Responsibilities of the Job
Weighing the responsibilities against the benefits of a law enforcement career is difficult. Each person approaches such comparisons with a different set of values and standards, making the task unique to their way of thinking. But there are some primary benefits and responsibilities that can be used as a starting point for the assessment. The responsibilities are simple: obey and enforce the law. The one benefit: living within the law entitles you to the protection of it.
In order to enforce the law, you must first live within the rule of law. Simply stated, that means that you don't break the law in order to enforce it. It's true that it is sometimes necessary to exceed the speed limit to apprehend a traffic offender, but depending on the context, you must always stay within the law in order to be a proper agent of its enforcement. In law enforcement, even the little mistakes can come back to haunt you in a big way. That cup of coffee that you accept for free from some local merchant may well burn you later when you have to arrest that same merchant for an offense. Suddenly, his or her guilt or innocence is secondary to your corruption, even if accepting a free cup of coffee seems minor in the broad scheme of things. By living a life completely within the broad limits of the law, you will have the ability to hold your head high with pride, and at the end of the day say that you did the job well.
Fact
Prior to 1960, it was estimated that less than 5 percent of the law enforcement officers in the country had any college classroom experience. Today it is estimated that more than half have a college degree.
As for the requirements of any particular job enforcing the law, the specific list of chores that will face a new officer or agent will depend completely upon the agency that employs them. Each department has its own mission statement and way of doing things, but all enforcement agencies have two things in common:
Enforcement of a given set of laws and regulations
A method for accomplishing enforcement that is unique to that agency but consistent with accepted practices within the industry
An applicable simile is that law enforcement runs like major league baseball parks. None of the parks have the same exact dimensions, and there are rules that are specific to each of them, but baseball, by and large, is played the same way regardless of which park it is played in. The same is true of law enforcement.
