired at a great time.  Thanks
to modern technology, I'm able to publish a book
with tremendous exposure, and the Internet allows
me to continually dispense advice to those of you
who would be police officers.

Come back often...this site's only going to get bigger.
A Most Important and Honorable Profession
The Personal Crisis
Industry
Police Report Writing -
Download the FBI's
Uniform Crime
Reporting Handbook -
It's Free
More Victim
Classification
Police
and
Information
Technology
Talk about stress:
Domestic violence
and the male
police officer
Education
and Police
Sexual Stress and the
Male Police Officer
Alcohol and Stress
Organizational
Stress
Fraternal
Order of Police
Partner Links
Introduction
Chapter
One
Are You Ready
for a Career as a
Police Officer?
New police officers usually begin their careers possessing one of two
psychological mind sets.  The first will be based on idealism, and the
belief that people really aren't that bad.  This view dictates that the
authority of a police officer should be exercised rarely and sparingly
since the police officer's ability to reason with people will almost
always resolve any situation.  The second mind set will rest solely on
the authority and power conveyed by the badge the police officer
wears.  In this mind set, the police officer will make a quick and final
determination for the solution of any situation based upon the police
officer's initial understanding, or impression, of circumstances.

While the first mind set is naive, it's probably the best way to start.  
You'll quickly learn a lot of people are just simply bad, and you'll
soon start moving toward the middle of the mind set scale.  The
second mind set isn't nearly as susceptible to change as the first.  
Power can be as intoxicating as any drug and just as difficult to
control.  Hopefully, whichever mind set, or degree of mind set, you
possess in the beginning, you'll learn how to most effectively, and
efficiently, find the right balance to exercise reason with power and
power with reason.
The New Police Officer
Personal
Websites of
Police Officers
turned Authors
Important
Police Related
Links for
Anyone
Contemplating
a Police Career
Police
Partner Links
Self-Satisfaction
There are very few professions wherein any single individual can have
a dramatic impact on anything on a relatively frequent basis.  While
police officers are not immediately recognized for their importance to
society, one needs only to imagine even our supposedly enlightened
society without police officers.  Think about this…without the social
order ensured by police officers, no one, in any profession, could
accomplish anything.

Okay…that's the big picture.  The small picture is you, as an
individual police officer, and how often you have a dramatic impact on
the lives of others.  Your impact can be positive even when it's
negative for an individual.  If you arrest a person for drunk driving,
it's a negative impact for that person, but your impact is positive for
society at large.  While the whole criminal justice system is geared
toward negatively impacting some for the welfare of many, it all
begins with you.  If you don't take the first, and sometimes
dangerous, action on a face to face basis, nothing will come
afterward.  Without police officers, the criminal justice system would
be a totally impotent bureaucracy.

You might think that with such an important position and mission,
your more important accomplishments would, from time to time, be
recognized and perhaps rewarded.  It's true that, like the military,
police departments have awards in the form of medals and citations
for exceptional performance.  In a very well organized police
department, management realizes the importance of recognizing, and
rewarding, exceptional performance.  In a weakly organized, or
dysfunctional police department, recognition of your good work is the
last thing on anyone's mind.

You might join a police department that really has everything
together.  The department will demand a high level of competence
from you, and it will quickly recognize and reward you when you
exceed that already high level.  Then — of course — there is the
other side of that coin.  You could join a police department where
management considers your paycheck as ample reward.

Here's the point…it's all about self-satisfaction.  I'm sure people in
other professions experience self-satisfaction, but a police career
provides you with so many ways, and opportunities, to experience self-
satisfaction on a constant basis.  You have the ability to ensure that
nearly everything you do results in a positive outcome.  Once you
realize that what other people think of you is totally unimportant,
you're well on your way to experience self-satisfaction in everything
you do.  Recognition by others, in any form, is only a very temporary
thing.  How you recognize yourself, as you constantly strive to better
yourself, is all that really matters.
Morality and Reason
Chain of Command
Police
and
Corruption
Police and Promotions
Self-Sufficiency
As a new police officer, your first and foremost goal should be the
achievement of maximum self-sufficiency.  Simply put…you should
never delegate to others what you can do yourself.  You'll work with
police officers who will gladly share as much of their work as possible,
and you'll soon observe that such practice frequently results in
confusion and discrepancies.  In police work, confusion and
discrepancies are not good things.

