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USA Today says that policing is the 18th most dangerous job in the US. What makes police injuries and deaths notable from other occupations is that “The most c

by zaroth 6y ago

USA Today says that policing is the 18th most dangerous job in the US. What makes police injuries and deaths notable from other occupations is that “The most common cause of workplace fatalities among police officers is direct violence from other people”. It is not just a risky job in general, it is a risky job due to people that would intentionally do them harm, done in service of their community. Everyone is a regular person, but that is why people generally regard police as heroic. In fact, police are expected to act heroically when the situation calls for it. The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting, caught on tape remaining outside while shots were fired, was rightly condemned as not fit for duty. [1] - https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerous-jobs-us-where-fatal-injuries-happen-most-often/38832907/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangero...

monocasa 6y ago
I'd love to see where they got their data. Everything I've seen is that they're most likely to be killed in a self inflicted car accident.
- no_multitudes 6y ago
  It depends how you break up the stats. The total number of officers feloniously killed is a little higher than the number of accidental deaths for recent years, but motor vehicle crashes is typically the largest single category. https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/home https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/home
triceratops 6y ago
> The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting...was rightly condemned as not fit for duty. But then got his job and pension back with the full backing of his union[1][2]. This is what I mean by the system propping up bad cops. If the "vast majority" of cops are heroes, why are they supporting someone who has demonstrated a distinct lack of heroism? Isn't he making the rest of them look bad? Don't they care? 1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fact-check-parkland-officer-who-failed-act-shooting-gets-job-back/5194831002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fac... 2. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article242719216.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/art...
- monocasa 6y ago
  He also got back pay, with back overtime.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    Yeah, I never said I was pro-union, but there was certainly widespread condemnation of that officer’s response.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      So basically no real consequences. I'm sympathetic to people losing their nerve. It's a human reaction and can happen to anyone. But no way should he be allowed to keep his job after he's shown how unfit for it he is. And the fact that the other cops didn't raise a peep over it tells me that most cops are in fact not heroes. Heroes do the right thing even when it's hard, you see. That's not an insult. I would like a society where policing doesn't have to be heroic. It's just a statement of fact.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Fwiw 18 is greater than 15... Did the chicken or the egg come first? Were cops the helpless victims of wanton violence before they started brutalizing poor and minority neighborhoods? Or, has police work gotten more dangerous as police are continually escalating against their desperate communities whom have little left to lose except their lives? Are police fit for duty in America when my barber took a longer training course than an average cop? As the first of first responders police should be competent to deal with any situation. This repo and tens of thousands of incidents going back decades prove, beyond the shadow of adoubt, that police are, on average, incapable of doing what's required of them.
- zaroth 6y ago
  I think your claims are exaggerated beyond reality, but; 1) Police have dangerous jobs, particularly in the inner city, but by no means are they helpless victims of wanton violence. 2) Police do not brutalize poor and minority neighborhoods. Although the overall trend is that violent crime is going down, these neighborhoods have become significantly less safe and less lawful in just a few weeks of reduced police presence, based on recent crime statistics, particularly shootings and murders, but even simple lawlessness like a 4000% increase in fireworks complaints. 3) Police work has generally gotten safer over the last few decades, for example measured in annual officer deaths which peaked near 300 in the 70s and now hovers around 150. [1] 4) Desperate communities which have little left to lose except their lives — I think this is hyperbolic even to describe inner cities where dozens die every weekend from civilian violence, e.g. Chicago’s bloodiest weekend last week where 85 were shot, 24 fatally. These communities by majority polling support greater police presence and funding, not less. 5) I’d say police academy training is fundamentally different than, for example, trade school apprenticeship. The apprenticeship system essentially has you working the job but under some level of supervision, until you get your license at which point you can work independently. The apprenticeship phase is similar to the supervision that officers receive every day in their squad. The key different is officers have a structured rank and rigid reporting structure, you can’t get a police license and then open up your own police shop. The overall police force performs the same function as the apprenticeship framework in trade crafts. Unlike a licensed electrician/plumber/barber, the officer never gets the opportunity to strike off on their own, but it is true that they enter the force as a low-ranking peon with fewer hours of upfront training than the barber who after their 1,000 hours can open their own unsupervised shop. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3AUS_law_enforcement_deaths_in_the_line_of_duty_1791-2016.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_offi...
projectileboy 6y ago
Yes, but in a free society, their job is necessarily difficult and dangerous. In a free society, when a peaceful protest starts to look like some folks may become violent, the response is not supposed to be “welp, time to respond with overwhelming force - I feel possibly threatened.” Now, if you think the police should be compensated accordingly, that’s a different argument, and I may well agree with that argument. But “gee, they have a hard gig” simply doesn’t excuse the responses that we’ve seen over and over and over again. Additionally, these are the responses we’re seeing to what are overwhelmingly a bunch of middle-class white twenty-somethings. Recall that the real issue here is how police in the US deal with people of color, which by any metric is a freaking nightmare.

