Who needs sleep?

Last Thursday I was working up at UMass in my position as a Police Cadet and at about 0130, we had a guy come in in Protective Custody (someone who is not under arrest, but too drunk to care for himself, so we babysit till he's sober enough to leave). Usually my shift is over at 0300, but since we had a prisoner, I had to babysit this punk. Till 0700 Friday morning...I had been up since 0700 Thursday morning, and by the time I got to bed at about 0800, I had been up for 25 hours and worked 12 of them, and it got me thinking about sleep deprivation on Police.

Cops, and indeed most people who work in emergency services, are used to pulling double shifts on little or no sleep, but how stupid must we be to do this? Sleep deprivation can have many effects on the human body including:

-Aching muscles
-dizziness
-headaches
-irritability
-tremors
-hallucinations

Having a cop working a double or triple shift with little or no sleep is dangerous not only for the officer, but for the public as well. All Officers understand that on occassion this is required, but often unnecessary. For instance me with the drunk moron. All I'm asking is that when you all go out Saturday night and get lit, just remember that some poor schmuck in a blue uniform may end up babysitting your sorry butt. And because that Officer isn't able to properly rest, some citizen who legitimately needs help may suffer.

More to health than working out

In nearly all jobs, there are certain risks to one's health that you assume when you take a job. Police work is certainly no exception, but cops are probably exposed to more physical danger than any other career with the exception of the military. One thing I want to talk about, because I am potentially exposed to it every time I go to work, is the danger of hypodermic needles.

For those of you who don't know, Massachusetts fairly recently decided that possession of hypodermic needles is not in and of itself illegal. Therefore, people can legally carry around hypodermic needles. The problem with this, as I'm sure you can guess, is that really only people involved in illegal activity routinely carry hypodermics. And with the use of hypodermics, comes the increased risk of communicable diseases such as HIV and AIDS.

Nearly every day I go to work I have to book someone who has been arrested and the possibility of an accidental needle stick from some cretin who has taped a hypodermic to his leg scares the heck out of me.

http://www.leaderpost.com/cars/wielded+hypodermic+needle+altercation+free/1993215/story.html

That's a story about a drug user who got caught shoplifting and used his hypodermic as a weapon. Getting stuck with a needle would potentially change nearly everything I have worked for in life, and everything I have planned such as maybe having kids someday. When I was in the Police Academy, the way the instructors teach recruits to do a pat frisk is specifically designed to help safely detect hypodermics hidden on the body. Every time I do a search I specifically ask a person, "Do you have a needles, knives or anything else sharp on you that I need to know about?" Usually they answer no unless they have a pocket knife or something, but I always follow up with, "You better not be lying to me." It may sound kind of rough, but I will not be a victim to some punk with a dirty needle.

http://www.aegis.com/news/ads/1992/AD920230.html