Tag: Police

I Did Not Run

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After a couple weeks of constant heel pain, I stopped running and vowed to take a week off.

That was last Sunday. 

My heel is no better.  But I might run anyway.

Strangely, I don’t miss running. At least not the act or sensation of it. I’m not pining for the trails.  I’m not desperate to run long and slow, or short and fast.

But something doesn’t feel right.  Inside me.  I’ve felt it all day.  Call it depression, melancholy, ‘the blues.’  I’m not myself.  Not today.

I’m not sure why.  Usually a “weighted hike” helps.  So I tried that.  I put a dumbbell in a backpack and set off through the forest.  I ate fresh blackberries, sat beside a stream, and watched a fly land on a perfect green leaf. 

A weighted hike usually does the trick.  The dumbbell gets harder and harder to carry.  The shoulder straps dig into my skin.  I lean forward, seeking a posture where everything hurts a little bit less.  At the end of a weighted hike I’m in physical pain. But I feel better.  On the inside.  Nature, solitude, and decompression lift me up from within.

That didn’t happen today.  Today I got home and still felt blah.

I’m not sure why.  It could be because there is nothing I have to do today. The lawn doesn’t need cutting.  My daughter does not need to be dropped off at a birthday party.  My wife and I don’t have to go shopping.  No distractions to distract me from whatever I’m feeling inside.

Maybe it’s shift work.  Two long days followed by two long nights.  Four days of sleep deprivation and a messed up body clock.  The aftereffects carry into my days off.  I feel jetlagged.  I feel hung over.  I feel short tempered. On my first day off, I am mindful of how I speak to my wife and daughter because my fuse is short and my patience is thin. 

Today is my second day off.  I slept long and well.  I’m weary but not exhausted.  I’m well on the way to the feeling of “normal” that usually returns by my third day off.

Maybe it’s the work other people do.  My job title is Watch Commander.  I supervise approximately twenty-five uniformed police officers.  I sit behind a desk, while they are on the street, doing the real work of policing.  I hear it all over the radio.  Assaults, thefts, domestic disputes, overdoses, and a seemingly endless stream of mental health calls.  There are so many broken people, and the police officers I work with spend large parts of their days trying to help.  They work hard, and virtually everything they do is because something bad has happened.  Earlier this week a senior citizen was the victim of an unprovoked violent attack.  Her injuries are life altering.  The cops I work with arrested the offender and went with the victim to the hospital.  It happened at 7:00 o’clock at night, in a nice part of the city, on a beautiful summer’s evening. 

Maybe it’s the work I do.  Like a contentious situation which I could have handled better.  Or sensitive information which gets shared with me because of my position.  Or decisions which I make that affect the professional lives, and personal well-being of the police officers on my shift.  Men and women I’ve come to care about deeply since I started working with them earlier this year.

Or maybe it’s because I haven’t been running.  I biked this week.  I went to the gym.  I stayed active.  But I did not run.

It seems too coincidental that I would feel run down after a week of not doing something I usually do almost every day.

It’s funny, because last Sunday, when I decided to take a break, I was out on the trails in behind our home, and I wasn’t loving the run.  My heel hurt, and my motivation was practically nil.  I’d entertained trying a two-hour run, and knew I didn’t have it in me.  I just didn’t want it.  Which was unusual, because often I look forward to two-hours as the perfect amount of time to be out there on my feet – to challenge myself without overtaxing my system. 

So last Sunday, when I decided to take a break from running, I felt kind of proud of myself.  I felt like I was listening to my body and my mind and it was the perfect time for a break.  A week for my heel to heal and my running mojo to recharge.

And now six days later, I feel the opposite.  A reminder that running for me is about so much more than physical health.  And it’s not just central to my identity.  The blah I feel today is a reminder that running is essential to my  well-being.  Physical tiredness and work stress are nothing new.  They are essential elements of policing.  Nothing about this past week was fundamentally different than the last 23 years of my career.

Except it was one of the few weeks in which I did not run.  And today I’m paying the price.

That Darkness

A child was killed in a tragic accident not far from our home last week.

I heard sirens that night.

The boy wasn’t yet a teenager. 

A life ended.

Parents shattered.

When I was about the same age, forty years ago now, something similar happened.  Close friends of my mother and father lost a child, struck, and killed by a car, as he delivered papers in Hamilton, Ontario.  I knew that boy.  He was older than me.  My last memory of him is a brief conversation as he fixed his bicycle in the driveway.  I remember hearing about his death on the car radio as we drove to their home the day after he died.  I remember entering that home – palpable grief.  Silence and sobs.  I played with his young sister.  She spoke very matter-of-factly about her brother being dead, seemingly too young to truly understand.

My current job, much of my career, involves investigating death.  What caused it?  Who did it?  Those investigations span months.  Years. 

Months and years where families suffer.  The source of their intense grief is my 9 to 5 job.  It’s a sobering thought.  A jarring discrepancy. 

