You Can't Judge A Cop by Its Cover

You Can’t Judge

a Cop by Its Cover

Rodney LeMond

Copyright © 2021 Rodney LeMond

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-3072-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3073-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Let me start out my story by saying that police work was a very challenging, stressful, dangerous, and unappreciated yet rewarding career for me. If it was all those things rolled up in to one, it must sound highly confusing to you. And how could it give you all the negative feelings yet still be rewarding? Well, as you read on, I am hoping to be able to make it all clear.

I know that a great deal of the American people lost respect for law enforcement in this country. I think that a lot of that comes from influence by politicians, the media, radical groups, and also the fact that they have a true lack of understanding and knowledge as to what their police officers face on a daily basis. And I am not just referring to state and local police, I am referring to an understanding as to what our Federal agents face as well.

There is a Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, DC. It is 304 feet long and has the names of 21,000 fallen officers on it, killed in the line of duty. And names are added annually. There are different inscriptions on the memorial, these words:

The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous as bold as a lion.

—Proverbs 28:1

Carved on these walls is the story of America, of a continuing quest to preserve both democracy and decency, and to protect a national treasure that we call the American dream.

—President George H. W. Bush

It is not how these officers died that made them heroes, it is how they lived.

—Vivian Eney, survivor

Think of the true meaning behind those inscriptions. And as you are thinking, ask yourselves, do we really want to do away with cops?

As you get into the story, you will also learn that not all cops are perfect nor would I ever say that they were. Just as in any profession, people make mistakes. Police work can definitely change a person and not always for the better. The stresses of the job can sometimes take its toll. Cops are human beings and not programmable machines. That is why their behavior needs to be closely monitored by their agencies throughout their careers.

I also feel that we have become a nation full of certain people that don’t believe in the laws of this country and would very much like to do away with them. They are those that continue to stir up chaos and threaten the lives of good law-abiding Americans. A nation without laws cannot survive. That’s why I felt the need to share my feelings with you and my experiences.

As you read on, I will talk a lot about myself and my twenty-eight-year career in police work, and why do I feel the need to write about myself, and why would anyone be interested in my story?

Well, it is because my life has been pretty unique; however, I am not writing just about me, I am writing about all law enforcement officers, men and women. I am just using my life as an example. I have never liked the stereotyping of officers that occurs, and I want you to understand that not all officers are the same. I have been part of highly unusual events that seemed to have occurred time and time again, and it took me years to realize why. I believe it was because it came from a higher calling. So, please read on and make a determination for yourself.

I have heard the phrase on several occasions, Law enforcement officers were peacekeepers, angels of God. I believe that I was pushed towards police work for some reason that I have never been able to explain.

There is something else that I don’t think that the general public knows about police work. I want to enlighten you as to what it takes to become a cop and what it takes to remain a cop.

First of all, I had to apply for a position. You were required to have a high school diploma or equivalent or preferably a college degree. I could not have ever been charged with a felony, I could not have ever had any type of prior drug usage, I could not have ever been charged with a misdemeanor that involved moral turpitude. A lengthy background investigation was done on me. I could not have any visible tattoos. Investigators spoke to my neighbors. I had to take a lengthy psychological exam, two parts, written and oral with a psychologist. I had to go before an oral review board. I had to take a written test and achieve a passing score of at least 85 percent. I had to take a physical agility test doing sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, and a lengthy swim test. I had to run a mile and a half in less than twelve minutes. I had to run an obstacle course, part of it dragging a one-hundred-fifty-pound dummy. I had to attend a police academy that lasted seven months. You had quarterly written tests; if you failed anyone of them, you were out. You had to attend the firing range regularly throughout the academy and pass qualifications shooting under the most stressful situations that the range instructors could put on you. You had physical fitness testing, training, and defensive tactics. You had weapon retention training. You had collision avoidance training driving at high speed on a road course and a decision-making driving. And all this was just to get a job as a cop. You also had to take and pass the state exam.

Once you got hired, you had to go through a field training program where you would ride with a field training officer. This lasted on average about nine weeks. The training officers would place a great deal of pressure on you during the training and grade you on how you would deal with stressful situations. Some trainees would talk about how they would become so stressed out that they would go home and vomit at night.

Your first year, you were considered an-at-will deputy, and you could be terminated without any means of contesting the termination. Continual training would be required throughout your career. Such as human diversity training, counseling, and communications training, so much more training and retraining it is difficult to list it all. But it would be thousands of hours. I hope you get an idea of how extensive it was.

There was a machine called a FATS machine that stood for firearms training simulator. It was a machine that was very realistic with live scenarios of decision-making events. You would be tested as to shoot or don’t shoot situations. We would have to train on it regularly.

When the Naval Training Center closed in Orlando, Florida, we were afforded the opportunity to use the facility for training purposes. It was like having your own private city. We would use guns with Simunition ammo, which is training ammunition or paint balls. We could train doing mock bank robberies, armed traffic stops, and several other work-related scenarios.

Well, here it is, my beginning. I started early on in life with no father figure due to losing my dad to that dreaded disease, cancer. During the trying times while my dad was hospitalized for two years fighting for his life, my mom worked at a fast-food restaurant in an effort to keep food on our table. It was a minimum-wage job and just wasn’t enough income to support six children, so she was forced to apply for Welfare. I remember us getting large cans of peanut butter that had so much oil on top you would have to scoop it out with a spoon prior to being able to make a sandwich. I also remember us getting large blocks of cheese. It was really tough times.