You'll frequently encounter situations which will require multiple
tasks.  Unless a circumstance exists where two or more of the tasks
must be completed simultaneously, you should personally complete
each task in order of its importance.  Never trust in others; unless,
you absolutely must.

As your career and life experience progresses, and you remain
observant, you'll see that incompetence is widespread and
everywhere.  Position, education, or so-called experience is no
guarantee of competence.  The easiest way for you to avoid the
incompetency trap is to learn by doing.  Your micro-management of
your own work will prepare you for a supervisory position later in
your career, and, as a supervisor,  you'll find it so easy to identify and
deal with the incompetence of others.
Police Training
Commissions; Nearly
every state maintains a
government, or quasi
government, agency to
establish,
maintain, and
monitor statewide
training and statewide
practices standards for
police officers
throughout that state.  
Some are more formal
than others, but all have
the same basic goals.  
These commissions,
programs, councils, etc.
are good sources of
information for those of
you contemplating a
police career.
Probable Cause
Reasonable Suspicion
and Stop and Frisk
Police Rank Insignias
Expert on Terrorism & Middle East issues
Expert on Domestic Gun Control issues
Political Correctness
Shoot Me!
Use of Force - Taser
Prisoner Retention
Undercover Cops
Why Some Die
Police Service Pistols
SWAT
Cops Stinging Cops
Rule of Law or
Rule of Law(yers)
Redundancy - A Lost Art
Police and Fairness
No Man's Land
Then and Now
Police and
Statistics
Falsely Accused
Police Salaries
Police Cars
Public Image
Confusion Over UCR
Shooting Dogs
Unfounded Reports
Uncooperative Victims
4th Amendment
Police and Property
Female Cops and Force
Photo Line-Up
Officer Somebody
Power of Arrest
Nobody's Perfect
"Like everything else that makes it into the world of
political correctness, the total eradication of
domestic violence in now the ultimate, impossible
goal.  The same people who view police officers as some
of the most imperfect examples of humanity are
shocked... shocked mine you when an allegation of
domestic violence is leveled at a police officer.  Because
domestic violence has become such a politically charged
issue, a police officer is the most effective target for
zealots and politicians."
"Unless you're a coward, or just lazy, the thought of letting a criminal escape from you is repugnant.  The problem with being
young, and new to policing, is the absence of experience, and the realization that your good intentions can place you in
jeopardy beyond your imagination."
Police-STAT
Traffic Stops
Bounty Hunters
Overtime Pay
Rachel Marsden
Politics with an Edge!
Shots Fired
Police K9 Training
Mounted Police
Motorcycle Police
Too Much Compassion
Police Aviation
Traffic Accident Investigation
Police Marine Patrol
Becoming a Detective
False Reports
Adobe e-Book
available at
iUniverse. com
$6.00 us
Contagious Shooting
A no holds barred discussion of issues which will most affect
a new police officer's career.
Miranda Warning
Bicycle Cops
Federal
Law
Enforcement
Careers
Links to ATF; DEA; FBI;
IRS; ICE; U.S. Customs
and Border Patrol; U.S.
Secret Service
More Inside
Women,
Unmarked
Police Cars
and
Traffic Stops
Illegal Immigration:
A Police Officer's
View
Police Civil
Liability
H.R.218
"The Law Enforcement
Officer's Safety Act"
National
Concealed Carry
for Cops is Now
Law
Terrorism
Resource
Links
Police Exam Tips
Test Strategies
for
Police Applicants
George M. Godoy
Police Recruitment Specialist
Police Exam Tips
Test Strategies
for
Police Applicants
Articles...
More Inside
United States
Constitution
A High School Lesson
Police Exam 911™
A step-by-step
system YOU can use
to secure a top score
on ANY Police Exam
CareerPoliceOfficer.com  Privacy Policy - Contact
U.S. Border Patrol Exam
A step-by-step
system designed
specifically
for the
U.S. Border Patrol Exam
"I’m not sure if this is the email address to the person who made the
website, “careerpoliceofficer.com” – but if it is, THANK YOU for doing it. I
am going to become a police officer after my time is up in the U.S Navy, and
I’ve been researching the job for weeks now. This site has ALL the
information I’ve been looking for, and I like that it was written by a police
officer. I’m going to buy the book too. Well, besides thanking you, I hope
this e-mail gives you more reasons to keep that website up-to-date and
running. Thanks again-"

Respectfully,
SN Valletta, Nicholas A. / Deck Department / First Division /  USS Pearl Harbor (LSD-52)
USS Pearl Harbor
"The Nation's Battle Cry"
Here's why it's worth the effort
I've received compliments about my site, but this one moves right to the top of the list:
CareerPoliceOfficer.com's first three link partners:
John R. Lott Jr., is a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute. Before joining AEI, Mr.
Lott was a senior research scholar
at Yale University’s School of Law.
He has also held positions at the
University of Chicago, Stanford
University, UCLA, the Wharton
Business School, and Rice
University.

