my law enforcement experience

What I learned as a cop shows up in my writing.

In the Wild Series the first novel, Wild Evolution has a lot of crime scene investigation. In fact, half the book is police procedural. In all of the Wild Series novels you will find that there is always a law enforcement character somewhere in the story.
When I mention my law enforcement experience to fellow writers, I hear comments like; 'I need to have a long talk with you sometime' or 'I have a lot of question I'd like to ask you'.
Most people would be surprised or even shocked if they new what kind of people carry a gun and a badge. Many times the type of people who are attracted to law enforcement are just one step away from the kind of people they haul off to jail. Even when I was in the academy, we were told that cops and criminals think a lot alike and the best cops are the ones that think like criminals.
My experience covers two states and four law enforcement agencies and with all of them I encountered the same type of personalities. Law enforcement agencies attract a special kind of people. It is a far cry from what the general public thinks cops are. Most TV shows and movies don't get it right either.
Mentally this is a hard job. No matter what you do, you are never right. The legal system burdens you down with rules and regulations, the political establishment caters to the whim of the public; what you end up with most of the time is someone who is willing to break some rules to get the glory their ego desires. The cop that goes into law enforcement to help others never lasts; they get burned out by trying to play by the rules and are left out in the cold by a system with two many lawyers.
In my experience the people I knew who became a cop became a cop for four basic reasons, they are:
*The lazy man, a cop's job is considered a lazy man's job;
*Prestige, wanting people looking up to them;
*The thriller seeker, 99 percent boredom and 1 percent pure adrenalin;
*And the one who wants to make a difference.
Yeah, I'm sure most people would be surprised at the kind of antics that go on behind the scenes at their local police department. The image your local police department puts on for the public is not what really happens behind the scenes. Most law enforcement officers develop an 'us against them' mentality.
In police training they are taught 'command presence', but in personal matters that type of behavior often leads to divorce. After awhile most cops end up associating only with other law enforcement people. That is the worst thing that can happen because they lose their prospective and it further feeds the 'us against them' mentality.
Crime scene processing will change as technology advances but when you deal with people's ego that never changes. No matter how much we advance with technology, our egos get in the way.
My law enforcement experience:
1 yr detention officer (jailer)
7 yrs patrol officer which included; 4 yrs as a crime scene investigator and 1 yr plain clothes for sting operations, drug enforcement, and long, boring stake-outs.