Police Life

You start your career as a patrol officer or on general duty – policing's front line. Preventing, reducing, responding to and solving crime is your 24/7 job. Well, you don't work 24/7. But your team does.

Whatever call comes in, you respond. You're first on the scene, so you're first to investigate. With all the variety, you quickly develop the knowledge and skills that help you specialize later on in your career.

Even if there isn't a call, you're deterring crime and creating a sense of security just by being out there. You're proactive too, gathering and documenting intelligence to identify crime trends, problem locations and suspicious people.

Obviously policing isn't a nine to five gig. You work in chunks like four days on, four days off, rotating through a schedule where you'll put in long shifts, any time of day. It's all planned out far in advance, so you can plan out how you'll maximize all those off days. Some days when you're not on patrol, you'll uphold the law in another way – by appearing in court. When you do, you're paid for it.

Off-duty, you end up seeing a lot of the same people you do on-duty – because they become your best friends. The camaraderie you experience as a police officer doesn't happen in any other job.

Policing's a unique life. For people like you, it's the only life.