My Brief Career In Law Enforcement
There is a part of my past that is not well known, even among those who know me best. What is it? It is that I spent a brief career in the field of law enforcement. I learned quite a bit in that brief stretch, both about the nature of law enforcement itself and also about myself. What kind of law enforcement? I was a member of the Safety Patrol in the 6th grade of elementary school.
About a year ago, my friend Jeff Sun wrote about the history of student Safety Patrols, and that got me to remembering my days “on the force”. Jeff interviewed a friend who remembered high-toned things like wanting to be of service and promoting safety. Me? I was purely in it for the perks.
In my school system, elementary school concluded with the 6th Grade. Grades 7-9 were called Junior High School, while our High Schools were three-year programs. It was therefore natural that it was the 6th graders who were offered the opportunity to join the Safety Patrol program.
Glenwood Park Elementary School was a modern suburban school in the final years of what was then called “the neighborhood school.” I was in the 6th grade in the year before the FWCS began busing kids from the inner-city schools into the suburbs, so everyone at Glenwood either walked, rode bikes or got a ride from parents that year. Students who walked were the largest group (by far), and lots of those kids were quite young. With so many kids walking and riding bikes, the Safety Patrol served a serious purpose.
I recall that there were four intersections that were staffed by members of the Safety Patrol – meaning that there were four reasonably busy intersections where little kids crossed the street between their neighborhood and the school. How long ago was that? I have been trying to decide how long it has been since I can recall seeing kids walk to school by themselves. For that matter, I am unsure how long it has been since I have seen unattended kids waiting at a school bus stop in the morning. Believe it or not, there was a time when 1st graders were shooed out of the house by our mothers and expected to show up to school on our own. Younger people make fun of we Boomers for a lot of reasons, but that’s OK. It was formative experiences like this that make us tougher than you kids any day of the week.
I remember the start of the 6th grade when someone made a presentation about the Safety Patrol. We had been under the authority of the “big kids” with the orange belts for our entire elementary school careers, so this was our turn to step up and be of service. But that wasn’t what sold me. What did? When we were told that members of the Safety Patrol would be permitted to be 5 minutes late when class started and would be allowed to leave class 5 minutes early. I did the math, and between morning, afternoon and lunch time, that made for 20 minutes of freedom from the classroom per day. Or an hour and 40 minutes a week. For someone who wasn’t terribly fond of school, this was a big win. And if that wasn’t enough, we were told that on really cold days we would be given hot chocolate. Public service and the promotion of childrens’ safety may have motivated some people, but I was in it because of everything in it FOR ME!
I must admit that being on duty with the Safety Patrol was the high point of my 6th grade year. As a car-crazy kid, I got to see all kinds of fascinating cars, many of which I still remember. This was especially true when I was stationed in front of the school where kids were dropped off or picked up by their parents. Some cars were old for the time – my friend Joe’s mother dropped him off every morning in a robin’s egg blue ’63 Ford Galaxie sedan.
Another kid was delivered in a black ’62 Plymouth (the ugliest car I recall seeing that year). Another kid occasionally got a ride in a white Checker Marathon station wagon – yes, the company that made all of the taxi cabs.
One (lucky) kid’s mom had a bright red ’71 Ford Torino GT convertible with a fat stripe that faded from yellow to red. It was nearly new then and I thought it was probably the coolest car any of the moms drove that year, at least as far as I could tell.
There was a difference in the way I went about my duties, depending on the age of the kids who approached my intersection. For those under 4th grade, I did the full thing – stood at the curb in front of the kids, with my arms out to stop them from crossing the street. For those 4th grade and above, I was more relaxed and just watched to make sure nobody did anything stupid. I was not above yelling at them if they started to cross without looking.
The year was not all cool cars and hot chocolate. A side effect of 6th Grade being the oldest kids in the building was that we lacked a natural environmental check on our egos, and upon hitting 6th Grade, all of our worst personality features came to the surface. It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely (or is it the lack of natural predators?), and I discovered that the orange patrol belt sometimes went to my head that year. Whether it was hormonal personality changes caused by adolescence or being given too much power, I can recall punching at least two kids that year while on patrol duty. I had never been a fighter (and wasn’t again after 6th grade) but that year I can now confess that I was a jerk.
As I got older, I had plenty of chances to go to a police academy, or even to interview with the F.B.I. after I got my law degree. Some of the same instincts were in play, and I decided that what I would get out of it was not worth what was sure to involve way too much physical training for my taste. I also remembered my worst impulses from that year in 6th grade and decided that maybe I was not made for carrying a badge and a gun. It turned out that I got plenty of chances to be a jerk as a litigation attorney – and without punching anyone.
There was no Safety Patrol program at my own childrens’ school, so I never got the opportunity to pass on any wisdom I had gained from the experience. Which is too bad, because I think that my year on the Safety Patrol provided me with some life lessons. Although they probably didn’t outweigh the several cumulative hours of missed classroom time and a couple of cups of hot chocolate.
J. P.'s Blog 
This is a concept with which I have zero experience. Like the inner-city kids you mentioned, I was also bussed to school but for different reasons. Being in a rural area, the school district covered a large-ish geographical area, rendering all of one person close enough to walk. She had to wing crossing the county road to get to the school.
In thinking about this concept using various classmates, I struggle to see any success. Of course the word “altruistic” was foreign to them (or, perhaps, most of us there at that time?). Their help would likely been to tell younger kids to not be dumb-bunnies (or some such phrase) when crossing the road.
However, the leaving class early thing would have been the big selling point.
