The rest of the guys are pretty well onto your questions.
#4 stood out for me.
Yes, there will be times where people will see you as being the bad guy for doing your job, and some days that will seem like a lot of the time. But any training should include some about how to deal with that -- basically, you're not the bad guy, you're doing what's right, and it's important to keep your professionalism about you no matter what manner of venom some pie-eyed driver or holier-than-thou stone-cold-sober soccer mom spews at you on the side of the road.
I know a lot of law enforcement anymore, when they aren't responding to calls, are under a sort of mandate to pull people over for burned-out tag lights in hope of finding a drunk driver. I know that's the case with the local sheriff's or police departments the last few places I've lived. But another way to remind yourself that you're a good guy is to stop to inquire of broken down motorists, and approach it with an eye to assisting, rather than detecting an offense.
I've told the story in the past on another board of having a flat on a friend's trailer while pulling it for him. No spare, the trailer was was loaded, and wasn't going to make it on three tires to where I was going. Called another friend near to where I was and got his blessing to drop it in his driveway for the night. Awkward spot to back into, plenty of visibility behind but the crest of a small hill ahead. I was waiting in the travel lane for traffic to clear with my four-ways on but two cars stopped right behind me. The first pulled by, but the second just pulled up to the back of the trailer and wouldn't come around, despite my waving, my back-up lights and my right signal. As I climbed out of the truck to go back and ask them to pull around, the spotlight on the A-pillar came on and I could detect the reflection of the blue strobes he had lighted on the rear. BIG, TALL state trooper stepped forward to meet me, still adjusting his hat to that right pitch, and ask if there was any problem. I liked his way of approaching it, and figured I could get a little sassy and allow as how that I was only waiting for traffic to clear so that I could back the trailer into the driveway and that my only immediate problem was his cruiser sitting on my arse end.
The "Ahah!" light came on, he apologized and asked if he could help by stopping traffic. I pointed to the hill and asked if he could pull ahead of me and put his blues on to the front to hold anybody coming from the more perilous direction. He liked the idea and did. The rest of my backing in was uneventful. I dipped my lights once I was tucked in, he gave a flash of his rear blues as a goodnight, and all was right with the world. In my book, he was a good police officer in the "to protect and serve" tradition.
If it had been one of our county mounties, I'd have been asked to produce all my paperwork and been checked over end-to-end for simply trying to back a trailer in.
If you do get into it, yes, it is dangerous, and your first duty is to go about it in a way that brings you safely home to your family every day. But look for the opportunity to help as well as to enforce in any situation you meet.
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Today's Featured Article - A Lifetime of Farm Machinery - by Joe Michaels. I am a mechanical engineer by profession, specializing in powerplant work. I worked as a machinist and engine erector, with time spent overseas. I have always had a love for machinery, and an appreciation for farming and farm machinery. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Not a place one would associate with farms or farm machinery. I credit my parents for instilling a lot of good values, a respect for learning, a knowledge of various skills and a little knowledge of farming in me, amo
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