Eye of the Officer

Rainy Days Officer Misty Floyd, #1717 San Antonio Police Department

Rainy days are made for reminiscing. While sitting at a red light en route to a dispatched call for a welfare check on a nine year old little girl, my mind drifted back to my life at nine years old. From one blink to the next I went from working one of San Antonio’s most dangerous patrol sections to patrolling the back woods of North Carolina in a role just as serious. It really doesn’t get more serious than a game of cops and robbers after school with the neighborhood boys! The only stipulation I had was I had to play the “good guy”. No questions asked! Playing the robber simply wasn’t an option for me and everybody knew it. I would hop on my little purple bike with the angel ornament my daddy gave me dangling from the side of my steering wheel like a qualified cover officer. My fluffy white pom poms would fly in the wind on each end of my bike handle as If cheering for me while I raced off into the neighborhood to crime fight. Climbing trees, jumping fences, and popping wheelies…I would chase “bad guys” until I was full of dirt, sweat and pride. The only thing that could stop me was the street lights because we all know when the street lights come on it signals quitting time or the tables would turn and momma would chase us down for a bath, prayers and bed.

I would walk my bike back home as slowly as possible so I could soak up all the laughs and jokes I could with my buddies before bedtime. You know, the kind of impromptu roasting sessions where you laugh so hard you cry and consists of jokes you all relive for years down the road. When the street lights came on there was no time for bad guys. We were all the same. Gender, color, money, religion and politics…none of that mattered. The only thing we discriminated against was how fast you could run as we exchanged banter, love and bragging rights for whoever outran the other. See, when the street lights came on we were no different than the next kid and there was no such thing as “bad guys”, just regular kids making the best childhood we could out of the lives we were given.

It would take me several years into law enforcement before much like the street lights, a light bulb went off inside of me. I realized that at the end of the day we are all just walking each other home, regular people on a journey trying to build the best lives we possibly can with the cards we were dealt while praying to God we leave a strong legacy behind. Although everyone’s hand is different, we are all far more similar than we are different. The rain pours down and I’m flooded with so much gratitude for the incredible life lessons I learned from behind my purple steering wheel at the tender age of nine. Running code 3 from the driveway of my childhood home, my very first substation, but never too fast to forget my humble beginnings. A world where we weren’t segregated by “good” or “bad” or black and white and loved eachother effortlessly over foot chases and shared drinks from a backyard water hose. With each drop of rain against the windshield of my patrol car I’m reminded that rainy days are made for reminiscing…as long as you don’t miss your call sign on the radio!!