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After the training is over and academy graduation has commenced it’s time to get to work. While television depicts cops as constantly in pursuit of a fleeing suspects or in a high-speed chase with loaded guns at the ready. However, usually an ordinary day for a police officer is typically. A typical police officer job description may include any or all of the following tasks:
- Patrol specified areas by foot, motorcycle, or car and issue citations where necessary
- Direct traffic and escort convoys
- Protect and escort famous athletes, celebrities and politicians
- Assist in riot controls
- Respond to domestic disturbances, traffic accidents, & emergency situations
- Monitor activity, watch for law violators and search for wanted persons
- Transport prisoners
- Serve warrants, subpoenas and other court documents
- Appear in court to testify
- Conduct investigations of crime scenes and assist detectives in criminal investigations
The job description of a police officer may change daily and might include doing two or three of these tasks in a single day. This wide range of duties, creates a lively work environment. In turn, officers rarely have a “routine day.”
In addition to these tasks, as a police officer you have the opportunity to specialize in a specific area of a variety of criminal justice careers such as firearms training, finger print identification, and microscopic analysis, tactics, EMT, and canine units. In a large police department, officers can work diligently to increase in rank to the position of detective or even police chief.
On unique aspect of a police officer’s job description is the fact that police officers are never really “off duty.” Officers are required to complete their tasks of protecting citizens and upholding the law, regardless of whether or not they are in uniform. As opposed to an accountant or a office assistant who clocks in and clocks out, the job of a police officer is never “off the clock.”
While everyday might not seem as exciting as the movies make it out to be, most officers have high job satisfaction rates and because a police officer’s job description includes a wide variety of duties and expectations, from busting drug deals, to controlling out-of-control citizens, this makes the career of an officer a gratifying and honorable profession.
