CEDAR CITY — After 25 years in law enforcement, Sgt. David Bulloch retired from the Cedar City Police Department on Friday.
Bulloch started his career in law enforcement at the Iron County Jail after serving in the United States Marine Corps, and was hired with the Cedar City Police Department a year and half after working at the jail.
Bulloch told Cedar City News he went into law enforcement because he was looking for a sense of service and comradery like he had experienced in the military.
“I’ve always liked to help people, and I thought law enforcement was a good avenue to do that,” Bulloch said. “I thought it would be challenging, which it was – just when you thought you’d seen everything it would offer something else to you. It was always something different that you were experiencing.”
Bulloch said he was given the opportunity to work as a detective with the police department, and handled crimes against children.
“You deal with a lot of people who have been victims of abuse or neglect, especially kids – that was probably the hardest thing,” Bulloch said. “Any time I ever saw a child suffer or anybody being neglected or abused, even at the end of my career, that still affected me.”
Bulloch added that finding ways to deal with that aspect of being in law enforcement was important.
“You focus on what’s important – your family, your kids – try to get involved in the activities that your kids are involved in. I like to hunt and fish and get outdoors,” he said. “I’ve got a motorcycle, I like to ride motorcycles, and just kind of getting myself away from that environment to kind of decompress are some of the things I did to kind of deal with that.”
Bulloch said he enjoyed “seeing a positive outcome as far as sentencing and stuff like that for people who have abused kids,” and the relationships he developed within the department.
“You jump into the meat grinder with those guys and you get such a strong bond with them, a brotherhood,” he said.
He said he also hopes he left behind a positive example for others in the department and in the community.
“I hope I was a mentor and a teacher, and I hope I led by example,” Bulloch said. “I hope my legacy is my leadership and my integrity.”
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