Officer Of Law Pros And Cons

Submitted By Collin-Zaio
Words: 1019
Pages: 5

Collin Zaio
CRJ 101.100
Pros and Cons
I have learned a lot in my Criminal Justice 101 class for the semester. I have learned there are a lot of pros to becoming an officer of the law. But like any other job there are a lot of cons that come with becoming an officer of the law. Which some can say one out ways the other and will force them to make a tough decision whether to follow through with becoming an officer of the law.
To become an officer of the law there are a lot of pros that come with getting the job. One of the best pros to having the job is you get to serve and protect the peace.
Which allows you to serve your community and help make a difference. From pulling drunk drivers off the road to possibly of saved them from getting to a car accident all the way to the little things like getting to help with little calls like getting someones cat out of a tree, you will always be helping the community. Another pro to becoming an officer of the law is after serving on the force for a long time is that an officer can make some serious money as a payroll and as when he or she finally retires. When I was in class we were looking at requirements and what degrees you need to become an officer for some of the departments. One of them really caught my eye when it said you make around $60,000 a year and at year twelve as an officer you would be making about
$87,000 a year. Which is a huge pro and is a very lump sum of money to be making every year. Which leads to another pro which is that officers get to retire a lot earlier than most jobs get to with on average an officer can be eligible for retirement just a few

years of twenty plus on the job, which is significantly shorter than the average job. Then there are a lot of opportunities for promotions and with a degree makes it very possible.
What is nice to is they promote from within the department also. I know a lot of companies that don’t like promoting within the companies and will go out and hire to fill the spot even though they have someone that is more than qualified for the spot that is already working for the company. So this is a really good pro since there are a lot of opportunities in the force for you to be promoted. The benefits that go with the job are usually very good even if the salary doesn’t match up at first. Usually with government jobs the health benefits are very generous. Becoming an officer of the law gives you a lot of street smarts and what I mean by that is you learn a lot of names of things, how things work out on the streets, lets you learn how to interact with different people such as from people from the suburbs to people that live in the city. The job is very social, so therefore it helps with your social skills, and makes it very easy to talk to just about anyone. So what I think is if you end up leaving the force and want to look for another job it makes it easier in interviews for you to talk to the person that is giving the interview to you. This will also make it easier for you to communicate to people that you need to talk to either in your personal life or on the job.
Then like every other job out there for an officer of the law there are also a lot of cons to become an officer. The biggest is it can tarnish a lot of your personal relationships from friendships to male or female relationships. Such as I know a lot of officers that have been married multiple times and have had multiple divorces. The reason why is that the hours they