2009-06-30
First Day out of Police College
I was posted to a small farm station straight out of Police College. Discipline was supposed to be quite tough but as cliché as it sounds; nothing could have prepared me for my first day there.
Walking across the front yard with all my earthly belongings in my hands I spotted a Lieutenant, who was the station commander, screaming in the face of a Constable who had evidently committed some grievous offence. The Constable said something back, which the Lieutenant clearly did not appreciate. He gave the Constable a slap to the side of the head, which floored him like a dropped brick.
Two things the Government does well: Make fingerprint ink, and plant flag posts.
If one had to have a look at any pair of flag posts at any police station in the Republic, one will notice that they are planted deep in a base of concrete, which sometimes sticks like a block about fifteen to twenty centimeters out of the ground. It was the edge of this concrete base; the head of the falling Constable hits on his downward journey.
The Lieutenant walked briskly away, leaving the stunned subordinate where he lay. The guy eventually got to his feet, with blood gushing out of a cut on the side of his head. With nothing else to staunch the flow, the Constable picked up his cap off the dust, crushed it into a ball and pressed it against the wound.
With a trumpeting scream like a charging elephant, the Lieutenant burst back out of his office building, strode back over to the man and with barely another word, cracked him another shot which sent him to the ground again. It took me a few seconds to work out what the Officer was shouting. I eventually worked out that it was: “That uniform you are wearing is State property, how dare you bleed all over your cap.”
It was going to be an interesting place to work. 
WCPF042 from SDC