by Steve Chapman

Created on: March 06, 2010   Last Updated: March 08, 2010

For many years of my life, including at the time of my birth, my father worked in law enforcement. During these years, he served on a total of four different departments. I spent many, many days with and around his fellow officers and their families.

As a small child, during summer breaks from school, my babysitters were not older kids from the neighborhood, or even professional sitters and nannys. My summertime sitters were police officers and their wives and family.

I was the bat boy of the Police Department Softball team, and in one department my father was a member of, many of my summer days were spent in the Police Dapartment officers lounge, located in its basement.

Because of this daily proximity to them, I saw firsthand the best and the worst of their lives, struggles and experiences, both professionally and personally. Their job is too often thankless, and the war on drugs, though gaining attention through the years, including those, has been ongoing for many years. 

While we presently fight several foreign wars with brave soldiers, and understanding the very real threat in other places of WMD's, the greatest WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) is right here, right now, in our own backyard. It is the war on drugs, and is a war we have got to fight 24 hours a day seven days a week.

During my childhood years and even into my teens, in the times I spent with my father and fellow officers and families, I saw their struggles, failings and shortcomings, as well as their successes. I also experienced some of them at times, beginning with my father.

My father used to tell the story of my first emergency ride with lights and siren on, in a police cruiser. Sadly, it burdened my father because it was due to an injury that should not have happened. My father and mother were engaged in a very bad fight, and one of them had thrown a glass, which broke all over the dining room floor.

As my brother and I played, I ran through the dining room, and fell on a piece of glass, causing a severe cut in my left shin. I was 22 months old. I hope my father did forgive himself and knew he did many things during his life, including his work, that made me very proud.

The alcoholism that played a big part in ending his life, received a lot of it's fuel from the burdens he felt over his errors, and it is sad that officers and families did not have more support and understanding of its toll on people at the time.

For a short period of time in

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