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Interesting article. I wonder if there's evidence that the mindset of a police officer reflects the general public. Sorry to have to generalize here but I've h

Interesting article. I wonder if there's evidence that the mindset of a police officer reflects the general public. Sorry to have to generalize here but I've had a lot of exposure to police over my life as a volunteer EMT and an ex wife who's department was part of a police department. I have a lot of friends who are police officers. They have one thing in common (mostly) - they think they're right about every situation. I don't think the general public thinks the same way. Of course I have no idea if that's a selected behavior or something they learn during their time as police officers. I can certainly see how it's a beneficial behavior from a stress standpoint but we can see how it turns out with respect to these deadly force encounters. I have a lot of respect for law enforcement but also personal knowledge enough that their decision making strategies are not like mine.

pjc50 8y ago
Well, if you had a gun and permission to shoot people for being "uncooperative" or "resisting" or "refusing to obey orders", you'd be right all the time too.
philwelch 8y ago
There's a cognitive bias where bad things stick out more than good things, which is helpful from a problem-solving perspective by helping you focus on problems that need to be solved, but it has a side effect where any job that involves dealing with the public leaves you increasingly convinced that the world is filled with people who are just plain awful at least in some respect. Of course, the world is filled with these people, but not to the proportion it seems. You just remember the bad a lot more easily than the good. Also, police officers tend to disproportionately deal with awful people anyway.
mc32 8y ago
In my youthful interactions with police, the sense I got was they were sure the knew the _law_ correctly. They didn't think they were always right outside of that, but they thought they were always right about the law and the events that unfolded (they might have been giving events their own interpretation to which they assigned certainty). Now, of course, this is typically the meat of the matter when interacting with police, but I'm pointing out that outside of this space, in my experience, they did not presume more knowledge than your average person.
gnu8 8y ago
> They have one thing in common (mostly) - they think they're right about every situation. I don't think the general public thinks the same way. I’ve witnessed a similar phenomenon on HN, where we have no shortage of computer programmers who believe they have solutions for every problem in economics, medicine, politics, and so on. So it must be some sort of generalizable phenomenon.

pjc50 8y ago

Well, if you had a gun and permission to shoot people for being "uncooperative" or "resisting" or "refusing to obey orders", you'd be right all the time too.

philwelch 8y ago

There's a cognitive bias where bad things stick out more than good things, which is helpful from a problem-solving perspective by helping you focus on problems that need to be solved, but it has a side effect where any job that involves dealing with the public leaves you increasingly convinced that the world is filled with people who are just plain awful at least in some respect. Of course, the world is filled with these people, but not to the proportion it seems. You just remember the bad a lot more easily than the good. Also, police officers tend to disproportionately deal with awful people anyway.

mc32 8y ago

In my youthful interactions with police, the sense I got was they were sure the knew the _law_ correctly. They didn't think they were always right outside of that, but they thought they were always right about the law and the events that unfolded (they might have been giving events their own interpretation to which they assigned certainty). Now, of course, this is typically the meat of the matter when interacting with police, but I'm pointing out that outside of this space, in my experience, they did not presume more knowledge than your average person.

gnu8 8y ago

> They have one thing in common (mostly) - they think they're right about every situation. I don't think the general public thinks the same way. I’ve witnessed a similar phenomenon on HN, where we have no shortage of computer programmers who believe they have solutions for every problem in economics, medicine, politics, and so on. So it must be some sort of generalizable phenomenon.