I think that police officer have a tough job. This is not a political statement or a position on any of the events that have occurred in the past couple of years period rather, it is simply me trying to make a statement that I think is well backed up by real-life occurrences. The day-to-day work that police officers perform can be emotionally taxing, physically dangerous, and difficult to perform. A police officer must balance physical skills, patience, fortitude, and knowledge of the law in split-second increments to perform their job well. Becoming a police officer is not for the faint of heart.
For many reasons, we have seen police officers leave law enforcement bodies across the country in record numbers over the past few years. Without getting deep into the reasons why individual officers may choose to leave their various police forces the reality is that there are fewer police officers and law enforcement officers employed now than there were two or three years ago. The consequences of that Can perhaps be seen in rising crime rates across our area and the entire country. It is difficult to be able to not tie these occurrences together.
It will be interesting to see on a person-to-person level because certain officers have chosen to leave the police force. While some may want to assume that police officers’ cars lead police forces for one cause or another the actual reasons may be surprising. What we see a lot of times when it comes to any group of people who have difficult jobs is that their relationships with friends and family can be harmed by their day job. This isn’t necessarily a reason to no longer perform that job but each of us can take into consideration our needs and those of our families and make decisions accordingly.
Anyone married has likely made decisions in their lives, personally and professionally to improve the quality of their relationship with their spouse. Of all of the relationships that we have In our lives probably the most important is that with our spouse. It is amazing how having a good relationship with your spouse can mask other issues in our lives that would otherwise be significant problems. However, sometimes the stresses and other areas of our lives can and do impact the quality of our marriage. We may try our hardest to prevent this from happening, but it may nonetheless happen that our marriage is suffer because of other areas of our life experiencing problems.
I think one of the most obvious careers in which people have suffered from difficulties at work is police officers. As law enforcement officers, you may be feeling the pressure of promising to protect your community well and at the same time struggling in your own life to take care of your responsibilities and household. Like I tell clients with the Law Office of Bryan Fagan all the time, just because you are going through something difficult in one area of your life does not mean that the other areas of your life bill be paused or take it easy on you. For example, just because you are going through a divorce does not mean that your boss, we’ll assign you simpler projects or extended deadlines on projects that were previously assigned to you. While he or she may be sympathetic to your situation does that mean you will get a pass on performing your essential work activities? The work must still get done.
Distractions for a police officer can have serious consequences
Have you ever been distracted at work? If you’re human, the answer to that question has to be a yes. I think all of us, multiple times a day most likely, have been distracted by various things in our lives during the workday. Some of those distractions may be with great merit. For example, you may be excited about the upcoming weekend when your family member is getting married. Seeing family members that you have not seen being quite some time at a wedding can be something really to look forward to. That is certainly enough to distract a person from their day-to-day work responsibilities.
On the other hand, we are also susceptible to distraction in the form of less meritorious things. Considering that social media is oftentimes the culprit for the loss of productivity at work period I’m sure that we could find many articles that had been written over the years about the amount of time an average office worker loses to social media users each day. Well, a little bit of social media use in your life it’s not necessarily a bad thing excessive social media use in the workplace can not only lead to a lack of productivity but unhappiness in general. Not being able to remove that distraction from our lives can have significant consequences for us.
What does this mean for a typical office worker? Well, it may mean that we have less time to coordinate on projects with coworkers, as well as a drop-off in the quality of our work. Hopefully, we can remedy these situations and get back to normal levels of productivity. After all: I have found that the number one reason why people use social media is to pass the time. Ironically, nothing passes the time faster than doing work. This is especially true if you are operating with a deadline.
A different situation altogether relates to distractions for law enforcement and police officers while on the job. In an office environment distraction on the job certainly leads to loss of productivity but is not something where people’s lives are often at stake. For example, if you pay too much attention to social media one day the person in the cubicle next to you is not likely to lose their life. The same cannot be said for law enforcement officers. If a law enforcement officer is distracted, then the life of their work partner or even a private citizen can be lost or significantly harmed. This is one of the underlying and not often discussed aspects of police officers and their work period namely, problems with relationships, especially marriages, which cannot always be left at home. When an officer has a tense situation at home it would be completely normal for him or her to bring that situation into the workplace. This is true no matter how much the officer tries to prevent that from occurring.
overall, police officers do an admirable job of forming a difficult occupation while having the same sort of difficulties with a work-life balance that we all do. On top of that, their schedules, and work responsibilities in other circumstances are oftentimes unique to them what they do. If you are a law enforcement officer, then today’s blog post from the Law Office of Bryan Fagan is written with you in mind. We would like to share our thoughts with you on what you should be aware of when it comes to relationship and marriage problems. Namely, I would like to look at the widely held belief that law enforcement officers are more susceptible to divorce than others.
Of course, a major point to make in this regard is that his widely held belief could be based on something as silly as Internet gossip or typical untruths that you can read about online. It does not take much for a catchy headline or interesting concept to go viral. The next thing you know half of the world believes something that isn’t remotely true. I’m sure all of us have a couple of examples of this phenomenon in our minds right now. Instead of making assumptions and basing our viewpoints on conjecture, I would like to consider this topic from the perspective of a law enforcement officer. Not a union representative or chief of police but rather an everyday officer who comes into work and serves their community. Well, I certainly would not try to argue that everything written in this blog post will be perfectly aligned with your experiences as a law enforcement officer I hope that much of what we discussed today will apply to your life.
