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I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is and what police officers believe the job of the police is. In my mind, police offi

• newman314 11y ago
  I can't upvote this enough. However, even the phrase "law enforcement" implies a different mindset rather than "To serve and to protect (the public)". It seems that phrase got perverted into "to serve and protect (thyself)" instead. Which makes me sad. We need more officers to think like this one. [1] [1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-speaks/story?id=35676207 http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-s...
• theworstshill 11y ago
  Who are you kidding? Vast majority are there for pensions, donuts and occasionally (the 1% of cases) the thrill of the chase.
• knieveltech 11y ago
  I agree with your position and would also like to see officer pay increased to reflect the dangerous nature of their work.
  • newman314 11y ago
    Are you sure about that? There are officers already making a very good salary... http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/article2642161.html#req=employee%2Fsearch%2Fdepartment%3DCA%2520Highway%2520Patrol%2Fyear%3D2014%2Fsort%3Dpay%2Fdirection%3D-1%2Fpage%3D0 http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/arti...
    • 49para 11y ago
      And police officers don't make the list of top 10 most dangerous jobs. Most police officers die in routine traffic accidents. http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-country-tanks/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-c...
      • knieveltech 11y ago
        Fascinating. So in addition to increasing pay for police officers there are other careers that warrant hazard pay. Thanks for pointing that out.
    • knieveltech 11y ago
      Yeah I'm positive. Median in my area for police officers is 50k. While we're at it, teachers, firefighters, and (especially) EMT/Paramedics could use some love.
      • newman314 11y ago
        I'm for pay for performance here. Bonus for successfully descalating situations without taking of lives.
        • viraptor 11y ago
          Paying for performance in a problem fixing job is dangerous. Even if you concentrate on deescalation. We already know of many cases of planted drugs. This would be just an invitation to "Hey, he had drugs (that I totally didn't plant) and I solved the situation without violence, even though he had a gun (that I also totally didn't plant)".
• deleted 11y ago
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  • jonlucc 11y ago
    In the 3 cities I see most, yes. They almost always wear a "second-chance vest" under their uniform.
    • jcrites 11y ago
      (Oops; didn't see that you'd replied before I deleted my comment. My deleted comment asked whether cops routinely wear body armor. I figured I could research that on my own rather than ask.)
• crusso 11y ago
  the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that I think that forums heavy with computer desk jockeys like HN tend to throw this idea around too casually. If outsiders kept callously telling us "you signed up for it knowing that you would work 80 hours a week" or "you signed up for it knowing that your stock options would probably be worthless", we'd be up in arms and demanding that no one should be treated that way. Yet we expect officers to put themselves into situations where they'll be hurt or injured unnecessarily. Take, for example, the Eric Garner case: "They didn't need 5 officers to tackle that guy who was resisting arrest". Really? That was a big dude. If he had decided to start punching; officers could have suffered knocked-out teeth, irreparably damaged eye sockets, and broken bones. Can you imagine going to work every day where the public expectation is that the risk of your knocked-out teeth when confronting someone resisting arrest is perfectly acceptable? There are very few jobs I would never do, but being a police officer is one of them. The public is just way too callous in thinking that it's okay for you to be injured or killed because "you signed up for it". [grammar fix edit]
  • Mithaldu 11y ago
    Saying "it's dangerous" doesn't mean "accept being hurt or killed", just the same as saying "they'll expect 80 hours a week" or "stock options may be worthless" don't mean "accept being abused and left poor". It means "make sure your contract guarantees hours or appropiate payment for extra hours before you sign". It means "research the markets and the startup and demand proper pay if it looks bad". It means "make sure the citizens are safe, make sure you are safe, but don't pretend that killing someone is anything but the last resort when you failed to properly address a tactical situation".
  • themartorana 11y ago
    Are you justifying unnecessary force and unnecessary force multipliers by invoking hypothetical situations? This is madness. When any hypothetical situation is a valid excuse for use of force, all uses of force will fall back on hypothetical situations as justification. And most do, when it comes to the police and use of force. Have you ever seen the South Park episode where they forbid the killing of animals unless in self defense, so hunters shout "it's coming right for us!" before lighting them up with automatic gun fire? Yeah, this is like that.
• stillsut 11y ago
  "I know that people wouldn't usually rap this But I got the facts to back this Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets" For the criminals creating urban chaos, they don't expect to live to 25 years old. However the police do have a reasonable expectation to live to see their kids grow up, and that means they can't get into 50/50 situations with borderline suicidal gunmen. I think all us sheep on HN will rue the day the good guys are selected for low-testosterone personality.
  • mcguire 11y ago
    "I think all us sheep on HN will rue the day the good guys are selected for low-testosterone personality." Certainly. That is, if you can give us a way to separate the good guys from the bad guys.
• JshWright 11y ago
  Let me start off by saying I agree with you (if you're bored, crawl through my HN history and you'll find some very strong condemnations of certain LEO practices). However... let me also explore a different perspective on this. Do you feel the same way about paramedics and firefighters? We choose to put ourselves in harms way for the sake of others. Heroic, right? No... not really... My first priority on any scene is to go home to my wife and daughter at the end of the day. In fact, my priorities (usually...) are me, then my crew, then you. Firefighting is not without risk, but in reality, modern firefighting is very conservative, and growing more so every year. There are practical reasons for this though. When a cop or a firefighter is out of the fight, they're not doing anyone any good. In fact, they are now causing a division of resources in the operation as they have now become someone else we need to rescue. I am my first priority because I can't do anyone any good if I'm injured. My crew is my second priority because they are the ones that are going to take care of me if things go sideways. Keeping those priorities straight is what maximizes our effectiveness in preserving life. I realize this comparison is not perfect (it's generally easy enough to identify fire vs innocent civilians), and I am by no means excusing the military mindset of many modern police forces, but I hope that gives you some insight into the mindset behind some of the tactics used.
