The "Old Patrol"

The "Old Patrol" is a term used by the newer level managers who were, themselves, never part of it. They are too young to have been in it. Sometimes the term is used derisively in the same manner that one of "Dirty" Harry Callahan's Lieutenants described him as being a Neanderthal.

The Old Patrol was the outfit respected by just about all law enforcement agencies in the country. The Old Patrol members were not hampered by the stifling dictates of political correctness. They had a job to do; they knew how to do it and they were well-versed in their necessary statutory authority. The job wasn't over until the chase was completed and the Tonks and smugglers had all been processed.

Members of the New Patrol must harbor secret fantasies about what they have read about the Old Days. Most, I imagine, have read No Second Place Winner long before they took the written exam prior to the Academy. Once they actually start the job, they quickly discover that the world inhabited by Bill Jordan, Charlie Askins and Skeeter Skelton no longer exists for them.

There is probably a good reason that it does not: there are considerably more of them these days than there were of us. (There are - or recently have been - actual Border Patrol Recruiters ... something unheard-of in the Old Patrol) These days, Agents are drawn from a considerably larger "pool" and many of them bring with them the mental and emotional bacteria which still clings to them from those waters. When I Entered On Duty (EOD'd) after the war in Viet Nam, there were less than three thousand Border Patrol Agents nation-wide. Now, there are many times that number.

Once we graduated from the Academy, we were all able to take sworn statements from aliens and from smugglers in both Spanish and in English and to translate from one to the other. We prepared cases for prosecution. Not so anymore.

Post Academy probationers learned how to read sign and to track from Journeyman Agents. Trainees were expected to display initiative by cutting sign and to initiate a chase without being granted permission from anyone else. Not so anymore.

The Old Patrol had no such thing as BORTAC. The concept of an "elite-within-an-elite" would have been laughable to us. Once an individual made it off of probation, he was expected to do what was necessary to accomplish securing his portion of The Line ... or of The Railroad Yards ... or of Farm and Ranch work ... or of Traffic/Transportation work ... or of Marine Operations.

For those of us who lived it, the Old Patrol was simply something we assimilated into. The odd thing was that, at the time, none of us realized that one day we would be regarded as Neanderthals.