by zaroth 6y ago

monocasa 6y ago

I'd love to see where they got their data. Everything I've seen is that they're most likely to be killed in a self inflicted car accident.

no_multitudes 6y ago
It depends how you break up the stats. The total number of officers feloniously killed is a little higher than the number of accidental deaths for recent years, but motor vehicle crashes is typically the largest single category. https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/home https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/home

triceratops 6y ago

> The Parkland officer who didn’t enter the school during the shooting...was rightly condemned as not fit for duty. But then got his job and pension back with the full backing of his union[1][2]. This is what I mean by the system propping up bad cops. If the "vast majority" of cops are heroes, why are they supporting someone who has demonstrated a distinct lack of heroism? Isn't he making the rest of them look bad? Don't they care? 1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fact-check-parkland-officer-who-failed-act-shooting-gets-job-back/5194831002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/15/fac... 2. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article242719216.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/art...

monocasa 6y ago
He also got back pay, with back overtime.
- zaroth 6y ago
  Yeah, I never said I was pro-union, but there was certainly widespread condemnation of that officer’s response.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    So basically no real consequences. I'm sympathetic to people losing their nerve. It's a human reaction and can happen to anyone. But no way should he be allowed to keep his job after he's shown how unfit for it he is. And the fact that the other cops didn't raise a peep over it tells me that most cops are in fact not heroes. Heroes do the right thing even when it's hard, you see. That's not an insult. I would like a society where policing doesn't have to be heroic. It's just a statement of fact.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

Fwiw 18 is greater than 15... Did the chicken or the egg come first? Were cops the helpless victims of wanton violence before they started brutalizing poor and minority neighborhoods? Or, has police work gotten more dangerous as police are continually escalating against their desperate communities whom have little left to lose except their lives? Are police fit for duty in America when my barber took a longer training course than an average cop? As the first of first responders police should be competent to deal with any situation. This repo and tens of thousands of incidents going back decades prove, beyond the shadow of adoubt, that police are, on average, incapable of doing what's required of them.

zaroth 6y ago
I think your claims are exaggerated beyond reality, but; 1) Police have dangerous jobs, particularly in the inner city, but by no means are they helpless victims of wanton violence. 2) Police do not brutalize poor and minority neighborhoods. Although the overall trend is that violent crime is going down, these neighborhoods have become significantly less safe and less lawful in just a few weeks of reduced police presence, based on recent crime statistics, particularly shootings and murders, but even simple lawlessness like a 4000% increase in fireworks complaints. 3) Police work has generally gotten safer over the last few decades, for example measured in annual officer deaths which peaked near 300 in the 70s and now hovers around 150. [1] 4) Desperate communities which have little left to lose except their lives — I think this is hyperbolic even to describe inner cities where dozens die every weekend from civilian violence, e.g. Chicago’s bloodiest weekend last week where 85 were shot, 24 fatally. These communities by majority polling support greater police presence and funding, not less. 5) I’d say police academy training is fundamentally different than, for example, trade school apprenticeship. The apprenticeship system essentially has you working the job but under some level of supervision, until you get your license at which point you can work independently. The apprenticeship phase is similar to the supervision that officers receive every day in their squad. The key different is officers have a structured rank and rigid reporting structure, you can’t get a police license and then open up your own police shop. The overall police force performs the same function as the apprenticeship framework in trade crafts. Unlike a licensed electrician/plumber/barber, the officer never gets the opportunity to strike off on their own, but it is true that they enter the force as a low-ranking peon with fewer hours of upfront training than the barber who after their 1,000 hours can open their own unsupervised shop. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States#/media/File%3AUS_law_enforcement_deaths_in_the_line_of_duty_1791-2016.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_offi...

projectileboy 6y ago

Yes, but in a free society, their job is necessarily difficult and dangerous. In a free society, when a peaceful protest starts to look like some folks may become violent, the response is not supposed to be “welp, time to respond with overwhelming force - I feel possibly threatened.” Now, if you think the police should be compensated accordingly, that’s a different argument, and I may well agree with that argument. But “gee, they have a hard gig” simply doesn’t excuse the responses that we’ve seen over and over and over again. Additionally, these are the responses we’re seeing to what are overwhelmingly a bunch of middle-class white twenty-somethings. Recall that the real issue here is how police in the US deal with people of color, which by any metric is a freaking nightmare.