Air National Guard TACP in civilian law enforcement jobs: How do you balance work/life?

Special Forces? Lol no. Special Operations is a broad term, especially in the Air Force. TACPs are basically very well trained Forward Observers. They are not Special Forces or anything like it.

That's not to say that TACPs haven't been on the front lines during the busy years of the war. 24th STS TACPs support Delta and SEAL Team 6, but most TACPs in SOGs are not doing that, and the National Guard TACPs especially are not doing that.

Second, you probably won't make it. As in the case of most special Operations selections, most of the people fail. Depending on the selection, it's 2/3rds or more. My SFAS selection had less than half pass. My Ranger Regiment selection had a little above 10% pass. Most selections are just above single digits for passing. Statistically you won't pass unless you're already an anomaly. Of course, "you'll" pass because you'll never quit, or something like that. But everyone who quits says the same thing.

Third, National Guard usually take people already qualified as opposed to taking the risk to send someone off when most of them will fail. So, they fill their spots with already qualified Active Duty personnel who are leaving Active Duty. The pipeline is a whole year long, no unit wants to pay for someone to be gone a year who might still fail even after paying for selection. That's a year of active duty time and full benefits.

Fourth, there's no real spontaneous issue in the Guard unless there is a sudden state emergency. Deployments are planned well in advance. Active duty deploying units request support far in advance. Nobody is going to tap you like you're Jason Bourne and the only person available to fight evil and it has to be done today.

Finally, a ridiculous amount of law enforcement are in the National Guard already, both Air and Army. When I was in the Army National Guard, most of the Infantry were in law enforcement. Many of the SF were first responders and law enforcement. It's a great place to network. Your obligation is one weekend a month and two weeks a year, it's pretty easy to meet the obligation. Deployments are announced well over a year in advance, you can plan around that and there are SSCRA provisions in place to help you

First, I would say that if you are really interested in pursuing TACP and a police career, just go active duty, try to get to TACP, do some time, get out and become a cop.
For a couple of reasons.
1. what you want to do in the military is a young man's game, and more fun when it's your fulltime job, whereas you can still become a cop in your 30's and still do that in your 50's.
2. it looks like for the Guard you would have to look out of state, and doing these kinds of jobs in the Guard away from the state where you live and work takes a much bigger toll on both your job/family and your Guard position.

Selections and pipelines have a very high attrition rate, before you start you should be completely honest with yourself: are you doing this because this is what you want to do every day until you can't, or are you doing this to just prove that you can?
Those doing it for the first reason are usually successful, barring major injury.
Those doing it for the second reason usually quit, and if they don't quit and make it through, they typically are not an asset on their team.

If you are past probation and especially if you are a union, you can be given ample time to do your training and have your position back. The employer support in the garden Reserve will hopefully prevent any abuse from happening. Employers claim after your deployment that you don't have a position for you and I remember seeing a lawsuit where one office or came back from deployment and he was able to sue a year or so later when he found out that someone was hired for his position.


So get your probation out of the way with your law enforcement job first. I do remember when I was an officer candidate school, that one of the candidates had to take a break and finish his police academy and he was able to finish the rest of his OCS and he graduated with us even though technically he was with the class before us. So in this instance, the California Army National Guard officer candidate School made accommodations for him. So hopefully you can burn both ends against the middle and do all your training or volunteer to go on missions while you keep your position with the law enforcement civilian career. Again, get your probation out of the way and be a fully fledged police officer or Sheriff first, then go and join your Air National Guard unit.
I once had an unscrupulous civilian employer who got fed up with all my mobilizations and told me to pick between the civilian job or the military but luckily I was mobilized and I didn't go back to that crappy job.

https://www.esgr.mil/