Posted: 2/9/2007 6:30:14 AM EDT
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This was posted in Law enforcement forums.com and it made me realize all the ghosts I see quite frequently. It was supposedly written by a LEO. __________________________________________________________________________________ GHOSTS Someone asked me the other day if I believed in ghosts. I said I wasn’t sure but then I started thinking about it and I realized that I see ghosts every day in my job. They all seem to hang around in the same places and I see them every time I pass those places. There’s the 16-year-old girl lying just off the roadway of a National Parkway next to a crumpled car that is resting against a huge pine tree. This ghost is covered by an old bedspread that someone got out of a car. When the sheet is pulled away from her face, there’s not a mark on it. She is beautiful and she looks like she is asleep, as if a gentle shake of her shoulder will bring her back to life but it won’t. That ghost appears every time I hear the Kenny Chesney song “Who You’d be Today”. When I pass a certain oak tree on a residential street, I see the ghost of a man in his early 20’s lying at the base of the tree. He has eight bullet wounds and he is gasping for breath. I’ve heard that sound before and I know that he will not live. His daughters, who are pre-teen, are standing nearby crying. They were walking with him when he was shot. Then there is a certain curve in a road where I see many ghosts. The man who hit another car head on and burned to death as I watched because his body was pinned and no one could get him out, the young kid who’s truck struck a guardrail and overturned, ejecting him into another guardrail. I can still smell the smell of an alcoholic drink in the air around that one when I pass. When I pass a certain retirement home, I see the ghost of an old man who is in a wheelchair in a bathroom. There is an unbelievable amount of congealed blood on the floor from his slit wrists. I keep thinking how he died alone and so sad on the first year anniversary of his wife’s death. I can’t get the picture out of my head of him rolling into the bathroom in the middle of the night and getting the razor blade. When I go down one street, I see two ghosts. One is a woman lying in the street with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. One of the wounds is to her left eye but her glasses are still on, undamaged. I think how strange that seems. Her dad, who was with her asks me if she is going to be OK and I have to tell him that she isn’t ever going to be OK again. Her estranged husband is in a nearby yard with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His shirt is pulled up a bit and I see something on his chest just under the shirt. I lift the shirt and see that he has a picture of their four-year-old child taped to his chest. You ask if I believe in ghosts. Yes, these are just a few of them that I see everyday. I’m a police officer. |
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I know I will catch hell for saying this, but Im used to it... Who ever wrote this piece needs to find a diffrent line of work. Sounds like he/she is stressed out and burned out. At the very least needs some counseling... Everyone in this type of work see this stuff. I have and so have countless millions of other FD, EMS, and LE have seen and experinced all of this. I kind of get tired ot the poeple that think they have had it rough and seen more than other people in the same field of work. |
I'm not a cop nor do I play one on tv, BUT if I was I would focus on remembering all the people I helped. Maybe they will get a new respect for life or go on and do good things. We're naturally setup to remember the bad so we can avoid it, but its not impossible to Focus on the good that has been done and what will be done. Good memories erase bad ones, didn't they say that in the Punisher?  Stay safe.Blackops_1. eta- a good book like Dave Grossman's "on combat" will work wonders on putting things in perspective better than I can. (no connection to me) |
i don't think it's about that. I use my 'ghosts', I need to feel the sorrow and pain. It keeps things in perspective for me. I have seen all of the things that the Op mentioned. i can read books X, Y and Z and it makes no differance, they still linger. I need my "ghosts", they have made me the Police Officer that I am, and I am better for having known them. |
Everybody is wired differently. For some the "ghosts" approach will work, for others moving on and forgetting is better. |
I disagree. I don't see it as a stress type thing. When I patrol I remember where things happened. The guy who chopped his girlfriends head off in the bathroom, the intersection where the little boy got crushed by a car etc, etc,. It is not burnout at all, just like I remember where I shot at the guy trying to run me over or the EDP who shot at my SWAT team I use these "ghosts" to maintain perspective. And I by no stretch of the imagination think I have seen more than others, but after almost 12 years I have quite a few memories. I don't think I have it rough either, I love my job and look forward to working every night. |
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I'm not burned out and I don't think remembering the tough ones is a bad thing or should be an indicator of needing to find a different line of work. I've been in EMS for 14 years. Some experiences can never be completely forgotten. But certain events still do "haunt" me. The first ped arrest I had. Superbowl Sunday 2001. I've never felt more helpless or unprepared in my life. I had been with this service for a week and couldn't find any of those supplies that never get used. I can still see him lying on the gurney and can still hear his mother scream in the ER when the doc told her he was dead. Little did I know at the time that would be the first of 9 ped arrests I would run in a 7 month period. They don't get any easier. The drunk driver who went up the wrong ramp and hit a family of 5 head on at 90mph. Killed himself, the dad, son and daughter in the other car. I remember checking the pulse on the drunk and his head rolling off of his shoulders. There was the truck driver crying on the bumper of his truck. He was the first to stop and had a daughter the same age. Then there was the mother coming back to thank me and my partner for saving her and her son, 11 months after getting out of the hospital and rehab. I can still see the wreck every time I pass mile marker 209 on I-80 in Wyoming. Taking my best friend and coworker of 5 years home to die of cancer because he didn't want to die in a hospital. Longest transport of my life. There was nothing left of him but a pulse and respirations. I've never before considered helping a patient die. It would have been so easy to do and no one would have known. He died 45 minutes after we put him in his own bed with his family around. If you stay in this field long enough these events will happen. How you deal with them and learn from them is what really matters. Remembering reinforces the lessons you should have learned from them. You should take something away from every call, sometimes it will be good and sometimes it will be bad. Make the most of both. |