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It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty: https://www.odmp.org/search/year https://www.odmp.org/search/year and

It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty: https://www.odmp.org/search/year https://www.odmp.org/search/year and many more than that receive serious injuries, even permanent spinal damage: One cop was paralyzed from the neck down in Vegas protests: https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/14/police-officer-shot-during-las-vegas-protest-paralyzed/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/14/police-officer-shot-... Retired police chief killed at 77 by looters in St. Louis: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired-st-louis-police-captain-killed-outside-looted-pawn-shop https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired-st-l... A federal agent was killed in Oakland in connection with the protests: https://patch.com/california/alameda/fbi-ids-federal-agent-43-fatally-shot-oakland-courthouse https://patch.com/california/alameda/fbi-ids-federal-agent-4... The one-sided narrative against cops is getting out of hand. It's an extremely dangerous job and you cannot treat gangsters with kid gloves while they pack serious weaponry. It's a joke to talk of nerfing or defunding the police for the handful of bad incidents that occur meanwhile over 15K people a year are murdered in the country. It's completely disproportionate and not aligned with statistical reality: cops often have to make split second life or death decisions and they don't get a second shot.

fuckyah 6y ago
This! Thank you for this 100% spot on comment!
alex_young 6y ago
Policing is not a dangerous job. According to the FBI, which publishes the data in the Uniform Crime Reports, from 1980–2018, an average of 85 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed per year. In 2018 there were 686,665 police in the US.
- Titanous 6y ago
  This is correct. In fact, landscaping and groundskeeping workers (among many other categories) suffered more fatalities than police officers in 2018 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    Sorta meaningless unless you cross it against the actual count of people in the occupation (estimates in this list https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-detailed-occupation.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-detailed-occupation.ht...) I don't really want to get into the actual meat of the argument, but please use per-capita death stats so the numbers are actually comparable.
    - Titanous 6y ago
      Sure, I combined the two tables in the spreadsheet linked below, and there are many occupations that are more dangerous than police officer if we look at fatalities by per-capita occupation. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dXtv2wnutujfXWUHB9Bmr-IWnNR2La8Q-ccr-Ikh2oM/edit#gid=971462432 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dXtv2wnutujfXWUHB9Bm...
      - oh_sigh 6y ago
        This sounds like one arguing that playing russian roulette isn't dangerous, because one can name more dangerous activities. The fact that deep sea fishing is ultra dangerous doesn't mean that being a cop isn't dangerous.
        triceratops 6y ago
        "It's a dangerous job" is given as a reason for why so much policy brutality occurs. Pointing out how dangerous it is relative to other professions is absolutely germane.
        oh_sigh 6y ago
        That's exactly my point, and no it isn't. Policing isn't less dangerous because deep sea fishing is really dangerous. If someone said "It's the most dangerous job", then it would be germane. Here's the same logic applied elsewhere: It's not dangerous to be a black man in America. What's really dangerous is to be a El Salvadoran living in El Salvador(the country with the highest murder rate in the world).
- stock_toaster 6y ago
  Not even in the top 10, apparently. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-according-to-bls-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-i...
- jacoblambda 6y ago
  I'd be interested to see a breakdown of deaths, injuries, and trauma(PTSD and such) per capita for police officers versus various US Armed Forces MOSes as well as common civilian trades/occupations. I imagine in general it's safer in most regards than many trades and MOSes but until I see the data I wouldn't want to make an actual assertion. I'd put this together myself if I felt competent enough to do this properly but by no means am I a data scientist or anyone actually qualified to do this.
- Aloha 6y ago
