16 ms·

Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

• steve76 5y ago
  Conscription often follows liberal reigns of terror. I wonder if anyone has ever thought about drafting the thieves and murderers and bums, but just don't send them to war. I'm not giving you a rifle. Yell at them for two months, and death march them, and then tell them to get out and dump them back in the dumpster behind Home Depot.
• _fat_santa 5y ago
  Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops because it's one of those jobs that I just know I could never ever do, props to those in our society that do that work.
  • slavboj 5y ago
    You're also describing pizza delivery and convenience store cashier, but they don't have the legal ability to beat the shit out of their customers because someone wasn't fast enough / was too fast getting their wallets out.
  • smileysteve 5y ago
    And if you make the incorrect commit in the moment -- or don't check with compliance, then a person is dead, you're on trial by the public; and possibly at risk for jail time. [Addendum: And you're being promoted based on arrests, while sharing frustration with management about compliance, and likely seeing other cowboy coder style actions]
    • ssully 5y ago
      You might be surprised to see the rate at which police are charged and convicted of a crime while on the job. Hint: The number is incredibly low.
      • RankingMember 5y ago
        Yep, most around here just get put on "desk duty", essentially a "hey let's wait for this to all blow over then we'll get you back out there" play.
    • jellicle 5y ago
      You're probably 1000x as likely to be fired for a bad commit than you are to be fired as a cop that has made a poor policing decision. After all, you don't have a union.
    • revscat 5y ago
      However, qualified immunity would protect me from being held responsible.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ct0 5y ago
    My opinion of cops has changed as i've gotten older. I used to think they had nothing better to do but bother me, the youth, but in hindsight they have too much to do and are expected to always be on, alert, and accountable. Something that takes a lot of courage. I respect them more, especially after the extremely divisive events of the past 2-3 years, riots, attacks, etc.
    • hanselot 5y ago
      What riots? I thought they were peaceful protests? The TV man said so.
    • YinglingLight 5y ago
      The force that wishes to sow division within the US is also the force that wishes to create a Federalized 'Police' Force. "These cities whose mayors have coincidentally punished and gutted it's own police force need help, let's create Gestapo v2.0!"
    • sneak 5y ago
      If they were always accountable, this story wouldn’t have run.
    • sidlls 5y ago
      I have a different view. I saw a lot of friends lose their fathers and mothers to the system thanks to dirty cops. Being white in a poor (understatement) neighborhood was an enlightening experience. The police are very powerful voices in local governments. They have too much power. I consider the number of police officers to be inversely proportional to how civilized a place is.
      • caeril 5y ago
        > the number of police officers to be inversely proportional to how civilized a place is. On a police-per-capita basis, that would make US East Coast urban areas substantially less civilized than either Middle America or the West Coast. https://www.governing.com/archive/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html https://www.governing.com/archive/police-officers-per-capita...
  • nradov 5y ago
    Law enforcement can be dangerous but it's only #22 in occupational death rates. Lumberjacks and roofers are far more likely to get killed. https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
    • Disruptive_Dave 5y ago
      Potential for death is a very limited way to measure dangerous occupations/activities.
      • 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
        This comment is supported by data. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5516a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5516a4.htm > Floodwater contact with the nose, mouth, or eye was reported by 51% of firefighters (254 of 500) and 30% of police officers (258 of 864); 52% of police officers (473 of 910) and 63% of firefighters (330 of 524) reported rescuing citizens from flooded areas.
      • fighterpilot 5y ago
        Not sure why you're downvoted. Chronic stress should be considered. Police have a much lower life expectancy than regular people. This could be either selection bias or the impact of chronic stress, and it has little to do with dying as an immediate proximate consequence of the occupation.
        • Disruptive_Dave 5y ago
          It's also just a very un-nuanced way to think about anything. It reminds me of a scene in the show Scrubs where one friend is discussing the difficulties of being a child of divorce. The other comments how he always found it interesting how children with divorced parents think they have the market cornered on issues/problems (paraphrasing here, obviously). Think about all the children who grew up with parents who should have divorced but didn't, thus extending the misery of living in that environment. Living every single moment with PTSD, physical pain, anxiety, and so on shouldn't be diminished because it isn't as romantic and easily captured as death is.
  • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    Imagine just doing your best to help your local community by building some online community notice board, only for a rabid horde to start picketing your house, shouting ALL PROGRAMMERS ARE BASTARDS!!!
