Sheepdogs, Warriors, or Guardians
Is a law enforcement officer by definition a sheepdog, a warrior or a guardian of the public? Can a law enforcement officer be all three of these? To find this out, a description of all three and how they describe police officers are needed.
The general public thinks of the police officers as crime-fighters, which is a small portion of the police officers daily duty. “Only about one-third of a patrol officer’s activities are devoted to criminal law enforcement” (Walker & Katz, 2013, p. 4). Many other areas of work that the law enforcement officer does consist of social work, maintaining public safety, and solving many problems of the community.
Most police officers would like to know that they have a warrior mentality about them. This is because “When officers find themselves in a dangerous situation, they must have the mental mettle to never give up, fight on, and prevail against all odds” (Brocklin, 2015). The warrior mentality is what makes sure the police officer ends his or her shift and goes home to their family safely. It is a mentality that every police officer needs to keep them safe, but a mentality that a police officer can’t have with everyone in the public.
The sheep
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People who are law enforcement officers or strive to be law enforcement officers need to understand that not everyone in the community are criminals, or “wolves” looking to do harm. A true well rounded professional law enforcement officer should have the capability to be that sheepdog or guardian and when the time is needed, which will happen sometime in his or her career, is willing and capable to turning the warrior mentality on instantly. And once that officer is able to survive that situation, the police officer is going to need to be capable and willing to turn that warrior mentality off, and go back to the sheepdog or guardian