  in 2019 there were a mere 89 deaths, and 41 one of those were vehicle accidents.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  That's only a function of how good they are at what they do. They have to engage in over 10 million incidents a year. Any one of those could be a routine traffic stop that suddenly turns into a gang bust and an attempt is made on their own life. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're a target. Contrast that with your average aeron chair programmer and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous. Edit: It's number 15 and only because 2019 was a near record low year, following decades of decline and improved equipment and training. That's a function of how good they are. And if you make them worse or non-existent, crime will go up. While the construction industry is accidentally dangerous, cops are victims of intentional violence and hatred. They have to deal with drugged out, abusive, angry people all the time. They have to console rape victims. They have to help assess suicides, murders, deadly car accidents and all kinds of unpleasant bullshit. They see death on the job every single day. It's not a walk in the park. It causes unbelievable stress (especially in high crime districts) and it pays 1/3 of what a junior JS dev makes and they don't get stock options or grants It's 5x more deadly than average occupation and 6x more injurious. It also causes loads of psychological and emotional stress because they have to deal with people going through some of the worst episodes of their lives...all the time. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Their job is not more dangerous than a pizza delivery driver.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    Pizza delivery drivers have to deliver over 10 million pizzas a year. Any one of those deliveries could be cut short by a drunk driver that causes a head-on collision at 60 miles per hour. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're at risk. Contrast that with your average cop issuing citations and filling out paperwork and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
- downerending 6y ago
  I'm guessing that that cop in Vegas that was just paralyzed for life by some "protester" would not agree with you. You don't have to be killed "feloniously" to be dead. And you don't have to be killed at all to have your life destroyed.
carapace 6y ago
I consider police to be heroes. But that's not what we're seeing here. The sides here are decent folk (police and protesters) against the racists and the violent criminals (police and rioters and looters). And the police agree: "Three big California police unions release national reform plan to remove racist officers" https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/3-big-California-police-unions-unveil-national-15339228.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/3-big-California... Their plan includes "a national database of former police officers fired for gross misconduct that would prevent other agencies from hiring them."
- Miner49er 6y ago
  The police have never done anything for me, and I can't think of a time they've done anything for anyone I know. I don't really see how they are heros. I can't even think of things they regularly do that can be called heroic? I know they do some good stuff, but nothing that comes close to the level of "hero" in my opinion. Firefighters, EMTs, nurses, and doctors are all examples of actual heros, IMO.
  - kipchak 6y ago
    Isn't being the stick that causes laws to have meaning a good thing? A law is only words unless there's someone who will inflict a penalty if you don't follow it.
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      There are too many laws. If there are too many laws then their monopoly on violence becomes tyrannical.
    - fzeroracer 6y ago
      You're right that a 'law is only words unless there's someone who will inflict a penalty'. The question we've seen over the past few weeks however is 'who watches the watchmen?' The answer is, apparently, nobody. The police should not be above the law they're enforcing. The only thing that's changed is that with the mass adoption of smart phones we're able to see from multiple angles how deep the corruption goes.
barneygale 6y ago
This is not a case of a few bad apples. 75 year old man thrown to the floor for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4f4dXXbfEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4f4dXXbfEg Two of the officers responsible were suspended. In response, the /ENTIRE DEPARTMENT/ resigned: https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-emergency-response-team-quits-in-solidarity-of-cops/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-emergency-response-tea... American police need to be disarmed and fired. The idea of a professional police force (especially an /armed/ police force) makes about as much sense as a professional jury service.
- trabant00 6y ago
  How do you provide security and protection in absence of police?
- GhostVII 6y ago
  I think it's a case of several bad departments/cities/states. The response from the San Francisco PD (for example) was very different from Seattle. Policing is very different from state to state, and police cultures are very different across departments. Treating all police in the US as a single entity doesn't make much sense.