    • throwaway2048 5y ago
      The problem is lots of police members don't do their best to help their local communities, and the ones that do stand behind that ones that definitely don't.
      • vinnymac 5y ago
        Most people I know can't distinguish the difference between an anonymous hacker and their IT department. Many roles are vilified by society due to ignorance, not just the police. I hear about the good software developers are doing in the world, much more often than I do the police. That certainly has an effect on everyone's perceptions of these roles in society.
      • thera2 5y ago
        I'm glad to hear you conducted a thorough survey with the millions of good police officers out there and found out they support the bad apples. If only everyone had access to this unprecedented data you have collected, we could finally put this matter to rest.
        • throwaway2048 5y ago
          Who needs statistics when you can see the police acting like this in your own day to day life? That's the reality for a huge amount of people. Bad cops are extremely rarely seriously punished, and its ever rarer for other cops to finger them for it.
    • depaya 5y ago
      Imagine using your online community notice board to murder a member of your community, and when your community tries to hold you accountable your fellow programmers, politicians, and members of your political party around the country circle the wagons and shout PROGRAMMER LIVES MATTER!!!
  • Hamuko 5y ago
    >Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society I'm guessing "our modern society" refers to the United States and not modern society as a whole. As far as I can tell, in my country, only two police officers have died on the job between the years 2000 and 2016. There also seems to be a wide disparity in people who get killed by a police officer. It seems more like it's just inherently more dangerous to be American, whether or not you're a police officer or not.
    • slowhand09 5y ago
      Will you tell us what country that is?
      • Hamuko 5y ago
        Finland. Population of 5.5 million people, around 1.5 million registered firearms (2016).
  • JoshTko 5y ago
    Police work is far less dangerous than common perception. Similar danger as an average construction worker.
    • gpm 5y ago
      Right, but it seems like many of the cops have the same perception. Could be a case where better awareness of the statistics would actually improve the problem. Also though, danger resulting from your own stupidity, from other peoples stupidity, and from other peoples malicious activities, hit different psychologically IME. I'm willing to bet consturction workers get a lot less of the third and a lot more of the first. Maybe something that better training could help with a bit, but probably not fix. Also selecting people who are well suited for that sort of environment.
    • jlack 5y ago
      I would think it varies depending on where you are policing.
  • buildbot 5y ago
    Yep, always live in fear, always be ready to kill anything you are afraid of. Sounds like safe people to be around…
  • zapataband1 5y ago
    Pizza guys are more likely to die on the job. Shout out to the real troops. ACAB.
  • uhtred 5y ago
    In civilized countries where guns aren't ubiquitous most police call outs won't be for something that can kill them. It's bizarre to me that it's just normal in America to expect someone to have a gun. Also, let's not pretend a lot of them aren't doing it for the power trip.
    • smileysteve 5y ago
      I'm of the belief that the US model of policing is incompatible with an expected armed society; This can be seen in police shootings vs armed militias at protests.. If police approached every suspect as if the suspect were open carrying a high powered semi auto pistol, they'd be much less likely to approach suspects as they do. They'd be much more respectful, keep a vehicle between them, and focus on de-escalation as opposed to confrontation. And in a country with 44% of suspects owning a fire arm, to confront someone is the wrong move.
    • ethagnawl 5y ago
      > Also, let's not pretend a lot of them aren't doing it for the power trip. ... and the ability (in many/most? places) to retire after 20 years with ~50% pay. SO many of these people give zero fucks about the communities they're policing because they don't actually live in them and, generally, aren't incentivized to do so. They take these jobs because it's the best of a limited number of options. They then adopt a siege/deployment mentality and bulldoze their way through 20 years of service in order to retire early and open a bar, fuck off to Florida, hang out on their boat, etc.
  • bestcoder69 5y ago
    https://fee.org/articles/by-the-numbers-how-dangerous-is-it-to-be-a-cop/ https://fee.org/articles/by-the-numbers-how-dangerous-is-it-... If that’s the case, objectively, many other jobs deserve more respect first.
  • yardie 5y ago
    We know different cops. The only cops I've met are mildly racist and intellectually lazy. Sure they were occassionally nice to have a beer with. But then they'd start talking and leave no doubt they aren't one of the good apples. Imagine getting a JIRA ticket thinking, "fucking Java bug, again. Only way to fix this is to yank the power cord out." Honestly, delivery people have to put up with way more shit and don't have weapons, the law, nor even a union that has their back. That's a tough job.
