Crimes, Confessions, and Convictions

In today’s society, we are inundated with movies and TV programs covering big-city cops. When you turn on the TV, you can’t help but see all the CSI, Law and Order, and COPS programs and watch the exciting lives of police officers from Miami, New York, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles. These officers are gifted in their abilities to collect massive amounts of evidence that will allow modern science, within the hour, to spit out the name of a suspect. The shows unfairly characterize all cops as quick to use force and not affected by traumatic events. You could also argue that such programs, along with true-crime novels, lead viewers and readers to believe that crime occurs only in large metropolitan areas and doesn’t really affect rural places or small towns. From my perspective of thirty years of police service, most of it spent in smaller Oregon communities, I can say that many citizens believe police officers are arrogant, badge-heavy ticket writers. Early on in my career, I realized that I was a little different than most officers. My friends were not just police officers. My wife and I had a good marriage, and we were active as a couple and then as a family with other couples and families mostly in my wife’s circle. I found that our noncop friends were intrigued with my job but had no idea what kind of evil really exists. They told me I didn’t fit the stereotype of a police officer. I’m not sure that I was different or if their perception came from a recent traffic ticket, which could have been their one and only encounter with a police officer. More recently, I have heard grumblings about the “luxurious” retirement packages for police officers and how, because of fiscal difficulties in the government, many are even calling for a change to these twenty-five-year pensions. Everyone knows that police officers are different from other people. They go against the basic instinct to flee danger and are more Crimes, Confessions, and Convictions than willing to go to it—into the school after the shooter, into a high speed pursuit to stop the armed robbers, or into countless buildings to search for the hidden felon. The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that between 1976 and 1999, more than 1,800 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty. What media depictions of police and statistics don’t show is the hidden killer of police officers. Police officers work in a high-stress environment and are, for the most part, sedentary. They work rotating shifts and are subject to being called in at any time. All of these factors have been studied and restudied, and the results are clear: police officers, specifically those from smaller agencies, with as little as nine years on the job face a significantly high mortality rates. Risks of cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, and heart disease are all substantially higher in police than what has been recorded in the average population. The studies go further to show that officers with thirty years on the job face more than three times the mortality rate of the general population. Mentioned in the FBI Bulletin was the sad statistics relayed in a 2004 report by the National Police Suicide Foundation: in 2000, approximately four hundred police officers committed suicide. This number was three times greater than the national average. According to Dr. Dan Goldfarb, in his speech written for Heavybadge.com, police officers also face a divorce rate between 60 and 75 percent, depending upon the study, while the national average remains at 50 percent. Researchers have also studied the life expectancy of police officers. The most commonly cited study was done by John M. Violanti, PhD, research associate professor in the University of Buffalo’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. His forty-year study of police officers with between ten and nineteen years of service showed an average life expectancy of sixty-six years. Other studies have shown life expectancy for police officers between fifty-three and sixty-six years of age. At the same time, the average life expectancy in the United States is seventy-four years for men and eighty years for women. What brought these risks home for me was the article “Issues in Small Town Policing” from the July 2004 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, as its authors suggested officers serving small towns were at even greater risk of these health issues partly because rural officers were not able to step away from the job. No matter where the officers were at or what they were doing, people identified them as police officers, so they remained hyperaware and often, because they are identified as police officers and are expected to act, they are called into service while enjoying a family outing. Officers serving larger agencies have the luxury of anonymity while off duty and therefore can truly unwind and spend quality time with their families. These numbers are just that—numbers—and I am sure everyone has heard the adage that statistics don’t lie but liars use statistics. In 1998 my father, Roger Decker, retired at the age of sixty-two as Wallowa County Sheriff. He had spent over thirty years in police service, and prior to that, he spent twenty years in military service. In October 1999, at the age of sixty-three, he died suddenly from a heart attack. So to those who may question why police officers are allowed to retire early or to those whose only opinion of police comes from an undeserving traffic citation, I challenge you to look a little closer at what officers face and what sacrifices they make to provide us with a safer community.