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  You sure about all of that? Those 50 some police did not resign from being police. They resigned from emergency response duties because they were shown that their dept will not support them. There is also more to that “poor 75yo man” story. He is a professional agitator with a now-deleted social media history of hating the police, despite this hatred he showed up hours early before police did with a police motorcycle helmet he wanted to return because it was the right thing to do, this stated by a Buffalo/NPR reporter who he happened to be there with, while BLM activists knew/recognized him as an agitator and told him to go home, asking him why he was there and replied a few times “just for fun”, then in the full video you can see he is using he is using his phone to scan over police radios (supposedly to skim Bluetooth advertising addresses and RSSI correlation, to get someone information to listen in on private band police traffic), all of this while not wearing a mask up until the interaction with police when suddenly he has “two” masks, one which appears mouth guard of some sorts with a mask over that. But whatever... it’s a lot easier to just say the police beat this guy (pushed him back from an advancing police line) https://twitter.com/ConservRachel/status/1268998560412033025?s=20 https://twitter.com/ConservRachel/status/1268998560412033025... https://twitter.com/PimpG18/status/1269328910988255232/photo/1 https://twitter.com/PimpG18/status/1269328910988255232/photo... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CubkyIzygQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CubkyIzygQ https://twitter.com/Sep112001/status/1269696080230350849/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Sep112001/status/1269696080230350849/pho...
joshribakoff 6y ago
The post is a huge list of links of police brutality on innocent protestors, bystanders, and media well within their rights. This post has nothing to do with how the police treat "gangsters", unless you mean something different by that word.
- pixelpoet 6y ago
  Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police. I think it would be much more productive and realistic to have a really deep study of how policing in America is different from other countries, and what can be done to normalise it. America is pretty gun crazy, and that doesn't make a cop's life any easier. The flip side of that is that some gun crazy people become cops, and shoot people on their knees with weapons engraved with "you're fucked": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
  - nlh 6y ago
    > Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police. This is a classic example of bad / misleading marketing on behalf of a reform movement. The "Defund the Police" movement has been poorly named. Yes, there are absolutely some folks on the extreme who truly want to disband the police and live in a place without police, but by and large, the major of people who are supporting this movement mean something else: Defund == defund the CURRENT police organizational structure (militarized, etc.), reallocate funding for things like homeless support, domestic checks, etc. to other departments better suited to handle them, and KEEP a policing organization which is responsible for a much narrower scope of duty with a reformatted training program, etc. It should be branded "Reboot the Police", not "Defund the Police"...
    - baggy_trough 6y ago
      If that's really what it is, calling it "Defund" is like marketing Coke by calling it "Shitty Sugar Water" and then issuing a 10 page explainer that says "Shit not included".
plugger 6y ago
> It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty From your own link it shows less than 200 deaths of police per year from the last five years. Hundreds as you've used it imho is misleading. Furthermore those stats include accidents which makes them even more misleading. Do you honestly think deaths from cancer related to 9/11 should "count" in the context of this debate? And yet they closely trail and sometimes even eclipse the death of cops by gunfire in the past 5 years. I do agree that it's a dangerous job but I don't agree that they're "required" to be heavy handed because of "gangsters" with "serious weaponry". The weaponry issue is a gun control one, not a "gangsters" one. There's absolutely NO NEED for so many ARs over there. NONE WHAT-SO-EVER. And I say this as a reformed red-stater expat who had a AK under my bed as a teenager and a 40 smith in the night stand. From my perspective I think the narrative for cops is disproportionate and out of hand. The ample, arguably overwhelming, footage of cops beating, maiming, shooting, and killing people in the past month alone is ridiculous and should be evidence enough that the police have lost their way. Instead you're in here defending them in spite of overwhelming video evidence to the contrary. In Australia and NZ the police are legally bound to these key principles. • Police should only use force that is reasonable, necessary, proportionate and appropriate to the circumstances. • Police should use no more force than is reasonably necessary for the safe and effective performance of their duties. • Individual police are accountable and responsible for their use of force and must be able to justify their actions at law Do you think the video below is a good example of the use of proportionate force? Do you think that shooting was justified? https://twitter.com/i/status/1272177941519257600 https://twitter.com/i/status/1272177941519257600 On a related note I found this an interesting read. https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759 https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard...
ViViDboarder 6y ago
I disagree. The protests and the narrative around them are about highlighting injustice. In those examples, I’m fairly confident the perpetrators will be arrested and likely justice will be served. In the first two, arrests have already been made and they’ve been charged. Meanwhile, those that murdered Breonna Taylor are still free despite the fact that the police know exactly who the perpetrators were. We want justice for all.