    • joejerryronnie 5y ago
      I’ve had a completely different experience than you. Cops who I’ve known have been pretty normal, compassionate people. They routinely tell me the most important skill in effective law enforcement is your ability to communicate.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • Jtsummers 5y ago
        This gets toward the heart of the issue here. (Also, same issue when discussing public education.) Reasonable people living in different places or with different skin colors (as a specific differentiator) in the same place have vastly different experiences with the same individuals or police forces. This creates a fundamental conflict in the discussion/debate because both sides are speaking about it (usually) as if their experience is the experience. Live in many southern US towns and you'll see very different treatment of people based on race which has a natural result that white people view cops as reasonable and polite (their experience) and black or Hispanic people view cops as unreasonable and oppressive (their experience).
      • yardie 5y ago
        Something tells me you don't get detained enough by the police because you "match the description"
        • joejerryronnie 5y ago
  • plank_time 5y ago
    The paranoid mentality that any call could kill you is the exact reason why so many unarmed black people are shot. If you can’t carry out a day’s work without the unreasonable fear that you will be shot, and any action makes you “fear for your life” so that why you emptied your clip into a car, then you shouldn’t be a cop. Cops needs to have cooler heads and this should be measured and verified before allowing them to carry weapons. I’ve heard that ex-military make the best cops because they are used to dangerous situations without panicking. I fully support this because they know that they aren’t GI Joe.
    • blacktriangle 5y ago
      Except "so many unarmed black people are shot" is a lie. A larger per-capita percentages of unarmed whites are shot than blacks.
      • jdmoreira 5y ago
        Could you point me in the general direction of a source? I would like to find more about this.
      • MereInterest 5y ago
        The data do not support your statement. Using the search term "per capita police violence deaths" on DDG in private mode, the links below were results #2 and #4. (Results #1 and #3 were comparisons by country, and are not included here from irrelevance. This is not a case of cherry-picking results.) https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/07/16/the-research-is-clear-white-people-are-not-more-likely-than-black-people-to-be-killed-by-police/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/07/16/the-research-is-cle... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings...
        • tzs 5y ago
          Blacktriangle was specifically talking about unarmed people shot by police. Your links are about shootings that include both armed and unarmed people.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • CapitalistCartr 5y ago
    A couple weeks ago, I needed to shut a business down to add capacity to their electrical service. I arranged it to be late in the day, but once I got involved, I discovered it was an unexpected type of meter can and I can't turn off the power. So I have all the breakers off, no load, undo the load-side wires to the meter, live, and make it all up, also live, the last half hour by flashlight. There's enough power to incinerate me, but I know how to do my job well. I'm probably at greater risk from physical abuse of my body over decades, back and knees. Most jobs are less safe than programming.
  • joejerryronnie 5y ago
    Also imagine that your profession has become so highly politicized that many people actually hate you based on some misguided ideology vs how you have actually comported yourself while on the job. While I respect law enforcement, you couldn’t pay me enough to work in that field. Although . . . big tech is also becoming highly politicized so many of us may find ourselves in the same boat to one degree or another.
  • lmilcin 5y ago
    I don't want to say policing is not hard, every first responder has hard job because they are not sent to people who are completely fine -- usually the situation involves some kind of crime or distress or both. But, the dangers, though present, are IMO largely overstated. There are 700 thousand officers in US and on any given day some of them must necessarily come into trouble. The statistics list about 360 officers getting killed in line of duty, annually. That is 1/700000 chance of getting killed every day, over 30 year career that would amount to 1 in 70 chance of getting killed on duty or about similar as dying from all other types of accidents, including car accidents. Is that small? No, I don't think so, that is nothing to sneeze at. But is still a lot less than dying from some easily preventable diseases. So if you are Police officer and keep eating shit food it might be that the shit food is actually more dangerous to you than your job. Going through Covid is statistically more dangerous than lifetime of being police officer. At least as an officer you are doing this (hopefully) for public good and you know and accept risks. It is also less than probability of dying on some other types of duties. The difference being, that policing is typically done when something already interesting happens with potentially a lot of cameras present on scene, then being investigated. If you go to be a police officer or fireman or military, you understand your choices and the dangers you are facing. It should not be a surprise, nor it should be a reason to kill any person not to your liking, on sight.
• ZoF 5y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20210624104256/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/police-resignations-protests-asheville.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210624104256/https://www.nytim...
• ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong. Sounds like they've got some common ground with the "defund the police" folks, if they'd listen a bit.
