Institutional Knowledge and Retention

 When I first came on the job in 1997, the typical retirement occurred at 30 years of service, and it was a full retirement (Ie, no more work, just hobbies).  Recently, however, we have seen early retirements in which the officer then goes and works another full-time job (Which they consistently report back to us is much better than the job they just vacated).  Beginning in 2020: 2 left at 27 years, 1 left at 26 years, 2 left at 24 years, and finally 2 left at 21 years.  In the same period, only 4 retired with more than 30 years on, and 2 left due to improper actions that occurred off-duty.  All of these officers who left early left for other public law enforcement positions outside of our city, so burnout does not account for this trend.  The other six did not go into sworn law enforcement positions (Obviously, 2 of these really did not have that as an option).

My department and I believe the city as a whole has no thought of incentivizing retention and stemming the loss of institutional knowledge.  If everyone stayed until they had accomplished 30 years of service, the department would have retained/gained 50 years of experience and expertise.  A recent positive development is that we have, finally, been allowing lateral hiring of officers from other departments, and they have been universally successful.  In this period, we have only had two entry officers replace these departing officers; the rest of the open positions were filled by laterals.   This has stemmed the receding knowledge tide to some degree.

What I wonder and have suggested is whether having a retention police would benefit the department and the city.  A simple calculation of the cost of training and equipping new employees and creating an incentive that is less than that amount would probably have retained all 8 of our "leave early" officers.  It needs to be noted that all of these officers left for second pensions, so they definitely can be motivated by money and benefits.  I took a quick poll of our day shifters, who all have timelines to leave before 30, and asked what it would take to stay another five years.  The final answer was 30 grand.  Since it costs more than $130,000 to get even a lateral up and running, I think that would be a great deal for the department and the city.  Hopefully, one that they will take advantage of one day, and maybe before I also retire.

Chemically Burned Hands-Fun!

We were on the street in the very early morning hours when we needed to test the substances we seized.  It was discovered that we were all out of testing kits so one had to be scrounged up and it turned out to be one of the old Marquis Testing kits.

If you have never used these kits the are a short plastic straw with a small glass ampule on either end.  You pop the top put trace amounts of the illicit narotic that is to be tested into the tube, put the cap back on and then crush the top and bottom ampules.  If it turnes blue/purple you positively field tested cocaine or heroin, way to go guy!

Ok back to the story, I decided not to use the old kit and wait for some new ones to show up.  While this was happening I was rolling one of the little ampules around my fingers talking to the assembled and currently inactive group.  Now what you need to know is that this ampule containes concerterated Sulfuric Acid.  A very strong acid (or if your the Blues Brothers "Glue...strong stuff").  The glass on the ampule is thin so it can be crushed in your fingers, while its safely in the plastic straw (you know what going to happen next).  I was lost in thought trying to solve a minor problem when I put a little too much pressure on the ampule and *POP* it went, splashing my hand in acid and embedding a thousand tiny glass shards into my right hand.

Knowing that if I said anything or admitted my hands were burning off or someone realized what I had done, I would be reliving this moment once a month for the rest of my career to be capped off as a small vignette at my retirement party, I put a fake smile on my face, placed my left hand over my right (causing it to start burning with acid) and slowly, calmly walked to the bathroom.  I then proceeded to wash my hands.  At this point a little High School chemistry came back to me and I realized while my hands were clean they were still burning and turning yellow.

Start the frantic searching for some alkali! At the kitchenette I found some Comet Cleanser and after about ten washings the burning finally stopped.

The result, bright yellow streaks throughout my left and right hands and two burn marks.

See Law Enforcement is dangerous and...I am a dumb-ass. But I didn't get caught, but they did ask if I was obsessive-compulsive about hand washing.