Miner49er 6y ago
When someone kills a police officer, they are basically garunteed life in prison or death. When a cop kills someone, they almost always go unpunished, no matter how unjustified it was.
- tejtm 6y ago
  They get automatic mandatory paid leave, kinda exactly like extra vacation. I would not be shocked to see flights booked in advance.
titzer 6y ago
The fact that people instantly go to both-sidesing this is absolutely infuriating. This isn't some kind of red-team/blue-team dynamic bullshit sports thing. Police officers are the designated empowered representatives of the state and they absolutely must follow the law. There is no rule of law if they can beat your ass and kill you and then hide behind a wall of denial, a police union, unaccountable processes, and phalanx of defenders like this. Police officers die in the line of duty. Yep. It's a dangerous job. You know who else dies in the line of duty? Truck drivers. Truck drivers die at 2x the rate of police officers in America. Do they get a free pass for beating the shit out of people and killing them? Hell no.
js2 6y ago
It’s about 100 officers a year in the U.S. About half are homicides and the other half are car accidents on the job. It doesn’t rank in the top 10 most dangerous jobs (per capita) in the U.S. according to the BLS. The number of deaths will be much higher this year, at least double, due to COVID19 deaths. The job pays well and comes with a pension. It’s nearly impossible to get fired and if you do get fired, most officers get rehired elsewhere. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-number-of-u-s-police-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty-increased-last-year-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-nu... https://www.policeone.com/coronavirus-covid-19/articles/covid-19-law-enforcement-deaths-3ftkdPnVffq55iHU/ https://www.policeone.com/coronavirus-covid-19/articles/covi...
- mjfl 6y ago
  honestly the whole "being a police officer is not even a dangerous job" is really non-intuitive, which probably means it's wrong. Being a police officer is a dangerous job, but through thorough training and institutional experience, they've managed to lean how to keep themselves safe in actively dangerous situations. Landscapers and truck drivers never have to wrestle a large, non-compliant man into handcuffs or talk down domestic dispute that turned into a potential murder suicide. Software engineers who sit on their computers all day and try to backseat drive on these issues should probably be dragged into the streets and set on fire.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    If the police are so well trained how do we have 700 videos of police brutality within the span of maybe 3 weeks? Why do so many rapes go uninvestigated much less brought to trial? Why is it legal for police to coerce people they’ve detained into sex in many states? Why does civil forfeiture exist? Why are police not legally obligated to 1) know the law, 2) protect people?
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Wouldn't landscapers and truck drivers also be trained to handle the most common dangerous situations in their respective occupations? Are they just more careless?
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Being a cop is less dangerous than being a pizza delivery driver, and pizza delivery guys don't get guaranteed pensions and a union to protect them when they purposefully beat the living crap out of someone because they had a bad day.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Pizza delivery driving is a dangerous profession because pizza delivery drivers are frequently racing to improve their tips and delivery numbers and drive dangerously, meaning they frequently cause their own deaths[0]: > Of course, when a pizza delivery driver is injured in a car accident, it is not usually an isolated event; other drivers and passengers are also involved. All too often, the accident is caused by the delivery worker’s negligence. They are racing for tips, trying to uphold the company’s reputation for service, aiming for positive feedback at work, or they are simply checked out and bored because they spend so much time in the car. Yes, cops frequently kill themselves in traffic accidents as well, but the difference is that they are usually not rushing to a place to put a few dollars in their pocket - but rushing to a place to protect or help someone who called upon them. [0]https://southfloridainjurylawfirm.com/pizza-companies-take-responsibility-delivery-driver-tragedies/ https://southfloridainjurylawfirm.com/pizza-companies-take-r...
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Gotta chase those Civil Forfeiture tips.
triceratops 6y ago
It's not clear to me why "Policing is dangerous" means things like strangling handcuffed prisoners, raping detainees, attacking journalists and peaceful protestors, and stealing cash and other valuables (i.e. civil forfeiture) and so on have to be tolerated. None of these are "split second life or death decisions". Just as crimes against police are more serious than crimes against civilians (rightly, IMO), crimes by police should also be more serious.

