Her job assignments consist, primarily, of being dispatched to successive calls. When someone calls for police service, there is a tacit admission by the caller that the situation at hand has deteriorated beyond his or her control, and police are needed in order to bring the situation back under control. That is the unstated assumption that the officer has going into each situation — not that a social equilibrium needs to be maintained, but that a situation needs to be quickly and efficiently brought back under control.
Further than this, when she gets to the scene of many to most of these calls, she encounters people who seek to frustrate her endeavors. She talks to witnesses who lie in circles about not seeing anything. She talks to suspects who lie about where they'd just been or what they were just doing. She talks to drunk people who can't coordinate themselves and won't remember what she said in ten minutes' time.
She talks to addicts who try to conceal the fact that they're high even though involuntary tics have consumed their body. She talks to grade school kids and teenagers who have been conditioned to mistrust or despise police. She talks to people who lie about their identity because they have warrants or because they just want to frustrate her.
She talks to people who act nervous and take too long to answer simple questions, raising her suspicions. She talks to people who have drugs, guns, knives, and any manner of other contraband hidden in their residence, in their vehicle, or on their person. Now consider that the officer is doing this many times per shift — 10, 20, maybe more — encounters every day. She will quickly learn that, in order to get anything accomplished with these liars and obstructionists, she is going to have to employ tactics that in any other field would be unacceptable.
She is going to have to be blunt, brusque and curt. She's going to have to call bluffs and smokescreens and BS. She's going to have to interrupt rambling, circular explanations. She's going to have to look people in the eye and say, "We both know that you're lying to me right now.
And through it all, she will begin to develop the opposite assumption from the freshly roused partner and the guy at the water cooler — work interactions are not among peers, and people are likely not worthy of implicit trust. Now, you, who I will assume is a normal, everyday citizen, comes into contact with this police officer. Even though she can probably surmise that you're not a frequent flyer, she doesn't know you and doesn't enter into interpersonal contact with the same assumptions you do.
Additionally, if she's in uniform it's possible she has a task at hand she's focused on. Until you are a known quantity, you may be treated coolly and humorlessly. Now, let's take a step back. I mean, after all, she's acting all distant and aloof and snobby, right?
However, your assessment is based on your interaction in a vacuum, and likely doesn't factor in much of anything I just said. That doesn't mean either one of you is "wrong. In closing, I'd bid you to be forgiving. This officer cannot afford to give people the benefit of the doubt, because there are only so many people you can relax your guard around in her line of work before she gets herself or someone else hurt or killed. More Police1 Articles.
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