I get this question a lot, and I proudly answer No. Now before you think that there is distain in that answer, there are a few things to know. I'll start with the law enforcement side of things. If you want the full detailed story, ask me. For the record, I spent three years exploring law enforcement as a profession and through that I was drawn away for several reasons. I found the culture of law enforcement toxic, and this was starting in 1980 for me. Because I was a very good shot, I was being recruited into SWAT types of activities, and to me, that was toxic times 2, not interested. I enjoyed being on the shooting team and the shooting range, watching and working fellow officers, many of whom could barely qualify with their service weapon. I observed many who presented as "afraid of their weapon". That equals, "likely to lose it in an altercation and either be shot or lead to the endangerment others". Not interested. I had a gunsmith relative and a lot of firearm training prior to looking into law enforcement and part of my early interest was my comfort with and ability with firearms.
I loved the community interaction yet saw domestic disputes that scared me. Radios, Teletronics, video and computers, great fun and ultimately took me another direction. Too much criminal justice, not enough "Protect & Serve". Since my background was very automotive, assisting the radio shop, the vehicle maintenance shop appealed to me. The tech side of me did work integrating very early portable computing into the vehicles movement, producing very early cable TV programming for the community and other law enforcement. I'd had a part-time job in a local computer store and transportable, car mounted, radio frequency computer tech was part of my jam. At the time, no live airbag systems to worry about deploying and launching a computer into an officer's face. Very leading edge and a lot of fun for me.
As for the video part of things, we did a weekly show for cable TV that highlighted home safety, technology, vehicle safety, some firearm safety, and many other topics of interest. Body worn video systems weren't on the radar other than talk of how cool we thought it could be. We did put video recording systems in some vehicles, mostly command and control oriented or SWAT, but nothing like can be done today. It was the programing and video experience that led me to produce a car seat installation video as a community service project in 1987 with my Kiwanis club that brought me to early car seat education activity and set me on this journey.
A side note on the video, Blockbuster Video stores had a community education section where the community could put video tapes for the community to borrow for free on community related, public safety and other topics. This is where the video was made available and it was marked to expecting parents, along with other prenatal topics. In my community, the library hadn't started offering these services, so it was Blockbuster where my video on car seats lived, until they closed up shop. My extra inventory of extra tapes was in a building owned by my parents that was set ablaze by an unhappy homeless person 2 months before I was to travel to retrieve the tapes to dump master content to DVD. I lost all the content, and many early car seats, personal items and essentially a lot of my youth in that fire.
In my next installment I'll cover firefighting, more technology and teaching part of this adventure. I've done a lot of things and never been afraid of a learning opportunity or challenge, and these mini-CV's will introduce you to my various adventures, and varied background. Hange on ...