fuckyah 6y ago

This! Thank you for this 100% spot on comment!

alex_young 6y ago

Policing is not a dangerous job. According to the FBI, which publishes the data in the Uniform Crime Reports, from 1980–2018, an average of 85 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed per year. In 2018 there were 686,665 police in the US.

Titanous 6y ago
This is correct. In fact, landscaping and groundskeeping workers (among many other categories) suffered more fatalities than police officers in 2018 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Sorta meaningless unless you cross it against the actual count of people in the occupation (estimates in this list https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-detailed-occupation.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-detailed-occupation.ht...) I don't really want to get into the actual meat of the argument, but please use per-capita death stats so the numbers are actually comparable.
  - Titanous 6y ago
    Sure, I combined the two tables in the spreadsheet linked below, and there are many occupations that are more dangerous than police officer if we look at fatalities by per-capita occupation. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dXtv2wnutujfXWUHB9Bmr-IWnNR2La8Q-ccr-Ikh2oM/edit#gid=971462432 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dXtv2wnutujfXWUHB9Bm...
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      This sounds like one arguing that playing russian roulette isn't dangerous, because one can name more dangerous activities. The fact that deep sea fishing is ultra dangerous doesn't mean that being a cop isn't dangerous.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        "It's a dangerous job" is given as a reason for why so much policy brutality occurs. Pointing out how dangerous it is relative to other professions is absolutely germane.
        oh_sigh 6y ago
        That's exactly my point, and no it isn't. Policing isn't less dangerous because deep sea fishing is really dangerous. If someone said "It's the most dangerous job", then it would be germane. Here's the same logic applied elsewhere: It's not dangerous to be a black man in America. What's really dangerous is to be a El Salvadoran living in El Salvador(the country with the highest murder rate in the world).
stock_toaster 6y ago
Not even in the top 10, apparently. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-according-to-bls-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-i...
jacoblambda 6y ago
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of deaths, injuries, and trauma(PTSD and such) per capita for police officers versus various US Armed Forces MOSes as well as common civilian trades/occupations. I imagine in general it's safer in most regards than many trades and MOSes but until I see the data I wouldn't want to make an actual assertion. I'd put this together myself if I felt competent enough to do this properly but by no means am I a data scientist or anyone actually qualified to do this.
Aloha 6y ago
in 2019 there were a mere 89 deaths, and 41 one of those were vehicle accidents.
chrisco255 6y ago
That's only a function of how good they are at what they do. They have to engage in over 10 million incidents a year. Any one of those could be a routine traffic stop that suddenly turns into a gang bust and an attempt is made on their own life. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're a target. Contrast that with your average aeron chair programmer and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous. Edit: It's number 15 and only because 2019 was a near record low year, following decades of decline and improved equipment and training. That's a function of how good they are. And if you make them worse or non-existent, crime will go up. While the construction industry is accidentally dangerous, cops are victims of intentional violence and hatred. They have to deal with drugged out, abusive, angry people all the time. They have to console rape victims. They have to help assess suicides, murders, deadly car accidents and all kinds of unpleasant bullshit. They see death on the job every single day. It's not a walk in the park. It causes unbelievable stress (especially in high crime districts) and it pays 1/3 of what a junior JS dev makes and they don't get stock options or grants It's 5x more deadly than average occupation and 6x more injurious. It also causes loads of psychological and emotional stress because they have to deal with people going through some of the worst episodes of their lives...all the time. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Their job is not more dangerous than a pizza delivery driver.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  Pizza delivery drivers have to deliver over 10 million pizzas a year. Any one of those deliveries could be cut short by a drunk driver that causes a head-on collision at 60 miles per hour. They don't have the luxury of foresight of knowing if they're coming home today or not. They know they're at risk. Contrast that with your average cop issuing citations and filling out paperwork and I'd say their job is incredibly fucking dangerous.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
downerending 6y ago
I'm guessing that that cop in Vegas that was just paralyzed for life by some "protester" would not agree with you. You don't have to be killed "feloniously" to be dead. And you don't have to be killed at all to have your life destroyed.

