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Health & Fitness

Police Officers Telling Stories!

The Citizen's Police Academy & other stories told by police officers.

 

I was told the best bedtime stories as a kid.  The stories were real. They involved people I knew.  There were real good guys & real bad guys.  The good guys always won & I was a personal friend of the good guys.  These were not stories told by my Mum or Dad but by our baby sitters.  My parents had a basement
apartment which they rented out.  They decided the best tenants would be police officers.  Not only would they keep the house safe but they would make ideal baby sitters.  I am sure their rent was significantly reduced in exchange for this service!  But I anticipated my parents going out so these young police officers would come upstairs and tell us about their recent successes overcoming the bad guys.  I believed every word & these good guys were my heroes.  Of course, this was when the cops & robbers, sort of by mutual consent, were still unarmed.

Going to the Citizen’s Police Academy is rather like reliving hearing these stories.  And at the police shooting range I even got to try my hand at being one of the good guys myself and firing at the bad guys – only on video but with real
bullets.  OK so my shot missed the bad guy but at least I did not shoot the cat! Unfortunately the stories you hear on the range stay on the range.  (The whole
experience is a bit like going to Vegas but more fun)  But I can tell you some other police stories.

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Believe it or not, the Greenwich Police were asked to look for someone’s cat that are gone missing.  Not just look but send out the police helicopter.  An unreasonable request?  After all, when my ex-boss went to South Korea to become ambassador there and his cat escaped, the police went looking for her.  Fortunately he lived in a top floor apartment so the cat only had the option of other roof tops to explore.  The police helicopter might have worked.

Police dog stories are fun.  Apparently the dog practices on the family kids.  The dog always wins at hide & seek.  Attendees at the Citizen’s Police Academy (Check with the Police Department to sign up for the Fall class) also get to ride along in a police car.  You hear great stories then too.  “I don’t have a driving license or car registration because I am on ‘black ops!’  And if you check out the girlfriend (who was busy revealing her cleavage till I came along) you might be distracted enough to not give me a ticket.  Wrong!  The girl friend got a ticket too, not for her cleavage but for lack of a license.

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Given the recent burglaries, we were taught how to help keep our homes & ourselves safe.  I took this lesson so seriously, I locked myself out.  Fortunately my neighbors have my key so no problem except persuading their Doberman I was a friend!

For the best stories, you have to attend the Citizen’s Police Academy yourself.  Hear about the drug busts that provided the money for Greenwich’s fancy new Mobile CSI Crime Unit van.  Get finger printed.  Be scared by the SWAT team.  Try out the “criminal PJs” and bunk in the new prison cell block.  Enough to convince me to stick to stories, not real crime! 

Why are the police, well some of them, such good story tellers?  Maybe because they have seen so much of life.  Maybe because they are also actors.  Think of the undercover cop.  He needs to act.  Maybe even the cop that stops you for speeding.  Is he really supposed to believe that story?  If this wasn’t the
real world, it would be really funny.

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