If you have any questions about the content contained in today’s blog post, then I recommend can you reach out to speak with the attorneys at the Law Office of Bryan Fagan. Our licensed family law attorneys offer free of charge consultation six days a week in person, over the phone, and via video. These consultations are a great way to learn more about the information contained in this blog post.
If you have any concerns about being able to come to our office from a time perspective, I want you to know that we also offer consultations over the phone and online. Instead of worrying about a certain subject, why not be intentional about trying to figure out a solution to any problems you may be experiencing. It may be the case that you have less of a problem on your hands than you were led to believe. However, you won’t know the truth until you think about it critically and then reach out to someone who can help you by providing you with additional insight and information. We believe that our attorneys are a great resource for law enforcement officers. Contact us today to learn why we believe this is the case.
Do law enforcement officers get divorced more frequently than the public?
As we talked about a moment ago, it is widely believed that law enforcement officers his divorced more regularly than do the public. Again, I think this has a lot to do with the general stresses of being a police officer and how it makes sense that stress in the workplace can lead to problems at home with your marriage. Try as you might to not bring the problems that your workplace into the home that is a tall task for even the most disciplined person. As such, considering that stress can be one of the leading indicators of divorce we can see that working as a police officer can cause problems in your marriage by bringing the excess stress of work home for your family to experience as well. Couple that with any stresses that your spouse may be experiencing, and you have a potentially combustible situation.
However, this is just thinking out loud about the nature of divorce. I would like to consider this subject from the perspective of someone who has done a little bit of research. Additionally, the perspective of law enforcement officers like yourself needs to be considered, as well. For starters, much of the research that you find online regarding police officers and divorce is quite old. The last thing we want to do is make statements and judgments about police officer divorce based on research in think pieces created 60 years ago. If possible, we should consider what the landscape of policing looks like these days and then make judgments about whether or not police officers are more or less likely to get divorced than the general public.
From my research, it does not look like police officers get divorced with any greater frequency than the public. Admittedly, it is difficult to perform research on a subject like this. It’s not as if police officer unions or other groups make available this information or broadcast it with excitement. Rather, census data and other publicly available information would have to suffice for making determinations across a broad spectrum of people. The bottom line is that it is difficult to determine the frequency with which law enforcement officers get divorced.
Ultimately, however, your specific circumstances within your marriage are what matter the most. We could talk all day and all night about factors across the broad spectrum of police officers that may impact they’re getting divorced but that doesn’t matter to you as an individual. Yes, as we discussed a moment ago it does matter in the sense that your safety as a police officer may depend upon the distractions experienced by your partner or other police officers. However, when it comes solely to, you getting divorced what impacts other officers is not necessarily relevant to you.
The reason is that marriage and people, in general, are so unique that we cannot say that you are more likely to get a divorce just because a certain quality that police officers have or do not have is prevalent. Rather, you would need to consider your specific risk factors deciding about divorce. Think about your marriage and your place within it. You know what you need to work on in your marriage and in what areas you are already proficient in. That will tell you a great deal more about the likelihood of you getting a divorce than any academic research paper or blog post written by a family attorney in Houston.
One attribute that I do think bears mentioning, however, is that marriage is built upon the ability of two people to set aside their egos, desires, and wants to work to improve their lives and those of their children. From my perspective, the dynamic of power-sharing and decision-making is crucial to success in marriage. If you are incapable or unwilling to share power and decision-making authority with your spouse, then you may be in a position where divorce becomes more likely than not.
Why do I mention this personality trait or attribute right now? I think any law enforcement officer will tell you that being able to make decisions and do some confidently is an important part of being a law enforcement officer. So much of the job depends upon your ability to seek out challenges, make assessments, make decisions, and then implement those decisions. Lives can hang in the balance during this process including your own. Therefore, you as a law enforcement officer may be wary of giving up or divesting decision-making capabilities. This is true even if you would be sharing those responsibilities with someone like your spouse.
If I can offer one perspective on divorce for law enforcement officers, it would be that being able to share decision-making responsibilities with your spouse can go a long way towards helping to ensure success for your family when it comes to marriage and relationships. Just like you have in your daily life as an officer your spouse is your partner. Partners do not make independent decisions and then coordinate later with the other person. Rather, partners make decisions as a team and then work to take into consideration the viewpoint of the other before moving forward. If you are serious about improving the quality of your marriage, then this almost certainly is a good place for you to begin that journey.
Questions about the material contained in today’s blog post? Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan
If you have any questions about the material contained in today’s blog post, please do not hesitate to contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan. Our licensed family law attorneys are available six days a week to meet with you in person, over the phone, or via video. If you found today’s blog post interesting, then go ahead and search our website for additional blog posts like these that relate to the subject of law enforcement officers and divorce.
from Texas Bar Today https://ift.tt/OISFgp6
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