carapace 6y ago

I consider police to be heroes. But that's not what we're seeing here. The sides here are decent folk (police and protesters) against the racists and the violent criminals (police and rioters and looters). And the police agree: "Three big California police unions release national reform plan to remove racist officers" https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/3-big-California-police-unions-unveil-national-15339228.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/3-big-California... Their plan includes "a national database of former police officers fired for gross misconduct that would prevent other agencies from hiring them."

Miner49er 6y ago
The police have never done anything for me, and I can't think of a time they've done anything for anyone I know. I don't really see how they are heros. I can't even think of things they regularly do that can be called heroic? I know they do some good stuff, but nothing that comes close to the level of "hero" in my opinion. Firefighters, EMTs, nurses, and doctors are all examples of actual heros, IMO.
- kipchak 6y ago
  Isn't being the stick that causes laws to have meaning a good thing? A law is only words unless there's someone who will inflict a penalty if you don't follow it.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    There are too many laws. If there are too many laws then their monopoly on violence becomes tyrannical.
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    You're right that a 'law is only words unless there's someone who will inflict a penalty'. The question we've seen over the past few weeks however is 'who watches the watchmen?' The answer is, apparently, nobody. The police should not be above the law they're enforcing. The only thing that's changed is that with the mass adoption of smart phones we're able to see from multiple angles how deep the corruption goes.

barneygale 6y ago

This is not a case of a few bad apples. 75 year old man thrown to the floor for no reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4f4dXXbfEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4f4dXXbfEg Two of the officers responsible were suspended. In response, the /ENTIRE DEPARTMENT/ resigned: https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-emergency-response-team-quits-in-solidarity-of-cops/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/buffalo-emergency-response-tea... American police need to be disarmed and fired. The idea of a professional police force (especially an /armed/ police force) makes about as much sense as a professional jury service.

trabant00 6y ago
How do you provide security and protection in absence of police?
GhostVII 6y ago
I think it's a case of several bad departments/cities/states. The response from the San Francisco PD (for example) was very different from Seattle. Policing is very different from state to state, and police cultures are very different across departments. Treating all police in the US as a single entity doesn't make much sense.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
You sure about all of that? Those 50 some police did not resign from being police. They resigned from emergency response duties because they were shown that their dept will not support them. There is also more to that “poor 75yo man” story. He is a professional agitator with a now-deleted social media history of hating the police, despite this hatred he showed up hours early before police did with a police motorcycle helmet he wanted to return because it was the right thing to do, this stated by a Buffalo/NPR reporter who he happened to be there with, while BLM activists knew/recognized him as an agitator and told him to go home, asking him why he was there and replied a few times “just for fun”, then in the full video you can see he is using he is using his phone to scan over police radios (supposedly to skim Bluetooth advertising addresses and RSSI correlation, to get someone information to listen in on private band police traffic), all of this while not wearing a mask up until the interaction with police when suddenly he has “two” masks, one which appears mouth guard of some sorts with a mask over that. But whatever... it’s a lot easier to just say the police beat this guy (pushed him back from an advancing police line) https://twitter.com/ConservRachel/status/1268998560412033025?s=20 https://twitter.com/ConservRachel/status/1268998560412033025... https://twitter.com/PimpG18/status/1269328910988255232/photo/1 https://twitter.com/PimpG18/status/1269328910988255232/photo... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CubkyIzygQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CubkyIzygQ https://twitter.com/Sep112001/status/1269696080230350849/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Sep112001/status/1269696080230350849/pho...

