Ultimate neighborhood compliment

In the midst of a challenging day at work today, I was delighted to find that my neighborhood received the ultimate compliment today. A police officer is looking to move into the neighborhood. Why is this a compliment? Because cops know crime and they don’t want to live near crime.

We as a society ask an awful lot of our men and women in uniform. Our officers work long hours for low pay and frequently get no thanks for what they do. As they like to say, if an officer visits you you’re usually having a bad day. Also, their work can be intense. And dangerous. They deal with dangerous people every day so the rest of us don’t have to.

With such a demanding job, the last thing an officer wants is to have to worry about being a cop when he or she is off the clock. She or he wants to relax and be a spouse, parent, or just be a regular neighbor. Officers don’t return their messages when they’re not working. They leave it all behind at the “office.”

So the last thing a police officer wants is to live in a crime-filled area. They want to live in a place where they can let down their guard (at least a little). It’s not that I hope that a cop moving into my neighborhood will to actively deter crime, but that his moving in is a powerful testament to the state of my neighborhood.

One thing I learned on my ridealong a few years back is just how well police officers know a neighborhood. They can tell you things about a neighborhood even real estate agents wouldn’t know. If a neighborhood is good enough for police officers, it’s good enough for anyone.