Reality of Policework: A Peek into a Cop's Life

Introduction

When choosing an occupation, one has hundreds of different opportunities that are available. Throughout childhood, every person has had some form of a dream job they wanted to reach. Some people wanted to be astronauts, others firefighters, and yet some wanted to be police officers. The lifestyle that is portrayed of a police officer on the television looks glamourous and action packed, with high speed chases all the time and frequent doughnut stops. But this is not necessarily the reality of the situation.

Life of a Police Officer

While the life and work of a police officer, commonly referred to as a cop, may be portrayed as exhilarating and adrenaline-charged though the television set, it does not tend to unfold the same way in real life. However, the general responsibilities of detection and prevention of crime, coupled with the maintenance of public peace does remain constant in both real and fictitious cop life. In order to truly understand the life of a cop, one must go to the source. In William Bratton’s and Peter Knobler’s Turnaround, they provide that source through the firsthand account of Bratton’s life and work as a cop, with all of his ups and downs.

Bratton is arguably one of the best police commissioners that were around throughout the twentieth century. He has a very interesting story to be told, and the format uses something similar to autobiography to accomplish that task. Though the whole book is not an autobiography, as some there are two authors and some parts are not told with an autobiography type of approach. Even still, his use of language is one that a person might expect from a cop, and he does not try and change his way of speech or reword his thoughts, which adds a nice touch to this