What's an average work day for a police officer (US) like?

Question

Just curious about the most common calls, how often you have to draw your service pistol, how often you have to take people to jail, etc.

Answer 1

Really depends on the area, state, town, city, county you are working in. I imgaine districts in Chicago are going to be a little different from mid state Illinois in a town of 5 thousand. Typically, the crime rate is the same per capita. If Chicago has 800 murders a year with about 3.5 million people , then it might be expected for a town of 10000 have one murder about every 6-7 years.

I would say a typical day shift of 12 hours and a staff of 4 or 5 officers, you could expect to handle one traffic crash, one or two citations, a stolen/damaged property report, a few parking tickets including handicapped, a funeral escort, a wide load escort. Mostly service calls in a town of about 10 thousand. Later in the day you may get a DUI, family fight, bar fight an ambulance assist. Probably an alarm or two daily also.

There will be times when you have near riot conditions, large fights, badly injured people, suicides and a killing or sexual assault.Maybe a felony arrest each week of some sort. May even have some paper deilveries or a warrant to be served. Even be asked to get someone into the car they locked themselves out of.

Night time will be less calls for service but more of a criminal nature and more likely to have serious arrests and injured people. All of this more or less is what I did on days and had much more on nights.

I can say I am very glad to be retired from there and really do not miss it at all. Now I am security at our hospital and see some of the same people and actually deal with more drunks, crazies, doped out folks then I did on the Police dept.

Answer 2

donuts .... coffee ..... futility awareness seminares .... donuts ......

Answer 3

I have been doing this for over 17 years, and have had very few "average" days. Something always happens to make the day unusual and unique.

Most calls, at least on nights, have something to do with drinking. Loud noise at a party, fighting, etc.

Drawing your weapon varies greatly with where you are assigned. Some smaller departments rarely draw. The same with transports to jail. Some days, you don't do any... other days it seems it is all you do.