A NEW Kind of Parapro

During my time out of the paying workforce, I continued to volunteer with our local Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association – supporting our city and “backing the blue” in various ways. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would find out that I can read and write and would ask me to come back to the workforce- so when I offered to “fill in” as a volunteer at the Police Department after the departure of an office employee (to which they declined – the information was too sensitive for a volunteer employee to be privy to ), I hesitantly accepted a full-time paid front office position, knowing that my INFJ personality would reject the constant social contact … but that same personality that wants to please people wouldn’t allow me to say ‘no’.

So I began my trek as a new kind of Parapro much with the same amount of ‘experience’ that I had when I entered the education system – which was … not a lot! However, through my volunteer work with the Citizen Police Academy, I may have had just a tad more knowledge about the inner workings of a police department.. but JUST a tad… a teeny, tiny tad.

As predicted by myself, trying to focus on researching Open Records/Release of Information requests and manage the window of a busy-at-times police department was not my cup of tea. I could do it, but I didn’t like it. So when an internal (non-public-facing) office had an employee retire (which is pretty much what it takes to get a promotion in a small town shop like ours… retirement.. death… both…) I leaped at the chance to move to CID (Criminal Investigations Division – how cool is that???). Now I’m a ‘parapro’ who files cases to the DA’s office for the ‘PRO’s” (also known as detectives) — giving them more time to concentrate on cases instead of paperwork.

Much like a teacher’s aide – I find myself freeing up time for the pro’s to get their primary work functions completed. And just like I used to help settle disputes between kids on the playground, I now mitigate questions and concerns about cases on the telephone – directing people to the right resources instead of bogging down our officers with returning calls that don’t require their level of legal discernment.

I get to work with awesome local support services like our county Children’s Advocacy Center, and Crime Victim’s Assistance through our DA’s office. I still support other parts of our PD with clerical and IT (technical) support – always a techie! And my strange sense of humor does not go to waste in this eclectic and downright hilarious group of individuals. We play a little and work a LOT.. just the way I like it.