joshribakoff 6y ago

The post is a huge list of links of police brutality on innocent protestors, bystanders, and media well within their rights. This post has nothing to do with how the police treat "gangsters", unless you mean something different by that word.

pixelpoet 6y ago
Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police. I think it would be much more productive and realistic to have a really deep study of how policing in America is different from other countries, and what can be done to normalise it. America is pretty gun crazy, and that doesn't make a cop's life any easier. The flip side of that is that some gun crazy people become cops, and shoot people on their knees with weapons engraved with "you're fucked": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
- nlh 6y ago
  > Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police. This is a classic example of bad / misleading marketing on behalf of a reform movement. The "Defund the Police" movement has been poorly named. Yes, there are absolutely some folks on the extreme who truly want to disband the police and live in a place without police, but by and large, the major of people who are supporting this movement mean something else: Defund == defund the CURRENT police organizational structure (militarized, etc.), reallocate funding for things like homeless support, domestic checks, etc. to other departments better suited to handle them, and KEEP a policing organization which is responsible for a much narrower scope of duty with a reformatted training program, etc. It should be branded "Reboot the Police", not "Defund the Police"...
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    If that's really what it is, calling it "Defund" is like marketing Coke by calling it "Shitty Sugar Water" and then issuing a 10 page explainer that says "Shit not included".

plugger 6y ago

> It's worth noting hundreds of police officers lose their life a year in the line of duty From your own link it shows less than 200 deaths of police per year from the last five years. Hundreds as you've used it imho is misleading. Furthermore those stats include accidents which makes them even more misleading. Do you honestly think deaths from cancer related to 9/11 should "count" in the context of this debate? And yet they closely trail and sometimes even eclipse the death of cops by gunfire in the past 5 years. I do agree that it's a dangerous job but I don't agree that they're "required" to be heavy handed because of "gangsters" with "serious weaponry". The weaponry issue is a gun control one, not a "gangsters" one. There's absolutely NO NEED for so many ARs over there. NONE WHAT-SO-EVER. And I say this as a reformed red-stater expat who had a AK under my bed as a teenager and a 40 smith in the night stand. From my perspective I think the narrative for cops is disproportionate and out of hand. The ample, arguably overwhelming, footage of cops beating, maiming, shooting, and killing people in the past month alone is ridiculous and should be evidence enough that the police have lost their way. Instead you're in here defending them in spite of overwhelming video evidence to the contrary. In Australia and NZ the police are legally bound to these key principles. • Police should only use force that is reasonable, necessary, proportionate and appropriate to the circumstances. • Police should use no more force than is reasonably necessary for the safe and effective performance of their duties. • Individual police are accountable and responsible for their use of force and must be able to justify their actions at law Do you think the video below is a good example of the use of proportionate force? Do you think that shooting was justified? https://twitter.com/i/status/1272177941519257600 https://twitter.com/i/status/1272177941519257600 On a related note I found this an interesting read. https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759 https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard...

ViViDboarder 6y ago

I disagree. The protests and the narrative around them are about highlighting injustice. In those examples, I’m fairly confident the perpetrators will be arrested and likely justice will be served. In the first two, arrests have already been made and they’ve been charged. Meanwhile, those that murdered Breonna Taylor are still free despite the fact that the police know exactly who the perpetrators were. We want justice for all.

