Having followed the debate over reforming the Minneapolis Police Department from the St. Paul side of the river, I found myself in violent agreement with several recent comments. Among them were the reminder (Aug. 10) from Jeff Potts, of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, that police work is "mentally challenging, exhausting, scary and thankless," and the call (Aug. 25) from former public defender Richard G. Carlson for a force "that won't glorify blue warriors, buttress the police wall of silence, and thoroughly earn the distrust of so many of the people it polices." But the one that really touched a nerve for me was the Rev. Alan Pritz's letter (Aug. 22) suggesting that those who find police services wanting might accomplish more by joining the force than criticizing it from the outside.

Did that. That is, shortly after Officer James Sackett was ambushed responding to a call for help from a woman who said she was going into labor, and Gary Hogan put a stick of dynamite in a downtown department store's restroom, I signed on as a "patrolman" with the city of St. Paul (one of three African American recruits in a class of some 20-odd folks).

Hitting the street as a narc making controlled buys and ending up at the Governor's Crime Commission (where my next partner was a social worker), six years in law enforcement was about all I could manage.

I'm not sure that even the most advanced AI, equipped with the finest statistical tools social scientists have yet devised, could measure the meager impact I had: a handful of lethal-force scenarios concluded without harm to a citizen or an officer; some public skirmishing over policies in the local paper's opinion pages; one formal complaint against a fellow officer ending with a letter in the miscreant's file and a year in the departmental "doghouse" for me.

Even if you add my crafting of St. Paul's first federal community policing grant, I didn't exactly lay the groundwork for wholesale societal redemption. In no way can I be included with the likes of Jim Mann, Jim Griffin, Debbie Montgomery, Bill Finney or Medaria Arradondo, all of whom opened doors (or widened doorways) to law enforcement careers for people who don't look like Clint Eastwood (or act like him, either).

Still, to return to the good reverend's point: A person who wants a different kind of police force might consider becoming that different kind of police officer.

Joseph M. Bloedoorn Jr., of St. Paul, is retired. He's at teacherman16@comcast.net.