  • bserge 5y ago
    I'm guessing it would've been better if they went with "Distribute funds properly" instead of "Defund the police".
    • bena 5y ago
      But they don't want that either. They want to keep everything they have and have other people handle all of that stuff they don't want to.
      • RankingMember 5y ago
        Bit of a broad brush there, innit? Who is "they"?
        • bena 5y ago
          The police. It's funny how you question my use of "they" but not the person I responded to. His "they" isn't broad?
          • RankingMember 5y ago
            He's talking about a known slogan. You're speculating as to what that group "wants".
            • bena 5y ago
              Those slogans describe things the group would want. Your objections are rooted in a bias you aren't willing to admit.
• jaywalk 5y ago
  When one of the two major political parties and their friends in the mainstream media decide to team up and demonize an entire profession...
  • unknown_error 5y ago
    They did a plenty fine job demonizing themselves. A generation of police trained to be militarized against our own citizens and unaccountable to the law, covering each other's misdeeds up with routine impunity? Maybe it's time to rethink how this country does policing. And sometimes that takes a changing of the guard. Not even an ACAB type. I've had several run ins with the police, some positive, some negative. Some of them were extremely friendly and helpful. Others were power hungry and lied through their teeth in court. The profession as we've made it can unfortunately attract people for different reasons, both white knights and bullies. Mass resignations are a natural and probably necessary step towards actual reform. If only we could get congresspeople and Supremes to resign en masse too. This country is long overdue for massive social upheaval.
  • JadeNB 5y ago
    > When one of the two major political parties and their friends in the mainstream media decide to team up and demonize an entire profession... Setting aside as presumably unproductive the discussion of whether Democrats are actually demonizing the police, I think it's fair to say that especially Trump-era Republicans did and do their share of demonizing.
• kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Guys, police are self-abolishing. Victory is within grasp. But seriously. Why is this surprising? This is a completely rational reaction of people who feel they're being unfairly demonized as a group despite most of them being professional and doing their jobs the best they can with the training and incentives they're given. Enjoy the crime wave.
  • _sillymarketing 5y ago
    Lol thanks for dumb take.
    • TheFreim 5y ago
      Please be polite, this is not adding anything to the conversation.
      • bairrd 5y ago
        Enjoy the crime wave seems similarly inflammatory and impolite, but I find HN moderation frequently falls on a certain "if you say something rude/inflammatory but phrase it a certain way it's okay" which drives me up the wall.
        • dfxm12 5y ago
          Yeah, as a meta comment, I've seen personal insults thrown around (including at me) that don't get flagged, but what does get flagged sometimes leaves me baffled.
          • dang 5y ago
            There's inevitably a lot of randomness, given the quantity of things that get posted here. That is probably enough to explain what you're seeing. Flags are mostly by users; moderators don't see most of what gets posted here. We try to review all the flags but that doesn't help if a post doesn't get flagged in the first place. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. If it's something egregious, you can help by flagging it and/or letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com. In any case, there's no consistency of moderation across all the posts, nor can there be. But certainly there's consistency of intent: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Sounds like 'defund the police' is stupid, self-defeating sloganeering that makes no sense given what its apparent settled-upon meaning (only settled upon many months after becoming popular).
  • ijustlovemath 5y ago
    The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. It's only recently that "defund" has been conflated with "abolish," which has always been a very very small niche of the police reform community.
    • roenxi 5y ago
      Is there a consensus committee that announces what 'the community' thinks? Because in my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words. There is always a risk that people chanting "defund the police" mean they want to, simply and literally, defund the police. If they want something different they should be chanting that instead.
      • lostcolony 5y ago
        "There is always a risk" I think there's an easy way to figure out what people mean when they chant a slogan. Talk to them. "In my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words" Well, even if your experience is correct, so what? Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies, including what the current police would turn into, is still removing 100% of the funds from the existing organization and redirecting them. No one is arguing to remove that funding and then setting that money on fire.
        • roenxi 5y ago
          > Talk to them. They'll all have different opinions on what, in the detail, the phrase means. Large political crowds generally can't handle complex ideas. That is why the slogan matters, it is the bit that coordinates what the goal is. > Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies... There are a few options. Major ones include: 1) This project is renaming the police. 2) This project is changing what they do. It probably isn't going to be 1, because then it wouldn't be worth the fuss. So the question is, which responsibilities of the police are we jettisoning here? Because the slogan suggests all of them. "Better funding for mental health" uses quite different syllables from "defund the police". I'm sure there are people with some great ideas in the crowd. But the ones in charge might be the people who believe, literally, that the point here is to defund everything the police do. There is a real risk people mean what they say.
