PAX Centurion - January / March 2016

Page 44 • PAX CENTURION • January/March 2016 617-989-BPPA (2772) Even Clark Kent can be Superman Submitted by Sean Broderick – Dedicated to the brave men and women of the Boston Police Department, Especially those in the Youth Violence Strike Force The following piece was written by my nephew Sean Broderick for a creative licensing class at Saint Michael’s College. Just as I was convinced that “this generation” doesn’t get it, I found reason to hope again. I recognize that this is written by the son and nephew of police officers who was raised with a certain set of values, as many of the readers’children were raised, but it still gives me hope in our future. – Christopher Broderick, Secretary, BPPA ‘I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane. I’m more than some pretty face beside a train. It’s not easy to be me.” – Superman, Five for Fighting M y name is Mark Moynihan and I am a police officer in the city of Chicago. Here’s my advice for those on the fence about becoming a police officer: Don’t. If you’re not fully committed to the idea of devoting your life to the service then you’re not ready for the emotional, physical, and mental toll this job is going to take on you. Become a fireman, the pay is better and you get to slide on poles all day. Now for those of you who have known since the day they were born what they wanted to be, you have no idea what you’re in for.You will become the person people count on to save the day, and society will hate you for that. When you can’t save the day they’ll call you a failure, but if they don’t like the way you do your duty then you’re a disgrace to the force, no matter who you save.Your experience may vary from mine, but I can certainly tell you that you will not be the same person within a year of service. I went into the job knowing, or at least thinking, that this was the only career for me, and even then it only took one big incident to shake my identity as a police officer down to the core, and the reality is everybody who puts on a uniform will have that earth shattering experience. I’m lucky enough that I was able to come back from that and create something worthwhile, but I will be the first to tell you it’s not for everyone. If you are going to join make sure you join for the right reasons. I didn’t, and that was my first mistake. I spent my childhood like every other child in the early 1990s, with my nose buried deep into any comic book that I could find. Every Saturday I would take my five-dollar allowance and buy five of the one-dollar issues from the comic shop near my house. I typically read classic superheroes such as Spiderman, Batman, TheAvengers, and my personal favorite, Superman. By the time high school came around my collection easily numbered in the thousands, which would have been worth a lot of money today had my house not burned down with my precious collection inside. I was fascinated by the concept of superheroes, after all it takes a special type of person (or God-like being, in some cases) to take the gifts that they have been graced with and use them to protect and serve the greater good. Superman especially stood out to me; the fact that he still felt an overwhelming urge to be the defender of a planet he wasn’t even from struck me as particularly noble, and this made him my favorite superhero. Now I’m hesitant to say that I draw my own moral code and sense of morality from the comic book I read when I was ten, but it’s hard to deny that they would have an impact on me during my formative years. Comic books gave me my first, most basic definition of a hero: a hero is someone who 1) defends those who cannot defend themselves, and 2) brings justice to those who do wrong. Obviously age and experience changed my exact definition of that word, but for the most part, every definition I’d have could be watered down to that very first definition, and until May 19 th of my rookie year that definition had never really been challenged. I had always felt the drive to be a hero in my life, which very well may have been the result of immersing myself in superhero culture, and this drive led me to one of the few careers where I could be a hero every day of my life and get paid to do it: Police Officer. The day I turned 21 I entered a six-month police academy program. I was doing fairly well with all of the written work, but as I was never the strongest person growing up I struggled with the practical training. It’s one thing to memorize all of the laws in the rulebook, but when you have to train in full riot gear in the blistering sun your book smarts won’t be able to help you. I would train every weekday during our standard training and I would work on building my strength at the gym, but I didn’t feel like I was making any progress for the first two months. It didn’t help that our training outfits, consisting of an itchy long-sleeve shirt and impossibly tight pants, were literally the most uncomfortable uniform for eight hours of physical exertion. Typical undershirts didn’t help the itch so one day I decided to wear a typical cotton tee shirt with a CaptainAmerica logo to ease my discomfort. Not only was that the most comfortable I had ever been in uniform up to that point, that day was also the first day I made progress during practical training. I ran a sub-seven-minute mile without collapsing for the first time ever, climbed a 105’ ladder without panicking and retreating, and I was even in the zone during my shooting drills. My training officer asked me what my secret was. I just told him that something must have finally clicked, but I knew that my CaptainAmerica shirt was my good luck charm. The next day I wore a Spider-Man shirt, just to test my theory, and my success continued. For the remainder of my cadet course I would wear a superhero themed tee shirt under my training uniform every day, and soon enough I was at the top of my class not just in the classroom but in practical application as well. I would come to find that it’s not uncommon for an officer to keep a good luck charm on their person while on patrol, be it a shamrock on the butt of their gun or mismatched socks under their boots, and when I joined the force