On an unrelated note…I was in Fort Collins, Colorado, two weeks ago as part of a work related trip. One evening I visited someone we both know who lives there. In our escapades, we spotted a black ’71 Torino GT convertible blasting around town. It was the best looking Torino I’ve ever seen.
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Likewise, the whole school bus thing is foreign to me. No buses came to my grade school at all. I always kind of envisioned that they would involve a kind of Lord Of The Flies vibe.
I still love the 70-71 Torino, at least in the right color or body style. Those have all but disappeared.
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I did this too. In my school you could join in the 4th grade. I did it through the end in the 6th grade, and was even co-captain with another fellow that last year. I wish I still had my pin with the yearly awards (“2 Year,” “3 Year”) dangling off it.
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Ooooh, you got to be “The Brass”! I was bad enough as a regular member – turning me into an officer might have been a disaster that year.
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In the short time I’ve been following you, JP, I’ve gained an immense amount of respect for you. So my comments aren’t condemnation of you, personally; rather, I’m taking the comments you made, and applying them to so-called Law Enforcement as a whole.
Your comments about being in it primarily for the perks that benefited you can more or less be applied to the so-called Law Enforcement ‘industry’ today in our country. As can the comments about letting the power go to their head. I’ve encountered far too many so-called LEOs who never grew out of the 6th grade.
What used to be called law enforcement has now simply become the government’s first line of defense against the citizens. Police have become revenue generation agents. The whole stack of traffic court is “Guilty, pay the fine, you want to defend yourself? You sure can, pay the fees, guilty, pay the higher fines for standing up for rights against the system”.
And it’s not as if I’m one of these communist/BLM/’anti’-fa/terrorist types. I firmly believe in law and order. I’d simply prefer it were more like Andy Taylor (or even Barney Fife) than the dystopian highwaymen militia we currently have.
Finally, these opinions/observations don’t apply necessarily to individuals in the so-called Law Enforcement line of work. I currently trust exactly 1.5 people who work/worked in so-called Law Enforcement to properly do his job. So I’m aware a few good ones get through the cracks.
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Thanks for the compliment up top – and I kind of agree that the character of law enforcement has changed. It has kind of taken on a military atmosphere, at least to me who is looking from the outside. But then again, the criminals seem to be a lot more dangerous, too. That is not a job I would want today, with both high levels of danger AND distrust from the people being served. In that respect, it is easy to see how officers can become more hardened than they were in decades past. I should add that I have very little first hand experience in dealing with law enforcement.
I am a “law and order” guy too, so it is a tough issue.
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Sorry JP, we never gave these kids the time of day. Along with hall monitors, they were the adult establishments para-military goons! Actually now, these positions are fairly decent low impact pocket money generators for the retirement crowd. I’m kind of sad every time I see an old grannie with a sign standing in a rainstorm waiting at a busy corner for the twenty kids that pass by there every day.
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Haha, you were one of those kids with a bad attitude. I might have punched you! 🙂
Adults as crossing guards were always a bit of a puzzler for me, because they were never around when I was in school. I could see where you wouldn’t want to trust a kid at a busy intersection. But I would rather be an old man working as a crossing guard than an old man driving a school bus!
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Ah, I hadn’t thought about Safety Patrol in eons. My school system, on Long Island, had SP too. Your memories of your SP days are vivid. Excellent story!
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Haha, thank you. It is funny the things that stick with you after several decades. I am fuzzy on what time I have to leave for work later today, but I can tell you what kinds of cars all of my elementary school teachers drove.
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I was a “Patrol Boy” (girls were not part of the Patrol and no one cared about that issue at my Catholic school). Of course, we did not have the perks you did but we would get in trouble if we couldn’t control kids throwing snowballs at cars at our corner.
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It’s a good thing we were not tasked with snowball enforcement!
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JP, you are correct about us Boomer kids getting out of the house and to school and back without incident. And yes, we did make that walk to school, without the cushy ride, in every type of inclement weather you could think off … and lived to tell about it. I rarely see kids walking to school anymore. There was a time when many groups of kids walked along the same route as our junior high and high school buildings were/are located next to one another. We called it “Junior High” not “Middle school” too. I generally try to stay clear of school buses and elementary schools when I am in the car in the mornings as the parents cause a bottleneck dropping kids off anywhere and the kids run out of the car, not looking ahead. They have adult crossing guards near many of the schools in my City – they work a couple of hours, then return in the afternoon and after a kid was hurt last month by a car and his leg was broken, they now have traffic cops on busy street corners.
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I remember what a rare treat it was when one of the moms took pity on us on a particularly wet or cold day and we got a ride. That almost never happened.
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My mom never drove and the neighbor across the street had three kids in school at the same time as me (going to the high school building next door). They had a station wagon. She never asked if I would like to ride with her kids and she and my mom were best friends. Go figure. So my mom parked herself at the front window behind the curtains and timed it for me to walk down our driveway as she pulled out of her driveway … I always wondered if she caught on?
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Oh my, your Safety Patrol days bring back similar memories, J P. My middle school – “Paul Revere J.H.S.” – had a volunteer group of guys called “Minutemen” and a similar group of girls called “Colonial Belles”. Can’t recall what the Belles did, but the Minutemen acted as a Safety Patrol of sorts when needed. We also rotated through raising the American flag on the main pole every morning. Hard to believe we weren’t made fun of for wearing the green sashes identifying our affiliation but hey, those were different times back in the 1970s. And like you, the obvious perk was getting excused from class for whatever task a Minuteman was needed for.
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I can see the idea of Minutemen as one boys of that age could embrace – I wonder if anyone knows what a Minuteman is any more? I think getting girls to sign up for Colonial Belles would be a lost cause.
I wonder when it became a thing to change from calling them Jr High Schools to Middle Schools.
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