• recursivedoubts 5y ago
  Democracy is said to be the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. However, I note that, from a democratic perspective, it appears that the broader public does not actually want a reduced police force, and this appears to be true across racial lines[1]. So, let us perhaps say, instead: democracy is the theory that the extremely-online elites and activists know what they want, and that the common people deserve to get it good and hard. 1 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx?utm_source=tagrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...
  • mtrower 5y ago
    > So, let us perhaps say, instead: democracy is theory that the extremely-online elites and activists know what they want, and that the common people deserve to get it good and hard. Holding a (small time) elected leadership position, this definitely matches my own observations. I have to deal with the opinions of those I represent on the matters I’m elected to handle quite frequently; the opinions of the few and the loud quite often do not match the opinions and priorities of the majority, but the few and loud do stand out, and the pressure they create gives the illusion of majority opinion. Does this make sense, or am I not expressing myself well?
    • recursivedoubts 5y ago
      obnocracy - rule of the most obnoxious?
      • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Volumocracy - the rule of the loudest.
    • 835Temporary 5y ago
      Interesting. Are you aware of any blog/channel/whatever where I could read honest reports from elected officials on the nuts and bolts of their jobs?
• draw_down 5y ago
  That’s ok, we have “social response squads” now (or whatever they’re called). Those should be even better than police! So we are led to believe. In reality this will just turn into private police/security forces for the rich, and go F yourself for everyone else. Austerity by another name. Mission accomplished.
• bigbillheck 5y ago
  Maybe they can try a really dangerous job next, like delivering pizzas.
• bradklein 5y ago
  Here are some facts from the City of Vallejo, a city of 120,000 people located 30 miles north-east of San Francisco: - Recently featured in ABC's 20/20 show for a "Gone Girl" case were the Vallejo Police Department accused a couple of faking a kidnapping. The woman was sexually assaulted during her kidnapping, and the VPD staged a news conference claiming the whole thing was made up. The city paid the couple millions for the VPD's mistakes. https://abc7news.com/gone-girl-kidnapping-vallejo-police-apologize-for-calling-hoax-2020-tonight-on-abc-ca/10744429/ https://abc7news.com/gone-girl-kidnapping-vallejo-police-apo... - A police officer shot and killed a person riding his bicycle without a helmet, when the person did not stop. The city paid the person's family millions in settlement. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/5-7-million-settlement-reached-in-2018-vallejo-police-shooting-death-of-ronell-foster/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/5-7-million-settlement-r... - Officers practice of celebrating kills with ceremony and badge-tip bending was recently uncovered. https://openvallejo.org/2020/07/28/vallejo-police-bend-badge-tips-to-mark-fatal-shootings/ https://openvallejo.org/2020/07/28/vallejo-police-bend-badge... - Recently fired the Police Union president for destroying police evidence and threatening a journalist. The officer was hired by his father, who was the Police Chief a few years ago. He basically threatened a black journalist who was moving from California to the South of Lynching. https://abc7news.com/vallejo-police-association-union-president-fired-investigation/10495801/ https://abc7news.com/vallejo-police-association-union-presid... - I think one thing a lot of people don't know if how much their local police officer make. Here are the stats for the city of Vallejo, the person costing the city $600K/year in wage and benefit was recently fired. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=vallejo&q=police&y=2019&s=-total https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=vallejo...
  • smhenderson 5y ago
    Just an FYI, your first link, (abc7news), is broken - "PAGE NOT FOUND".
    • bradklein 5y ago
      It should be working now, after refresh.
• danesparza 5y ago
  Nurses have also been quitting in droves in the last year. Specifically, nurses that work at hospitals.
• cochne 5y ago
  I wonder how these numbers correlate to overall resignation numbers in all jobs since those seem to be going up too. I feel it’s part of the larger pattern of covid burnout.
• gregimba 5y ago
  > Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699. 23% of officers leaving in only a year and a half. What kind of impact will this have in 3-5 years as officers who are holding out for pensions also retire?
  • at_a_remove 5y ago
    No amount of furious statistical spin will overcome what will happen in Minneapolis and this time around, people will be watching.
• bmmayer1 5y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks that police officers should be paid more, not less? These should be highly specialized and trained jobs that are hard to get and easy to lose if you're bad at them / criminal -- seems like the reality right now is that they're easy to get and hard to lose.
