Culpeper police officer resigns to take job in Iraq as mercenary - Wants to broaden his horizons

[NNN0LHI]

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/062007/06092007/290543

Lt. Pat Coffey has become the second Culpeper town policemen to leave his job in recent weeks and take a private contractor job's in Iraq.

Coffey, who has been with the town police for more than 12 years, left his post Wednesday and will head for Iraq later this month. He would not say where he will be stationed or what his duties would be.

Coffey says is going to Iraq partly to broaden his horizons and partly because he is disillusioned with the Culpeper Town Council's police pay scale, promotion policy and its inability to move forward on building a new police station. snip

Despite the obvious dangers involved, he chose to accept a contractor's job in Iraq.

"The danger hasn't concerned me as much as leaving my wife and children for four months at a time," Coffey said.

Coffey's 15-year-old daughter will be a sophomore at Culpeper High School next fall and his 12-year-old son will be in the seventh grade.

[SeattleGirl]

1. Broaden his horizons or fatten his bank account?

:shrug:

[Aviation Pro]

2. Provided he survives....

...oh, he is going over there for one other reason, because he will be unencumbered by such petty things as laws.

[hobbit709]

3. You got it

He can act out his fantasy of just killing "evildoers" without benefit of laws, judge and jury. I feel sorry for his kids-because growing up with him must have done tough enough without the added pain of the chance of having him come home in a box.

[DFW]

4. He isn't going into the military, he's going as a "contractor"

Whatever the hell THAT means. Maybe one of Blackwater's
"security" mercenaries. The Fredricksburg article stated,

"Coffey says is going to Iraq partly to broaden his horizons
and partly because he is disillusioned with the Culpeper Town
Council's police pay scale, promotion policy and its inability
to move forward on building a new police station."

Even in Culpeper, VA, you don't broaden your horizons by going
to Iraq when Washington DC is a 2 hour drive. On the other hand,
the pay of the Culpeper PD has to suck. Maybe he wants to get out
of debt or something. I can't blame him for wanting that, but to
leave his family for Iraq is a pretty drastic move.

At least he was partially straight about his motives, and didn't
say he was going to Iraq "to fight them there so we won't have
to fight them here." That's a rare departure from the robots that
usually spout the canned line that most of them give in public.

For that matter, a cop leaving to go to Iraq as a private contractor,
admitting flat out that he is doing it for the money, is a startling
and seldom heard instance of honesty. I'm amazed that made it into
print. Virginia must be changing, indeed (or else the editor of
that paper was fired the next day).

[acmavm]

5. Well I hope that we are all spared the whining, pissing and moaning of

his family and friends if he doesn't make it out of there alive. He's "disillusioned with the Culpeper Town Council's police pay scale, promotion policy and its inability to move forward on building a new police station"? Well, it just find out there are worse things in this world. Like being caught half way around the world trying to subdue and occupy a country that does not want to be subdued and occupied.

[Crabby Appleton]

6. Average Culpeper full-time wage - police $55,179 (2002)

from a table near the bottom of

http://www.city-data.com/city/Culpeper-Virginia.html

Starting LEO pay $35.5K to $37K

http://www.culpeperpd.com/careers04.html

not so bad, a lot of small towns pay much less.

[iamahaingttta]

7. Hey Pat, stay off the bridges in Fallujah!

On second thought...

[Turbineguy]

8. I suspect

3 months and $60,000 from now his horizons will have been sufficiently broadened.

[WinkyDink]

9. I give it a week.