In 1843 Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published.  It is a novella about the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, in part, with the help of his former partner in business, Jacob Marley.  When Jacob Marley confronts Ebenezer Scrooge he tells him “I wear the chain I forged in life.”  “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” 

I thought of this passage recently as I pondering the recent public outrage over the wages paid to public employees, specifically police officers.  Beyond the argument that these contracts were bargained in good faith, I thought about what we do and how much we get paid.  I have said before, and I will say again here, I am well paid and I am grateful for the wages I have received and the retirement I look forward to.  Given this, I thought about what I get paid for.  Is it report writing?  We pay non-sworn report writers and cadets less than officers so it can’t be that.  Is it responding to traffic collisions?  We have non-sworn traffic investigators and traffic controllers who get paid less than officers, so it must not be that.  There are many other jobs officers do which are also done by others for less compensation. 

So why do I think I deserve what I am paid?  Much like Jacob Marley wears chains forged in life, officers too wear chains forged in a career spanning twenty to thirty years and more.  But unlike Jacob Marley these are not chains forged of our own free will.  They are chains forged of tragedy seen and experienced when life is at its worst.  Officers see more human tragedy than the average citizen would see in ten lifetimes.  I can only imagine the average person will live a full life and never see a dead child, and probably not see a dead person, short of a funeral or a relative who might have died at died at home.    So back to my point; how much do you pay an officer to compensate him or her for doing CPR on a child who was struck by a truck while riding his bicycle, or dealing with a SIDS death, or watching a doctor pronounce a child deceased after he was beat by his mother, or a seemingly endless line of people ending their own lives?  Or, God forbid, you take a life in the line of duty only to be subjected to microscopic investigation from the DA to Superior or Federal Court.  Lest you think I believe these chains can only be forged while driving a black and white police car, how about the detectives and investigators who deal with the aftermath of these tragedies, who fight to get a reluctant DA to file charges on a homicide you know needs to be prosecuted.  Or dealing with people whose financial futures have been ruined by some tweaked out thief, or which cases get investigated and which go unattended.  Officers wear tragedies like these as chains which can weigh you down and wear you out.

And some of these chains can get heavy, and sometimes they become too heavy and something happens.  The weight becomes too much to bear and bad things happen and the officer becomes injured, not externally, but internally, and they can no longer be an officer.  What is the breaking point?  Everyone is different; everyone has different levels and different experiences.  Most of us will go through our careers with little or no effects from these chains we forge, not of our own free will.  But again, how much do you compensate someone for those chains?  Many of these chains will be with us forever and change us forever. 

I would hope those who are going to be pontificating in the future might think how much they would pay an officer to do the things they only think about in their worst nightmare, but I guess that kind of hoping should be best left to people with the fiction-writing abilities like Charles Dickens.