Our culture doesn’t shed the best light on the police.

We see them on TV, beating an innocent man senseless for no reason. In movies they are often portrayed as dishonest or serve as comic relief, taking advantage of the perks of their job by using their siren to avoid waiting at traffic lights or allowing a young McLovin to shoot drunkenly at the burning wreckage of their destroyed police car. In our own lives, they are the mildly irritating face of the law that breaks up our parties or pulls us over for speeding.

But is that the image they deserve?

“Being a police officer in real life isn’t like it is on TV,” Officer Bailey explains to me from behind the glass divider that separates us. His uniform is crisp and dark blue, with little decoration except for the brass nametag pinned to his shirt, and above his dark gray eyes I can see that his hairline has just begun to recede. “The media puts out the worst image of us. We don’t go around beating people up for no reason — why would I put my job and my family at risk like that?”

Officer Bailey has worked for the Seattle Police Department for the past nineteen years. He has seen a lot in that time, in a profession where there is no room for cowardice. He looks away from me as he describes in a shaky voice the first time he was shot at.

“It was 1992, and we had just got a call. We opened the door and there was a guy standing there with a gun. He had just shot his boyfriend who was cheating on him and he started shooting at us.” Officer Bailey pauses, and even after all these years there is pain visible in his eyes. “So we shot back at him.”

But he is quick to clarify that situations like that are rare, much more infrequent than the media would have us believe.

“I do have a lot of power,” Officer Bailey acknowledges. “I can arrest anyone at anytime. It’s a lot of power, and a lot of responsibility,” he says.

As a cop, you never know what to expect, he explains to me. Someone might call in with a regular noise complaint and you open the door and there’s a guy standing there with a gun — you learn how to deal with it.

“One of the hardest parts,” he says, “is separating work from family life. You see bad people all day long, and you go home to your wife or your husband and your kids and you have to turn it all off. You can’t take any of it home. And when you have dealt with negative things all the time…” he trails off, smiling wryly to himself. “Nobody ever calls when they’re having a good day.”

In her South Precinct office, Officer Hill fixes me with a death stare that is nearly successful in scaring me from the building. She pointedly begins to sort the papers in front of her, sighing at the inconvenience I present.

Finally, she agrees to talk to me. She tells me she has spent the past twenty-one years working in the force, during which time she has also raised three kids. Her duties as an officer are varied; they include clerk work, driving the prisoner van, and working as a liaison to the Native American communities.

I ask her if the work she does is ever scary.

She looks up from her filing, finally turning her full attention towards me. “Some fear is good,” she responds carefully. “It keeps you on your toes. In an instant things seem like they are peaceful, but at any second someone could decide to walk in the door and point a gun at your head.

“Stuff like that, though — it doesn’t happen often,” she says. “It’s not like on cop shows, where someone is getting shot at or beaten up every show.”

“We are only human,” Officer Hill says on the subject. “Maybe a particular officer is overstressed, or overworked. The public likes to push our buttons.

“Myself — being shorter and smaller in stature than most of the other officers — I might feel more threatened in a situation. But I would have to be in fear for my life before I used a weapon.”

“For a police officer to get carried away, or take advantage of their position — that is unacceptable,” Officer Bailey tells me. “But for every media story about an officer doing that, there are countless unreported officers who aren’t. People are always telling us to be careful not to stereotype, not to judge. It is the same with us; just because we are all in uniform doesn’t mean we are all the same. Just because one officer treated you poorly doesn’t mean we are all like that. The whole point of our job is to help people out — and when we do, it is definitely a good feeling.”