When I was eight years old, I remember the hospital that my dad was in allowed him to come home. It was for only a few days, and it was a week before my ninth birthday. I would lay in my bed at night and listen to my dad cry because he was in excruciating pain. He would tell my mom that he didn’t want to die. I remember looking through the opening in my bedroom door and seeing my mom carrying blood-soaked sheets from their bedroom. The blood was from cancerous tumors on my dad’s body that were breaking. It was an unimaginable memory that I can never forget. My dad had to return to the hospital but before he left, he kissed me and gave me a silver dollar. My dad never kissed me. He was always a masculine man. My dad died the day before my ninth birthday while he was back in the hospital.

From the age of ten to the age of fourteen, I had a stepfather. I won’t say he raised me because he was a very physically abusive man towards my mom, myself, and the rest of my family. He didn’t have much time for the kids, but he had plenty of time for other women and bars. He was definitely no role model. Several of my friends were experiencing the physical abuse from stepfathers as well.

I remember when I was about ten years old (probably the year 1965), I was going with my stepfather to Salisbury, North Carolina to visit his sister. We were at her home, and it was just getting dark. I looked out of the front window of her living room and saw a fire forming in a field across the street. It was in the shape of a cross and something like I had never seen before. I asked my stepfather’s sister what it was, and she said, Oh, it was just the Klan. She said that a black family had moved across the tracks and that the Klan was going to run them out. The Klan? What was the Klan? I had no clue. Then I saw numbers of people wearing what looked like white sheets and white hoods gathering around the cross as if to be sending some kind of intimidating message. I was scared to death, and everyone else there acted as if it was just a normal thing. Their explanation was that the Klan was bigger than they were, and there was nothing that they could do about it. It appeared to me that this was some kind of normal thing at that time in that area. That was one of the many horrible things that this man exposed me to during my childhood. Even at the age of ten, I knew that all people were equal, and I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed.

After I returned home, I tried to educate myself more about the Ku Klux Klan, and in my opinion, I felt that they were uneducated, radical white supremacists. They posed as being a part of a white supremacy, and they hated blacks. Yet they were neo-Nazi. Neo-Nazi supported the killing of millions of Jewish people whom were white. That just proved how intelligent they were.

At fourteen, I was pretty much on my own, and considering the man that my stepfather was, that wasn’t a bad thing. Later after my brother and I grew, my stepdad couldn’t get away with the things he had been doing because we were no longer afraid of him. And when I say the things he had gotten away with, let me give you just one example. I reflected back to a morning that I was to be awakened by my mom. She walked into my bedroom, I think I was around twelve years old, and when I looked at her, I didn’t recognize her. Her eyes were swollen shut, she had metal rods up her nose, and her face was bruised badly. She told me that she and my stepfather were in a bad car accident. She never said in what car, and our car had no damage. A couple of years later, I found out that my stepfather had punched her in the face and broke her nose the evening before she entered my bedroom. She had just returned from the hospital emergency room. Then on another occasion, we were all outside of our home enjoying the nice weather. My mom was sitting in a lawn chair and my stepfather was sitting next to her. I watched him stand up and punch her in the face and knock her out of the chair. Then he dragged her by her hair as she was bleeding badly into the house. I was still very young and unable to do anything about it. Why he was never charged criminally for the horrible abuse was beyond me.

I had begun to have my little encounters with the law. Nothing serious. I took a minibike that didn’t belong to me. I got put on probation, and that was when I met a savior that entered my life. He was a corporal with the local police department, and he was my probation officer. He took me and other troubled kids to major league baseball games and became a true role model. I think that was when I began to take a strong interest in police work. Shortly after turning fourteen, my stepdad came out looking for me one evening when I was with some friends. He began to beat me with his fists like I was a grown man right in front of them. He was not a small man. He was about 6'2" and over 200 pounds. To this day, I don’t recall what I may have done to ever deserve that. I became tired of the abuse and never having anything. And as I said earlier, we grew up pretty poor. I also remember that we had one bicycle for all six kids to share. It was a twenty-six-inch bike, so I would have to lean it against the fence then get up on the fence to get on it.

I also remember wanting to become a Cub Scout. We couldn’t afford a uniform, so a friend gave me his old one. It was faded blue and pretty worn. I was so embarrassed going to meetings and seeing the dark blue new uniforms all the other kids were wearing and seeing how different I looked. My mom was finally able to get up the ten dollars that a new uniform cost, and she bought me one. I knew how much of a struggle she had with five other kids to provide for, but some way she did it. My dad was deathly sick at the time and permanently hospitalized.

I learned to fight at a very young age due to having to defend myself regularly from my stepdad and kids from the neighborhood. I took up boxing at the YMCA, and I got pretty good and was fighting in competitive bouts. But it was beginning to become an important learning experience for me, and I started to see that it was not the life I wanted to lead. I began lifting weights and continued to train in boxing in an attempt to get stronger because I knew my stepfather would continue his abuse if he wasn’t stopped.

My brother and I grew older and wiser and were no longer going to take my stepfather’s insane behavior. My brother enlisted in the army, and we were having a going-away party for him. My stepfather and a couple of his friends waited until all the guests at the party left, including me, and all of them beat my brother up pretty badly. I was furious