Bob Walsh
Stockton, CA
Male, 60
I worked for the California state system, starting as a Correctional Officer and retiring as a Lieutenant in 2005. I now write for the PacoVilla blog which is concerned with what could broadly be called The Correctional System.
Couldn't really say. I have never been a street cop. It comes up fairly often in the prison setting, usually with female cops making the complaint, but we don't have to pull information out of the complainant under those circumstances.
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That depends on why you don't think you will be good at it. The skill set to do the job can be developed with no problem as long as you have average intelligence and a decent educational backgrounds. You do have to be able to read (things like job descriptions and operational procedures are important, and you have to be able to read them to follow them). Also some people just do not like the environment, being physically locked into a closed-up building really bothers some people. Also some people really don't want to deal with the shift work. As long as these are not issues for you I would be inclined to give it a go. If it turns out that you don't like it you can walk away, its not like the Army and you are in for three years whether you like it or not.
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Back when i was working, it usually ran three shifts. If they were absolutely positive the guy had something it could run as long as nine shifts. That was unusual, it gets expensive.
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Yes. Very much so.
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In my experience, neutral. Druggies still use in prison. Drugs are easy to get in prison. They are about 4X more expensive than on the street, but are still easy to get. A recent mainstream news report just released a report on that subject in fact. It said that, when tested in June of last year, 23% of the prisoners tested came up positive for illegal drugs and 30% of the sample refused to be tested, even though the sampling was anonymous and there was no way to connect the samples back to an individual person.
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Probably, though they might be uninterested in investing a full 14 weeks in someone who bails after only one week. Depends a lot on why he left and how hard up the department is for people. Presumably he already passed the background or he wouldn't have been in the academy.
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Like I said, I have never been a street cop. I suppose it might make a difference if they thought you were lying, or if they wanted to tell how solid a witness you were. Maybe he is a confirmed left-hand weenie wacker and if you say he was using his right that would tend to indicate you were lying. I very honestly don't know the answer.
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