Retired Bakersfield police officer Joe Grubbs recently came and spoke to Professor Pat Smith’s Introduction to Criminal Justice (CRIM B1) class about what it takes to become a police officer and his experiences in the force.

Grubbs was a BPD officer for 25 years and recently retired just last year. He now works for the Kern Community College District as an executive director for Risk and Management for the district. He’s also in charge of Public Safety for the entire district.

Grubbs mentioned multiple times that becoming a police officer is one of the hardest jobs in the world to get and one of the easiest jobs in the world to lose. Grubbs said that they get about 2,000 applications per year.

He said that you have to fully commit to becoming a police officer because they’re going to test your will in the academy. “I’m telling you, anybody in this room can do this, if you want to do it. If you’re not serious about it, we’re going to figure that out,” said Grubbs.

Grubbs also made sure to talk about the issues that are currently going on in our society. He said multiple times that he knows that there are bad cops out there and that will unfortunately keep happening, but he hasn’t known a cop that has had bad intentions in mind when on the job.

“As a policeman, I never wanted to hurt anybody. I have never worked with a policeman that wants to hurt somebody. I have never worked with a policeman in my experience that got up and said ‘I want to shoot somebody today.’ It sucks. There’s nothing nice about it,” said Grubbs. “It’s the most horrible thing that a policeman has to deal with in their career. If they have the mindset that they want to go shoot somebody when they wake up in the morning, I don’t want them working as a policeman, and I’ll do everything that I can to get rid of them.”

Grubbs answered any questions that the students asked him and he continued answering questions even after the class was over.