Miner49er 6y ago

When someone kills a police officer, they are basically garunteed life in prison or death. When a cop kills someone, they almost always go unpunished, no matter how unjustified it was.

tejtm 6y ago
They get automatic mandatory paid leave, kinda exactly like extra vacation. I would not be shocked to see flights booked in advance.

titzer 6y ago

The fact that people instantly go to both-sidesing this is absolutely infuriating. This isn't some kind of red-team/blue-team dynamic bullshit sports thing. Police officers are the designated empowered representatives of the state and they absolutely must follow the law. There is no rule of law if they can beat your ass and kill you and then hide behind a wall of denial, a police union, unaccountable processes, and phalanx of defenders like this. Police officers die in the line of duty. Yep. It's a dangerous job. You know who else dies in the line of duty? Truck drivers. Truck drivers die at 2x the rate of police officers in America. Do they get a free pass for beating the shit out of people and killing them? Hell no.

js2 6y ago

It’s about 100 officers a year in the U.S. About half are homicides and the other half are car accidents on the job. It doesn’t rank in the top 10 most dangerous jobs (per capita) in the U.S. according to the BLS. The number of deaths will be much higher this year, at least double, due to COVID19 deaths. The job pays well and comes with a pension. It’s nearly impossible to get fired and if you do get fired, most officers get rehired elsewhere. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-number-of-u-s-police-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty-increased-last-year-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-nu... https://www.policeone.com/coronavirus-covid-19/articles/covid-19-law-enforcement-deaths-3ftkdPnVffq55iHU/ https://www.policeone.com/coronavirus-covid-19/articles/covi...

mjfl 6y ago
honestly the whole "being a police officer is not even a dangerous job" is really non-intuitive, which probably means it's wrong. Being a police officer is a dangerous job, but through thorough training and institutional experience, they've managed to lean how to keep themselves safe in actively dangerous situations. Landscapers and truck drivers never have to wrestle a large, non-compliant man into handcuffs or talk down domestic dispute that turned into a potential murder suicide. Software engineers who sit on their computers all day and try to backseat drive on these issues should probably be dragged into the streets and set on fire.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  If the police are so well trained how do we have 700 videos of police brutality within the span of maybe 3 weeks? Why do so many rapes go uninvestigated much less brought to trial? Why is it legal for police to coerce people they’ve detained into sex in many states? Why does civil forfeiture exist? Why are police not legally obligated to 1) know the law, 2) protect people?
- triceratops 6y ago
  Wouldn't landscapers and truck drivers also be trained to handle the most common dangerous situations in their respective occupations? Are they just more careless?

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

Being a cop is less dangerous than being a pizza delivery driver, and pizza delivery guys don't get guaranteed pensions and a union to protect them when they purposefully beat the living crap out of someone because they had a bad day.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Pizza delivery driving is a dangerous profession because pizza delivery drivers are frequently racing to improve their tips and delivery numbers and drive dangerously, meaning they frequently cause their own deaths[0]: > Of course, when a pizza delivery driver is injured in a car accident, it is not usually an isolated event; other drivers and passengers are also involved. All too often, the accident is caused by the delivery worker’s negligence. They are racing for tips, trying to uphold the company’s reputation for service, aiming for positive feedback at work, or they are simply checked out and bored because they spend so much time in the car. Yes, cops frequently kill themselves in traffic accidents as well, but the difference is that they are usually not rushing to a place to put a few dollars in their pocket - but rushing to a place to protect or help someone who called upon them. [0]https://southfloridainjurylawfirm.com/pizza-companies-take-responsibility-delivery-driver-tragedies/ https://southfloridainjurylawfirm.com/pizza-companies-take-r...
- jacobush 6y ago
  Gotta chase those Civil Forfeiture tips.

triceratops 6y ago

It's not clear to me why "Policing is dangerous" means things like strangling handcuffed prisoners, raping detainees, attacking journalists and peaceful protestors, and stealing cash and other valuables (i.e. civil forfeiture) and so on have to be tolerated. None of these are "split second life or death decisions". Just as crimes against police are more serious than crimes against civilians (rightly, IMO), crimes by police should also be more serious.