Being a cop is tough, and I’m not just saying that because my editor, Carrie Rodriguez, tried to get me tazed for a video for our website.

The reality is that police work is a lot different than it used to be. Lt. Travis Forbush, who is leading the Bellevue Police Community Academy in which I have enrolled, said the reality is that many people don’t assume cops to be the good guys much nowadays. Both the missteps made by former Bellevue officers and national events have shed a negative light on the field, and now the Bellevue Police Department must move forward and enforce the law.

Oh, and they need to do a lot of hiring.

With a batch of officers approaching retirement, the Bellevue Police Department anticipates it will need to hire 60 officers over the next three years. And while they would once have 200 applicants for one open position, the department now has more open slots than bodies to fill them.

That’s not to say they hire just anyone — only about 1.2 to 1.8 percent of applicants make it through the application, testing, background checks and oral board process. It takes roughly 18 months from the initial application until new officers hit the streets on their own.

There are plenty of weirdos to filter out, including one man who freely admitted during background questioning that he had around two dozen images of pornography involving animals on his computer. But besides the weirdos are the people who just wouldn’t fit into the department well— the Bellevue Police Department is selective, more so than smaller departments might be.

As they should be. Those that withstand the intensive training — during which officers are tested after having been tazed and pepper sprayed — then go out onto streets where they (luckily) aren’t shot at very often, but citizens and the local media (myself included) are watching them.

So although Chief Mylett told me he could arrange for me to get the full experience of being pepper sprayed and tazed, I quickly declined, despite my editor’s enthusiastic support of the idea. I like you, Bellevue, but I don’t know if I have that level of dedication. But, if anyone in the city operates a bungee-jumping business, give me a call.