I was in a dollar store yesterday.  Having fun.  Buying birthday balloons, batteries for my daughter’s glowing princess shoes, and 5 pairs of reading glasses for my ageing eyes.  I’ve been to that store dozens of times.  The lady behind the counter is kind, friendly and we always chat and laugh, although I don’t know her name and she doesn’t know mine.  Yesterday she asked me what I did for a living.  I told her where I worked.  She responded, “I’d never have guessed you were a cop.”  I never asked why.  The conversation moved on.

This morning I wonder why she never would have guessed.  Is it how I look?  I’m very thin.  I lift weights but never seem to add muscle.  Should a cop be bigger – tougher looking?

I laugh in that store.  Always.  I chase my daughter around.  Everything catches her eye.  Stickers, sparkles, cards, toys, costumes.  She loves everything in that store.  Wants everything.  I’d like to buy it all for her.  Of course, I don’t.  But I can’t resist getting her something every time we visit.  Should a cop be firmer, stricter, less indulgent?  Less joyful?  Gruffer.  Meaner.  Angrier.  Bitter.

There are days I feel gruff.  Mean.  Angry.  Bitter.  Sad.

Everyone does.  Cops do.  You do.

I bet that every cop I work with could walk into that dollar store – and the kind woman who works there would never guess they are cops.  They are moms, and dads.  Husbands and wives.  Athletic and not.  Calm, and intense.  Funny and serious.  Not stereotypes.  People.

People whose careers expose them to darkness that most people don’t often see.

People who cope with that darkness in different ways.

People who are regularly exposed to death.  Sometimes it breaks them.  Sometimes it gives them a heightened appreciation for life.  Usually, it’s somewhere in between. 

I try not to think about what happened close to our home last week.  It’s too heartbreaking.  And because of that I do think about what happened.  Mostly I think about the parents.  And the young boy.  But I think about everyone who was there.  Neighbours, paramedics, firefighters, and the cops.

I think about what happened in Hamilton 40 years ago. 

And I think about a comment in a dollar store.

About how television and movie cops have shaped society’s perception of what a police officer should be.

A police officer is a person.  It’s you.  It’s your neighbour.  It’s the person next to you in a grocery store you’d never guess is a cop, because they don’t look the part.

I like cop movies.  I love detective fiction.  The best of it captures slices of reality.  But it’s fiction.  Stories.

Stories aren’t life.  And life is complicated.  So are people.  So are cops.  Just like you.  Just like me.

… If you interested, here’s a link to a podcast, where cops talk about their careers and their lives.  I work with these people.  Real people.  I’m proud to consider them colleagues and friends.  True Blue Podcast (buzzsprout.com)

Like my colleagues and friends, I pray for the victims and their families.  For peace and healing.

Sarah – A Run for Life.

A few years before she was killed on duty, Sarah Beckett worked in a homicide unit.

I worked with her on a couple of cases. I did not get to know her but I formed impressions. She was “very.” Very professional, respected, hard-working – and pretty. It was hard not to notice her.

Sarah returned to working on the road. That’s where she was killed.

The morning she died I was working in the same homicide unit Sarah had been in. Her death rocked our office. One of my colleagues – one of the strongest and toughest people I’ve ever met – both physically and mentally, wept in front of a desk. Mostly there was shock, and silence, and whispers. For a few minutes it looked like our unit would be investigating Sarah’s death. Fortunately that changed. It would have been too much for too many.

Yesterday, I ran in the inaugural Sarah Beckett Memorial Run.

There were many families there. A community rallied behind Sarah’s family, her friends, her co-workers.

I witnessed stirring moments. A West Shore cop sprinting to the finish line. Sprinting at ten in the morning after being up all night working a nightshift. Sprinting when he could be sleeping, with another nightshift looming just hours away.

Canine cops running in full uniform. Weighted down by boots and vests.

Families running together. Strollers and children. A pregnant mom, herself a cop, who did not have to run, but did because she could.

My most abiding memories of the run are mascots and Mounties.

Our three year old daughter Molly came to watch the race. What she saw were giant furry figures, like Marty the Marmot, towering over her. She was terrified. She cried and cried, tears running, snot flowing. Molly finally calmed down on the drive home. But she remained fascinated by the mascots. And by her fear. She kept asking me to tell her the story over and over, about how she was scared. So I did. And I told her that I was scared too. I said that she was scared because she was too young, and I was scared because I was too old.

Molly is too young. Too young to understand what Sarah’s 5k was all about.

I am old. Older than Sarah Beckett of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ever got to be.

The Mounties get a lot of bad press, much of it undeserved. What rarely gets reported is how close knit they are. The RCMP is a national family. Tens of thousands of members and one large family. I’d experienced that first hand when I’d marched in Sarah’s funeral – me and dozens of my Victoria Police colleagues lost in a sea of Red Serge.

Yesterday that sea of red didn’t march. It ran. At a run for Sarah. A run for life. A run that everyone there felt privileged to be a part of. A run that everyone there wished never had to happen.

Beckett 5k