Kung Fu
By William T. Moyer
Copyright 2012 William T. Moyer
Smashwords Edition
It was a payday Friday night with a full moon. The kind of night that you know is going to be a wild one, especially when you are working second shift. I was working as a field training officer, just like Clark was to me several years ago. Once a new officer graduates from sixteen weeks of Recruit School, where he learns all the basics, laws, self defense and firearms, then I get him for six weeks in the field. When he rides with me for those six weeks, he will learn what the real world of policing is all about. I only train male recruits. I am not discriminating against women as trainees, it’s just that my wife won’t let me train a woman officer. She’s seen what has happened to other male officers when they have trained a woman recruit. All sorts of marriage problems can and usually do happen.
My last trainee did not pass the six week training course. Hell, Joey only made it about two weeks. He was a nice guy and I hated to fail him with a bad review, but he had a drinking problem. The problem was that he was always drunk. This guy was buzzed all the time. At first I thought he was just stupid or something and then I caught him drinking vodka on duty. I warned him once and then the second time I took him to the captain. I’m pretty easy going and I am certainly not perfect, but when my life is on the line I get pretty serious. The Captain put him with a different training officer and he failed him to. For a young guy he sure had some problems. My philosophy is that everyone has got problems, but mine are the only ones that are important.
My new trainee was little Larry Diller. he had been riding along with me for almost three weeks now and was doing pretty well in most situations. The problem with little Larry was that besides being rather small in stature, he was just not very assertive in some situations. He was also way too sincere for my taste. By sincere I mean he really cared about what people said and believed everything they told him. Even when I was joking around he always thought I was being serious and I joked around a lot. Every time I let him handle a situation on his own, he invariably got pushed around either verbally or physically. Larry, to his credit, was not afraid and would jump in to any fray when it started. If I could just teach him how to take charge and be a little more intimidating, then there would not be the need for situations to escalate into violence.
I had tried to teach him proper police radio protocol according to me. Proper police radio protocol according to me, is that whenever you use the police radio, you should never sound any way but real cool. If ten people are shooting at you, when you key that mike, you had better sound like you are just checking out on your break at the doughnut shop. There must be no stress whatsoever in your voice. There was an unspoken cool contest going on in the department. Every officer was competing to see who can sound the calmest under pressure. Larry always sounded nervous on the radio even if we actually were checking out for a break. Other officers had started making fun of my trainee and giving me a hard time about his radio voice. I was also getting tired of having to come to his rescue all the time. At this stage of his training he should be able to stand alone in most situations and if he can’t then at least sound cool when he calls for help...
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