Training day

I have heard it described many ways. First it was described to me like this "to be a good cop you have to have been in some trouble"...got your feet wet so to speak. Later like this "you have to have been there to know how to get there". See a common thread? Then I read this paragraph about  "How most people are sheep and cops are like the sheep dog protecting the sheep from the wolves"...I thought about that a lot. It did not ring true for me I never felt like a big happy sheep dog tending the flock bounding around ears flopping in the breeze barking and wagging my tail when the master called...running back to get a pat on the head for a job well done....Not likely.

Then I saw Training Day. Alonzo(Denzel Washington) kicked ass. Dark edgy and off the damn chain. This was no damn sheep dog. Zo did not care about the sheep or the "pat on the head from the master" for a job well done. He was a wolf hunting the wolves..as he put it "to catch a wolf you have to be a wolf" None of this sheep dog shit.... and no catchy phases and having been there(done that). Officer Hoyt on the other hand is fierce as well, scrappy and still has the thin veil of  the facade left to help him filter the reality of the street. By the end of the movie Hoyt has come to grips with reality. He shoots Zo wounding him and leaves him in the street to the thugs.

It came to me after this movie... I am not a sheep dog or a wolf. I do work with a lot of sheep dogs. Happy stupid, barking dogs eager to do the masters bidding. They can fight the wolf and protect "the sheep" if necessary. But they are not wolves.... and they have never been there or know how to get there as the old cops used to say. I am one of those "Hybrid wolf dogs" you read about that everyone fears and no one understands...Not able to be controlled, neither a "wolf", or "sheep dog". Neither are comfortable around me. I belong no where, I can fit in temporarily anywhere, but in the end all sides watch me out of the corner of their eye and wonder...what will he do next? What guides this hybrid? part criminal, part cop... I marvel at the sheep for their ability to pretend they are "Ok" and that all will be alright in the end. I have an internal battle between Zo and Hoyt....who wins the day? Don't know,  they are balanced...jockeying for position to own my soul... fortunately they are balanced... "Yin and Yang"

So for you cops that read the blog...no disrespect meant. If I say something you don't like. That is ok. I am not one of you.(as Lt. Leeds said so loudly announced one day in my book) To the criminals as well, sorry homies, not part of you either. One foot in both worlds.... belonging in neither. I am more like "Hombre" the character Paul Newman played in a western of the same name. Check out the book and you will see what I mean. That is what Curbchek is all about.  ZF