My name is Troy Rene BOSTICK and I'm an English major out of Atlanta, Georgia. My favorite genre of music is rock with Creed and Seether being my favorite bands. Holes is my favorite book. It was read to me in the fifth grade and was the first novel I enjoyed.
For my team presentation, I'm interested in public relations / corporate writing, technical writing, and writing for the Internet. These choices reflect my desire to become a police officer or pursue a closely-related career. Traditionally, police officers and closely-related professionals write reports. However, due to an emphasis on community-oriented policing and the desire for citizens to know what their governments are doing to protect them, the police are increasingly using websites, blogs, and even Twitter accounts to pass along information. Facebook accounts are used as recruiting tools. Large departments often have community-oriented policing sections and small departments often have public information officers to maintain such pages.
Police officers and closely-related professionals tend not to have degrees in English. Therefore, I feel supremely confident that I could be a great asset in one of these specialized roles. However, I would be foolishly optimistic to think I could make such an arrogant statement and not prove my worth to potential employers. This brings me to the purpose of my blog. To demonstrate my seriousness in pursuing a career in government work and to prove I've properly examined the career, I plan to ride along with four metro Atlanta police departments. They are two urban police departments, City of Atlanta and City of Dunwoody, and two university police departments, Georgia Tech and Kennesaw State. Future blogs will discuss the procedures for applying to these ride-along programs and if I'm successful, entries on my experiences. The next entry will probably contain general information on ride-alongs and an examination of ride along blog entries currently in the blogosphere.
I actually talked to a detective who said that it was wise to have a degree in something else besides Criminal Justice if pursuing a law enforcement career. He said the CJ major just doesn't apply to much else and that the absence of it won't hinder work in law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Criminal justice seems to be that degree that athletes pursue. I'm not suggesting they're dumb. On the contrary, they got into college, but they don't have the time to pursue more work intensive degrees. The police go through extensive training, which allows people with law, nursing, engineering, and other degrees to learn everything they need to know. The Atlanta Police Department does four months at the academy and four months in the field. The CIA does one year. I chose English because many officers complain of being weak at writing.
ReplyDeleteWell...went on my ride-along. Great experience. Lost my notebook...but I'll try to sum it up for you in an email later.
ReplyDelete