Fourth in a series.

Re: “Raetz Reflects on P.D. Attitude Change” 

In the opinion of soon-to-retire Officer Jim Raetz, what he calls “pre-Prozac era” inside the Police Dept., his rookie years in the 1980s under the hardline direction of Chief Ted Cooke, has vanished “because society has changed.

“When I got into law enforcement,” he said, “a lot of the officers primarily had been in Vietnam. Older guys, predominantly white. They had their structured way of dealing with things.”

This did not bolster their popularity.

Mr. Raetz embodies the kind of spiritedness that secure law enforcement leaders love to see in their field.

Guys who say they are not going to take it anymore.

“As time has gone on, people have spoken up,” said Mr. Raetz. “They have said, ‘Hey, we could be more effective this way.’

“If you look at today’s Millenials and the changes in society itself, they had to spill over into us. Whether we were in the lead or not, changes definitely came into our department.”

Question: Is it true that police officers are better educated today than they were 30 years ago?

Mr. Raetz, for example, is a top-drawer lawyer – and has been – in his off-hours.

He resisted the easy response.

“I don’t know if that is true,” he said. “When Cooke was here, he used to brag about the number of guys with degrees.

“Today, people certainly have gotten degrees, and some got them online.

“An interesting part of earning a degree is going to a physical classroom. You have discussions. You interact with people. Online, you don’t have that peer-to-peer interaction.”

Plainly, he prefers the traditional path to a degree.

“When you have intelligent people near you, asking you questions,” Mr. Raetz said perceptively, “it raises your worth.”

(To be continued)