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Portraits by Peter Bucks
Tributes to officers from the CPD Officer, Lodge 7 member and renowned artist
n BY KAREN STAHL
Driving hundreds of miles to make deliveries for 7 Up wasn’t where Officer Christo- pher Green found his purpose. No, every turn of the wheel felt like repetitive factory work, and he knew he was destined for something more — his next job, he vowed, would be something with community. It would be a career. It would fulfill childhood dreams.
By the age of 31, he knew his life had some miles on it, and he was beginning to feel the wear and tear of deliver- ies. In December 2000, Green retired his Class A commercial driver’s license that allowed him to drive a semitruck and traded it in for his law enforce- ment badge, Star #13996 in the 5th District. The decision was nearly 10 years in the making.
“I’m a late bloomer for a police officer,” Green said. “I actually had the opportunity to come on the job at 22 years of age, and I turned it down. I didn’t think I was ready.”
By the time he decided he was ready, Green had finished school with an architecture degree, worked as a truck driver, become a high school baseball coach and married his wife. But through all that, his purpose still felt imminent and unfulfilled, ripe with the potential of bringing him back to his pre-teen imagination. And that’s exactly what the 5th District could offer him.
“Once I got there, it was a family environment,” Green gushed. “The people that I worked with were like fami- ly members. The policeman comes out. You start to laugh about things with your co- workers. It was just fun.”
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Growing up, Green always played “cops and robbers” on the playground with his friends, and he was never the robber. He was obsessed with the idea of catching the bad guys and doing what was right as a police officer.
When he came home sweaty and spent from those after- noons of tag, he would plop on his couch and watch the TV show “Cops.” For Green, join- ing the force was an illustra- tion painted in his head that took a few decades to bloom.
“I was fascinated with be- ing the police,” Green shared about joining the 5th District. “I like the variety that the po- lice department offered — I know it’s cliché to say it’s dif- ferent every day, because no job’s the same, but it was just different.”
Now, Green is one of the
poster children of the 5th Dis- trict — and five happens to be his lucky number. With a distinct maturity that comes from having so much life lived before joining the department, Green knew that he had the skills necessary to work tacti- cal and to work a beat.
He started on midnights, and it was only in 2016 that he moved to days, after an ex- cruciatingly tough decision of leaving his midnight family.
“When I did go to days, the first month, I was like, ‘I’m go- ing to go back to midnights. I don’t know if I can handle this. I need my people,’” he remem- bered. “And I had a friend who was on days, and she said, ‘Chris, you just got to give it a
chance.’ And I said, ‘No, I need midnights. I need my people.’” But after a back-and-forth with his wife, he stayed on days, and finally, Green has found his purpose. Gone are the days of repetitive factory work. Being an officer gives him community. It is a career. It fulfills his childhood dreams. Green plans to retire after 25 years, which means he still has just under six years left on the job. Throughout his time, he’s learned that the most import- ant part of being on the force is looking out for his law en- forcement family. His lifelong mission is to be an open heart for others in his work, which, for Green, exists as long as he’s
an officer.
“I always tell the younger
officers their safety and going home is the most important to me,” Green professed.
‘I need my people’
CHRISTOPHER GREEN
Star #13996