  • tghw 11y ago
    The people you are helping are already in peril, and only remain in that peril if the situation is not safe enough for a first responder to reach them. That seems eminently reasonable, and I don't think there's any expectation to ignore overwhelming risk to yourself to get to someone. But for someone who is, say, selling cigarettes illegally, their life is not in peril until a police officer takes it upon himself to put that person in a choke hold or take other potentially deadly action. It's especially galling when the officer's life and safety was never in danger.
    • JshWright 11y ago
      I think the distinction is in the ability to perceive the risk. A burning building is a burning building (ok... there's actually a lot that going into assessing the risk posed by a fire in a building, but you get the idea...). A potential confrontation with someone selling cigarettes is an unknown. Odds are, it's not going to be a problem at all. However, there is a small (but non-trivial) chance that it will become a violent encounter (even with fantastic deescalation skills). Given that unpredictability, the safest course of action, it makes sense to have enough manpower on handle to safely deal with a violent encounter. That being said, the cops in Eric Garner's case did not attempt any deescalation at all (quite the opposite, in fact). The resources on scene were not the issue, the rapid escalation was the issue. Even at that, it was not the 'chokehold' that killed Eric Garner. It was being placed on his stomach, with his arms behind his back. It's difficult for anyone to breathe in that position, and _very_ difficult for someone of Eric Garner's size. The fight dramatically increased his body's need to get oxygen (and more importantly, get rid of carbon dioxide), and then he was placed in a position that made it all but impossible for his body to do that. We have known for years that this is a dangerous thing to do, yet it happened anyway. Even the EMTs on scene later ignored the risks of his position, and in my opinion, are just as culpable in his death.
• Nadya 11y ago
  Where do you think LEO come from? Do you think if one dies there are 10 more people willing to stand in their place? Reducing officer casualties is a must in order to even have law enforcement at all. To enforce the law there needs to actually be people to enforce the law. Can't do that if a number of them are dying on the job which also hurt future employment rates.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • Nadya 11y ago
    There is some disagreement with what I am saying being factual reality. Can anyone point me to the nearest LEO tree? Or maybe there's a secret VAT lab growing clones to be our guardians of the future that I'm unaware of? Dead officers aren't easy to replace. They aren't goldfish. You can't just go out and buy a new one to replace the old one. Expecting them to take needless risks that end up with them dead isn't a realistic option if you expect to maintain a police force. There is a reason Kyle Dinkheller's video is used in training. "Hesitate to use deadly force. Don't hesitate so much that you end up dead." There is a huge difference between putting your life on the line and throwing it away. Putting it on the line is having a gun drawn on them. Throwing it away is letting the other person take the first shot. It seems many here are asking they not only put their lives on the line, but that they throw them away too.
    • Retra 11y ago
      Most of the police I've met came right out of the military. And there are plenty of people in the military with skills not marketable anywhere else.
• vacri 11y ago
  > They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. This is patent nonsense. Emergency workers (police, fire, paramedic, rescue... even nurses) takes a lot of training (and good ones need a lot of experience) and are hard to replace. They can't be considered disposable, and preserving themselves is the first order of business. A civilian might have an emergency once in a year (usually less). Emergency workers have them every day, usually multiple times. The first order of business of any emergency worker should be protecting themselves. Police are not bodyguards - they're there to keep order in society, not to take a bullet for you.
• karmacondon 11y ago
  With this attitude, no one will want to be a police officer. Or at least, no one who has any other reasonable options. That means when someone has to call 911, either no one will show up or the person who shows up won't be the highest caliber individual. It sounds like you expect everyone who becomes a police officer to be willing to dive in front of a bullet like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. There are noble and heroic people who are willing to do this, but they are few and far between. Most of police work is routine and boring: mediating domestic disputes, filing paperwork, processing evidence, etc. We need people to do all of those things without having to be willing to sacrifice their lives for strangers.
  • thanksgiving 11y ago
    I'm sorry but a cop that stands by and does nothing when duty calls is worse than a cop that goes on a shooting spree killing people. (To go off on a tangent, people who don't want to do a job, shouldn't have to do the job to not starve to death. Any employee/worker/volunteer/service member whatever should not have to take a job just to put food on the table. This is where some kind of a basic income should come in. I'd rather have a smaller police force of people who belong there than a bigger force of people who do not. and no I am not saying sacrifice life but at least show some initiative in something other than writing tickets and meeting quotas. http://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-who-subdued-killer/ http://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-p...
• analyst74 11y ago
  There is no universal public belief that police are guardians. People who are protected by police think they are guardians; but people suppressed by police probably don't have that belief. That's why there is so much controversy around police violence, because some people genuinely believe police are protectors, and they have no reason to suspect otherwise based on their own and threir aquaintances' experiences.
• SN76477 11y ago
  This is correct. And reinforces my personal belief that it is policy that needs to be repaired. For the most part, these officers that are doing bad things are only acting in ways that have been encouraged. Until we can make an adjustment, we will continue to see police on people violence.