The Regurgitation of Emotive Illustrations

OIE. I'M POLICEMAN LA.

i used to resent the fact that i was being posted to the police force as the vocation in which i will be serving my 2-years ns. i felt like i was being singled out from the whole cohort of ordinary singaporean males to join the EXTRA ordinary organisation. all in all, i felt discriminated.

i received different comments from various people who had happened to know about my posting. the uncles and aunties of the older generation thought that i failed my napfa (i got silver ok!). my fellow ns pals envy my predicament. they were jealous that i get to slack in camp. some girls felt that it was cool to be in the blue uniform while some others can't even be bothered. however, my family thought that it was a good place to go. especially my dad 'coz he had served his ns in the police force too.

i won't deny the fact that the life in police academy was pretty much like living in a holiday chalet and in fact i did enjoy myself very much. however, though we are much relaxed in terms of physical training. i felt that we were in fact much stricter in the disciplinary aspect. afterall, we are being trained to be police officers.

i am very grateful for the fact that SPF is willing to spend more than 60k to sponsor the driving course for the 2 npc squads. we being NSFs are really priviledged to obtain such sponsorship given the fact that we will only be serving 2 years of ns after which we will most probably leave and turn our back on them.

alright, it's not only about the driving license that caused a change in my attitude towards serving ns in the police force. in fact, it's more because of the experiences that i have been receiving ever since i passed out from tracom (police academy) and being dispatched to pasir ris npc.

by being a police officer, i've been granted the access to see the grey areas in life --- the vulnerability of a country, the downside of a society, the unfamiliarity in a community, the distance in a family and the fragility of a human being.

i've witness how circumstances in life forces people to do things that they hate and if given another chance, they will rather die than to do it again. many times in life, people often do things that they might regret later on but they had to do it 'coz they didn't have another way out. i've seen some of them cry 'coz of guilt and regret and i've even seen some of them laugh at their own foolishness.

there was once i did ward duty and was guarding an illegal immigrant from china. she was chased by police officers 'coz her status was wanted. in the end, she jumped down from the second storey in order not to get caught and be repatriated. though she survived, she ended up paralyzed.

i peeked into the room once and i saw her weeping softly. suddenly, i just felt my heart ache. i didn't know what i could say to comfort her. i felt useless. my colleague was the one who had entered the room to check on her. she hadn't been eating. my colleague told her she should eat more and that she needed energy to recover. immediately, her face lightened and she smiled at my colleague.

i realised that there's no need for speeches or beautiful words to comfort a person. a simple sentence that came straight from my colleague's kind heart is enough to make someone smile. (:

therefore i conclude that being a police officer is not just being a law enforcer. being a police officer is being an upright law enforcer and at the same time a compassionate human being and an empathic friend.