True FTO Story

An FTO story…

When you are an FTO you come across some real characters when training rookie police officers. Many times you may find yourself asking, “How did this person get hired?” Whether it is because the person is a friend of a politician or is a suck up to the police chief it is a sad state of affairs when someone who clearly should be in another line of work gets hired as a police officer.

With that in mind, I am reminded of someone who rode along with me. This guy, lets call him Wilbur to conceal his identity, thought that he was the sh*t. I mean he thought that all the ladies (and guys) loved him and that rules didn’t really apply to him. Never mind that he was under the chief’s desk every morning. He was constantly breaking rules. The big one that he broke on an hourly basis was the use of a personal cell phone. Seems this guy had to call his girlfriend at the stroke of every hour to check in and tell her what a big, bad cop he was. We all know the type, as soon as they get a badge they become the toughest person on the planet and masters of the universe. Or, was he checking in because she told him to?

The kicker with this lunkhead is an incident that occurred with an employee of a convenience store. This employee, an approx 60 year old woman, I’ll call her Judy, was a very nice and friendly person. All of us officers talked with her on a regular basis as she worked lots of hours. Well, one day I walk in there with Wilbur who had met her one or two times before. I am standing there talking with Judy when all of a sudden Wilbur walks up to her and says, “Judy, I know you want me” and then starts reading a magazine. She looked at me in astonishment and shook her head. I shook my head and laughed and had to walk away. Several days later when Wilbur was off she asked me, “What is wrong with that guy?” I just told her that I didn’t know.

I honestly didn’t really know. I don’t know if this guy has an attraction to much older women or is so insecure that he needs an older woman to be attracted to him since the younger ones probably weren’t. The fact of the matter is that a police officer has no reason to say that to a civilian that he hardly knows much less one that he knows well.

Seems that this guy fits right in at that department as he was made a sergeant after 2 years on the job. Never mind that he was rumored to have barely passed the written test(and rumored to have gotten a 99% on the oral–yes oral). Wonder if he comes down on the officers for using their cell phones? Oh, he also likes to call in sick 4 hours after leaving his tour for the next day–that he tried taking off earlier in the week.

Do you know anyone like this?