Lesson9 Police Life
The average citizen in the United States has very little personal contact with the police. Contacts most frequently occur in two contexts: Americans sometimes approach a policeman to ask for street directions; and police sometimes stop a motorist for speeding or some other traffic violation. Neither of these situations is usually violent or life-threatening.
However, the life of a policeman in a large American city can be both violent and life-threatening almost on a daily basis. This is especially true for police assigned to patrol the poorest sections of the city where most violent crimes take place. Here police routinely come in contact with drug dealers, armed robbers, muggers and the like.
If a policeman is exposed for too long a period of time to these types of people from the lowest level of society, they run the risk of being injured or of developing a prejudice against all the residents of the poor districts of the city. For this reason, the police chief regularly changes policemen's assignments so that they can escape from the tension and danger of patrols in the ghetto. These other assignments might be deskwork or controlling traffic.
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1.patrol巡邏
2.mugger行兇搶劫者
3.ghetto少數民族聚居的地區,貧民區

警察生活
美國普通民眾很少與警察有私人接觸。大多數接觸經常發生在兩種情境下：找警察問路時，和因駕車超速或違反其他交通規則被警察攔停時。
通常這些情形都不會有暴力發生，也不會危及生命。
然而，美國大城市里的警察生活幾乎每天都面臨暴力和生命危險。對于負責巡邏暴力犯罪多發的城市最貧窮地區的警察來說，尤其如此。這里和警察日常打交道的都是毒品販子、帶武器的搶劫犯、走私犯和諸如此類的人。
如果一個警察太長時間置身于這類來自社會最底層的人員之中，他們會有受傷或對城市里貧困街區的居民形成偏見的危險。正因如此，警察局長定期調整警察的任務，讓他們遠離巡邏貧民區的壓力和危險。其他任務有可能是文書工作或交通監管。[qh]