Wives could not bear the tension of waiting at home, the irregular hours, and the violence and, worse still, the comraderie of the cops among themselves. They moved in tight circles, drinking in the same bars, hanging out in the precinct, speaking their own special language. They needed this companionship of themselves, as those outside never understood their lives. Real life for them was the long, boring tedium of stakeouts, hanging around for days in the courts, enormous reams of paperwork. But interspersed with this was the daily danger, the adrenaline of fear and the chase, sometimes the gun battle, then the slow descent back to normality of routine.
Cops see only the under belly of society.
They see the many ways in which people kill each other and they use evasive words to describe these ways iced , taken out , chopped , floater , jumper , whacked . In all my time they never said someone was killed . Apart from death they nurse the wounded, some horribly so, they have to break the news to relatives and friends, they see the scum of con-men, thieves, pimps, drug pushers. It s not surprising that slowly the division in their lives blur into a grey reality. Their daily business is crime and the men and women they meet and mix with daily are criminals, lawbreakers.