Always In Service – A Conversation with 90 Year Old Veteran Cop Jerry Burden

It was different.

When I came from the dispatch and the state police to Beverly, The state police had all kinds of reports and they had a report for everything.

So when I left, I took a copy of everything.

And back then, Beverly Hills was not developed completely.

We have some apartment complexes and some bigger homes there now that weren't there back then.

It was farmland.

And we had a small airplane crash.

in the field just west of the police station on 13 Mile Road.

And my sergeant looked at me and he said, what are we gonna do? I said, well I guess we'll have to make out an official aircraft accident report.

And he said, where do you get those? And I opened my briefcase and I had one.

But I remember working midnights many times.

The phone never rang all night.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of times the phone never rang all night.

Yeah, it's a little different when you're in some of the smaller villages policing.

But some of the basic concepts, like you're talking to children and people fairly and with respect and dignity and all those things, it still stays the same, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does.

It does.

It don't change.

The job don't change with the times.

I think what happens is today's police departments... make the upgrade to meet the times.

We probably, it was probably 15, 18 years before we had in-car cameras.

We never had body cameras, which they have now.

And we had in-car cameras, You know, we used to run a lot of radar.

The communications have changed dramatically, the equipment.