Inner Monologue of a Beat Cop: Did I Fail?
Let me preface this by saying that I don't need a bunch of people to pat me on the head and tell me I'm special and awesome. I use this place to vent, so hopefully, in 20 years, I don't suck start my Glock
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About two years ago now, I arrested a woman for Aggravated Stalking (after some hours of interviews and discovering who was really at fault). I dropped a note the to D.A.'s Office asking them to please make sure to attend any bond hearing, because she was young, pretty, and convincing and would certainly be let out of jail. Sure enough, she had a bond hearing and was granted an SOR (signature bond).
Two weeks later, she ended up being shot by police officers after attacking her husband with a machete. She was a "suicide by cop."
I think about the case fairly often, even though she was the "criminal" (and she most definitely was) and wonder if I couldn't have done more to prevent what happened...for her and for the officers who were forced to shoot her.
You were probably the best thing that happened to that girl in a long time. If anything, I would think that the only issue comes in thinking that we can fix fourteen minutes in an a half hour of mediation. We put people on a path, but ultimately they still have some very difficult choices to make in order to stay on that path and, more often than not, they wander right back off of it.
So in you come to this situation -- the hero, the father figure who does not exist in this girls life. And she craves the discipline, boundaries and understanding that you are offering. But then you're gone, and she starts to think about her life and everything that has happened and to realize that what she has are some people who are saddled with her care, at their wits end, and can't wait for her to grow up and get out.
It's not your fault. It's not her grandparent's fault either. Where are her parents? I might blame them, assuming she wasn't orphaned or something. Think of the abandonment issues this girl probably has. She needs months and years of counseling. And maybe she'll even get it now, given what she did with the razor. You never know, but that might be the catalyst that gets her to talk to someone (other than the cop who shows up at her door) about everything that has happened in her life.
You did the right thing. She is still alive. But maybe you can check in on her in a while? That's one reason I'd like to eventually work in a smaller agency.
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