Understanding what it was like to be a teen and not being totally against everything it meant to be a teen (they were middle and high school teachers in the 60s/70s)
This was the opposite of my father. He was in charge of enforcement and discipline as an assistant high school principal in the 70s. And boy, did he *love* that.
He was at his happiest when he could punish students through the use of police-type interrogation techniques. I think he really wanted para-military tools to control the deviants within the subject population, but he had to settle for the local police.
I only ever witnessed one raid, where he brought the full force of the local police against a bunch of kids playing with a small bouncy ball on school property at about 2:00 a.m. I don't think they expected to be confronted with police offices waving guns at them demanding they get on the ground.
I think he always wanted to be an FBI officer but settled on a career in education to make my mother happy.
