One
evening, as I was patrolling in my police car, as I usually did, I got a call
from the central
Then,
I got out of the police car with my teammate. We entered the building and
walked upstairs quickly. As we reached the top of the staris, we noticed an apartment
with its door left open halfway. We took
our weapons out of their sheaths and tiptoed toward the apartment. İt was very
dark inside. I pushed the door open slowly. We began to move our weapons
vertically upwards and proceeded to walk slowly and carefully around the place.
We checked the kitchen. We looked in the hall. We looked all over the
apartment, but there was nobody there. I had a bad feeling about the whole
thing. I knew someone was there. My teammate told me, “Let’s check different
rooms.”
We
started to check again. While my teammate was searching one of the rooms, I
went into a big hall. There were two large seats inside that room. There was a
large glass case adjacent to the wall. I kept on searching the room. Then I saw
a small door. The door was right next to the glass case. When we first checked that room, we did not see anything
suspeicous. We had not noticed the door. It was a balcony door. Now, as I
walked slowly to the door, I came eye to eye with the thief. I told him to
surrender. “Lie down slowly,” I ordered him.
He
looked at me with a confused gaze and a calm expression, like a bird trapped in
a cage. He didn’t seem to know what to do. I pointed the gun at him. I would
have shot him if he had moved, but stayed still, looking at me. He kept on
staring at me, as if he could not
understand what I was saying to him. Finally I told him, in a loud voice, to
lie down. Slowly he began to lie down on the ground. I told him to stay face
down and put his hands on his back. In the meantime, I communicated with my
teammate on the walkie-talkie. I reported to my team mate that I had already
caught the thief. A few minutes later, my partner came to the balcony to help me. By then, I had already
put handcufs on the thief.
My
partner took the thief away from the scene and I followed him to our squad car. I waited there
for a few minutes. The excitement of the chase was still in me. I tried to calm
down a little. I was happy the thied had not made a wrong move. If he had not
followed my orders, I would have had to shoot him. Luckily, I caught him
without him attacking me. Thanks Allah. In such moments, the human body is
filled with fear and anxiety.
After
it was over, I kept worrying about what could have had happened had I shot the
man. I did not know what I would have done in such a situation. I was glad to
have survived this situation, without any problem, and I hoped that I would
never again would have to face such a problem. I knew shooting someone was
going to be very difficult for me. Making such a hard decision was very
challenging for me.
I went
home after finishing my duty that day, but I could not sleep. The intensity of
the day did not go out of my mind. The next day, I was feeling tired. I had
finally realized how hard it was to be a cop. Being under constant stress wears
people down. It was very difficult for me to go through violent
situations. I was trying to get away
from what I was experiencing. More events were added every day. I realized that
it was hard to forget these violent events. I had to learn to live with these
problems. I had to learn to survive. If I didn’t, it would not be good for my
own health. I had to make a decision. It was going to be a difficult decisions,
but I had to do it. I thought about my life and decided that it would not be
good for me to live under a constant source of stress. It was necessary for me
to focus on the good and happy moments of life. Otherwise, bad events would
have impacted me in a negative way.
In my
experience of working as a police officer, people have hard and stressful
moments in life. These difficult and stressful moments put people's lives in a
bad situation. Sometimes I see cops driving
here. They remind me of the challenging and stressful moments I have
experienced in the past, but I can't stop the reflection of my happiness in my
face as a smile.
Written by Erdogan Akbiyik
No comments:
Post a Comment