Long time lurker (like TWOP long ago) but first time poster. You guys crack me up and keep me watching this trainwreck! Just wanted to shed light on the Miranda/deputy/police officer thing. I work as an administrator for a police department and my boyfriend is a deputy sheriff for our county. All sheriff departments in my area require that full-time deputies with full law enforcement duties and responsibilities are POST certified (had to go through the police academy). They are law enforcement officers with full arrest authority in the entire state (in my case, Tennessee). Our particular deputies do not have to live in county because our county is so rural and so small, but if they want a take home patrol car, those are issued only to in-county deputies. The county where I work requires all police officers and all deputies to live in the county. Reserve deputies are something different. These are individuals that offer support to the departments under a variety of different circumstances and do not necessarily have to have POST certification. They can be retired from another law enforcement agency that is out of state and not want to go through the POST certification process in their new state or they can be "newbies" looking to get into law enforcement. Usually reserve deputies are required to have the GED/high school diploma and have completed ride-alongs with deputies. They do not have the authority that a full deputy has, depending on jurisdiction, etc. Maybe Miranda was a reserve deputy? This I do not know for sure because I do not have the mad skillz of Internet searching but I do know that reserve deputies are more often female rather than full-time deputies and/or officers because of it is a way for the department to "diversify" without actually hiring females full-time. :(
I will tell you from experience that a cop does not usually walk away from the job, even after only a year and a half. There is something in them that requires them to serve as a police officer. I have many officers here in my own department that are on their second "career" as an officer. They put in 30 years with their original department, picked up a pension, then came to Tennessee to "retire" and ended up working for us because they can't let the job go. We also have several female officers and they are the same way, driven and very dedicated to police work. Miranda may have been investigating law enforcement as a reserve deputy and then ended up leaving because it did not work out for her in terms of what her new family required. Even if that was the case, props to her to serve even in a reserve capacity.