Additionally, he was the Chief
Economist at the United States
Sentencing Commission in 1988
and 1989.

Mr. Lott has published more than
ninety articles in academic journals
including the Journal of Law and
Economics and the Journal of
Legal Studies, and is a frequent
contributor to major newspapers.

He is the bestselling author of
More Guns, Less Crime:
Understanding Crime and Gun
Control Laws -
and - The Bias
Against Guns: Why Almost
Everything You've Heard About
Gun Control is Wrong.
Book Marketing Update
PoeWar.com
Writer's Resource Center
A web site for book authors and
publishers who want to sell more books.
Lots of detail information, including
reports, resource lists, and ezine
excerpts.
News, articles, information and
opportunities for writers
Named by Writer's Digest as one of the
101 Top Web Sites for 2006
If you ever build your own web site,
you'll quickly learn the importance of
well established sites linking to you.  
These sites accepted my link requests
when CareerPoliceOfficer was only a
mere six pages.

CareerPoliceOfficer has grown well
beyond those six pages, but it hasn't
outgrown its appreciation for all the
sites that link to it.
Police Shows
Descriptions of
Police Drama and
Comedy Television
Shows
Past and Present
You need Java to see this applet.
In-Car Video
From Chapter 17 - Domestic Violence
From Chapter 18 - Emergency Response and Vehicle Pursuits
Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster , LAPD
(ret), is the CEO of Criminal Justice
Online, and the author of
Police
Technology.  
Raymond's current project
is assembling state and local police
authors in one virtual location at
Police-Writers.com.  When I started my
site, I was lucky enough to bump into him
Criminal Justice Online
Police-Writers.com
Military-Writers.com

Police-Technology.net
AmericanHeroesPress.com
on the web, and I now refer to him as my Web Mentor.  Just click on the link above where
you can easily access all of Raymond's websites.
Spanish
for
Law Enforcement Officers
Police Agency Links
Federal
State
City
County/Sheriff
State Corrections
Police Jobs Postings

Federal
State
City
County/Sheriff
Other Police Jobs
Criminal
Justice
Universities
Nearly 200
colleges and
universities across
the United States
offering
undergraduate and
graduate degrees
in Criminal Justice
Tips on Writing
Your College
Admissions Essay
Becoming a Police Officer
Translated and Published in Macedonian
Aside from being the birthplace of
Alexander the Great, Macedonia is a
country rich in history.  Did you know that
Mother Theresa was born in Skopje, the
capital of Macedonia?  She lived there until
the age of 18 when she moved to India
where she devoted her life to helping
others.  Macedonia is one of three
countries mentioned in the
Bible; St. Paul
baptized the first Christian woman, called
Lydia, and it was from Macedonia where
Okay... back to my book.  Becoming a Police Officer: An Insider's Guide to
a Career in Law Enforcement
was chosen by the Macedonian Ministry of
Interior Affairs for translation and publication.  The Macedonian
Government has undertaken a project to translate and publish 500 expert
titles on various subjects for academic use;
Becoming a Police Officer is
one of those titles.  The books are being distributed throughout faculties
and libraries so that students can use them as textbooks or additional
reading.

Here's the really cool part... I don't know anyone in Macedonia.  When
you become a police officer, you're going to see a lot of people move and
advance based on who they know more than what they know.  So, it's
always nice to have something you do or produce judged only on quality,
merit, or content.
St. Paul began his journey to spread Christianity throughout the world.  
Macedonia is the birthplace of Cyril and Methodius -- brothers and
founders of the Cyrillic alphabet.  The Cyrillic alphabet is the official
alphabet in all the Slavic countries like Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc.
Read About USS Pearl Harbor
EssayEdge.com Admissions Essay Help
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