A kindness remembered—seven years later

If we aren’t careful, we can get into a place where we are burned out and going through the motions without taking the time to truly connect with people. To combat this, I make it my goal that with every interaction, whether positive or negative, I leave a positive mark. I aim to be compassionate, understanding, and, when I can, to give people a break. When possible, I avoid handcuffing a parent in front of their kids or I let people make a phone call to their family before they go to jail. I tell young officers all the time that they won’t realize the impact these interactions have until later in their careers. It always happens.

Recently, I was on a call at a fast food restaurant backing up a night shift officer. While there, a guy came up to me and asked if I remembered him. I didn’t, but he went on to say that I had arrested him about seven years ago. He had been making meth at a local hotel, and he had his kids in the room with him. Whenever young kids are impacted like that, it’s very easy to not want to help that adult at all. But for me, letting him have an interaction with his kids before we took him to jail, not being in handcuffs, was the right thing to do. So seven years later, we had this encounter, and he was clean and sober. He’d been to prison, was released, and actually came up to thank me.

When that happened, there was a rookie officer who overheard the conversation. It really drove home the point. We talk about those things with young officers, but they don’t know it’s real until they experience it themselves. It was a great teaching moment.