When I was a child I wanted to be a police officer. I was five years old when I saw a man in a blue uniform with a large city badge helping an elderly lady cross a busy street. In fact the kindly officer helped all kinds of people to cross that city street.

From that point on I was hooked on wanting to wear a badge and a gun and wanting to serve and protect society. My older brother told me that I should set my sights higher and aim to be a doctor or a lawyer. I told him all I wanted to be was a cop.

When I grew up an had the chance to be one, I went through a lot of training. I studied all the codes, and I studied laws and offenses. I also learned a thing or two about self defense, first aid, and about firearms.

Part of becoming a deputy sheriff involved being trained by superior officers. I met a lot of officers, and I rode with all of them and learned from them. All of them had different skills.

The first time I rode in a police car was in the back seat of a unit. The two senior officers in the front seat were well dressed, their uniforms looked perfect. Their pants had ironed creases. They had great cologne or shaving lotion they were wearing.

Their hair was combed perfectly neat. Their badges sparkled like diamonds in the night. Their brass they wore was well polished.

Quietly I listened to every word they said. The first call I ever heard was one to go to the "Silver Slipper."

The Silver Slipper was a bad ass bar room where fights took place often. I heard the dispatcher on the radio say in code that their was a stabbing there.

I asked the senior officers up front if they wanted my help. One of them said that I could not get involved until I was commissioned.

The two officers were not at all worried. They were talking about common everyday stuff like football game scores while one of them casually lifted the twelve gauge pump shotgun off the rack on the police car. I had to remain in the police car with the doors locked.

They returned very fast. There was a man wearing handcuffs. He had to sit next to me. He smelled like alcohol. I knew it was going to be a long boring night at the jail house and it was.

All the police officers were great, and I learned a lot from all of them accept for one. There was one rotten apple in the barrel.

It happens everywhere. Nothing is perfect. Your always going to run into one sucker who is not at all what he should be.

He was a handsome good looking fellow. He was perfect at everything accept he was dangerous.He was almost perfect in every thing. He was considered to be one of the best officers, but he had a serious problem. He was a brutal son of a so and so.

I walked into a police sub station and there he was with a prisoner. He grabbed the prisoner by the hair and shoved the man's head into a brick wall.

I thought to myself, this officer is no good. He needed to get kicked off the force, but somehow he became powerful and a man that was feared by other officers.

I was not afraid of him. He came and sat by me in my car and began telling me how I should join forces with him because he did not like the way the captain was running things.

I had just received my badge. This bum comes to sit down next to me to tell me what I have to do in life. I removed my 357 magnum stainless steel revolver from my holster and I asked him if he liked my gun. He said it was really a nice revolver.

I told him to get out of my car or I would shove the barrel of my revolver right up his miserable behind.

As it turned out he became my enemy. He tried to intimidate a young woman into going on a date with him, but I protected her.

He had a yellow bellied cop as his partner. Eventually I confronted his no good buddy. I told him what a no good piece of dirt he was to try to put and innocent girl behind bars to protect his own worthless skin.

In the middle of the night I protected the girl. I pulled up behind the girl's car with my car. All of her paper work was on the hood of her car. I walked up to the yellow cop and asked him what the hell was he up too. He immediately told the girl everything was fine and she could go about her business.He had stopped her on the highway.

There is one good thing I learned about the law. No matter what you are, at any time you could be under investigation and never realize it. If you have nothing to hide you will be fine. If your no good, your nature trips you up and you fall on your face every time.

This is what gives decent people the edge. The nature of a criminal always trumps up a criminal to where mistakes reveal their nature.

I reported the two cops for their actions, but nothing was done right away, but in time both men would no longer be officers because the worst of the two suddenly died in bed. For some reason he had a heart attack. He died all of a sudden at a very young age. Maybe God just removed him from the earth.

God forgive me but I could not be sad over his passing, but may God have mercy on his soul.

His cowardly buddy was eventually not allowed to become a police officer for very long. I had words with him. I told him how no good he was for trying to do what he did to the girl. I told that piece of junk what I thought of him. He was afraid of me.

I never wanted anyone on earth to be afraid of me. I try my best to love everyone, but sometimes that can be hard to do. God forgive me for saying that.

Those were the only two officers I ever knew that I did not like. I have worked with hundreds of men, Army rangers, state troopers, former police chiefs and supervisors, narcotics agents, criminal investigators and detectives, and I have to say that I would have laid down my life for their honorable ways. I would have taken a bullet for any of my partners, and I faced the muzzles of many a gun barrels to stop violence and death.

No one was going to destroy my dream of wearing my badge with pride and integrity. I will not lie. I was afraid of power that I thought he had, but I made a decision to stand up for what was right and I did. Maybe in the end, maybe my protector saw fit to deal with him. Like I have said many times, God has always protected me.

I truly believe that God in Heaven loves so many of us on this earth. He blesses all of us in so many ways that we never realize exist.