  • JackPoach 5y ago
    Probably, but so should teachers, nurses, etc. Can you name one occupation outside politics/lawyers where you think people should be paid less?
    • mtrower 5y ago
      Telemarketers. =)
      • JackPoach 5y ago
        When I was a student they used to get minimum wage. You can't go lower than that. Absolutely terrible way to make a living. 'Lucky' for us, it's now mostly pre-recorded robocalls.
  • pp19dd 5y ago
    Yes, but the accounting is not as clear as you'd think. It's a complicated relationship between understrength departments with unfilled vacancies, and overtime budgets. Police officers throughout the country, but especially in cities, tend to supplement large portions of their income through overtime work. It means they're chronically underpaid for what they do throughout the country. And the way they bring themselves to what they want to be making is through exhausting themselves with overwork. In Baltimore, some officers doubled their salaries. Others approached 50%. They averaged 12+ hour shifts per day for weeks. In fy 2019, a BPD sergeant made $260,000. The department went $50 million over budget for overtime. There are virtually entire books written on this, piecemealed in small budget stories throughout USA.
  • only_as_i_fall 5y ago
• hanselot 5y ago
  Wow, this thread has an insane amount of activity. I estimate more than 50% of the replies here are just shaping narrative in a direction. Edit: They are sliding this thread. How did something with this much engagement end up on page 2, when it clearly has some very reasonable content? This has to be deliberate?
• dfxm12 5y ago
  Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong. Yes. Untrained people should not be sent to deal with these issues. Hopefully, this leads to municipalities actually training people to deal with these issues instead of continuing to try to shove cops into obviously non-cop shaped holes.
  • II2II 5y ago
    I doubt that it is that simple. By the time police are called in, it likely is a police issue: a crime has been committed or there is an imminent threat of violence. Having specially trained people to deal with those issues may marginally improve the situation, but they will end up being the police in all but name. The blame will be shifted away from the police and the burden will be put on the new organization. What we need is a means of reducing the social ills that lead to mental health breakdowns and drug overdoses. That requires proactive involvement in the community rather than a response model.
    • 835Temporary 5y ago
      Yes. This is a conversation I have had with many friends. Police are misused, imo, by society to clean up macro issues, one person at a time, that police have no ability to control outside criminal investigation. Police are where "the rubber meets the road" for policy failure and unrecognized socioculturally trends. They are easy to blame for up-the-pyramid authority while being the only easily visible aspect of a ineffective, corrupt gvt.
• bairrd 5y ago
  I always am asked when I say we should reduce policing budgets, "have you ever needed police?" In my experience, they've always been either so late that myself and neighbours have had to get involved in breaking up a rape / other violent situations, or just completely useless when I've needed them for paperwork related stuff, i.e. credit card fraud. I think the police are asked to handle too many edge case situations, e.g. managing mentally ill populations, but are also grossly overpaid compared to other civil institutions, that if budgets were appropriately distributed, would lead to less of the issues police are required to intervene in. Also, among police put-maneuvering pregnant women, beating elderly bystanders just standing in Buffalo, or the myriad other documented instances of unnecessary police violence, there is a serious "bad apples spoil the bunch" issue in US policing due to the culture of other "innocent" officers backing their bad apples instead of weeding them out. In any business, a department/team that isn't serving clients is usually re-evaluated, and budgets/resources re-allocated if they don't meet some performance plan. I don't see why bringing some business-world reasoning to policing in the US is so controversial, but I suspect that's more a framing thing of "defund the police" enflaming peoples emotions, as they get mad before reasoning.
  • lostcolony 5y ago
    Yeah. The only time I've "needed" police was because my insurance required a police report. It's not like the police did anything except file "yep, burglary at (address)". The number of times I've seen police in situations they were clearly unequipped for is insane though. It's a not-infrequent occurrence near where I live to see them standing around and talking to a homeless person. Regardless of the motivation (are they trying to help or hassle the person), they don't have the training or incentives to be the right people for that.
  • dfxm12 5y ago
    I always am asked when I say we should reduce policing budgets, "have you ever needed police?" In my experience, they've always been either so late that myself and neighbours have had to get involved in breaking up a rape / other violent situations, or just completely useless when I've needed them for paperwork related stuff, i.e. credit card fraud Right. I don't like how the article conflates a rise of crime with cops retiring/resigning. Cops generally don't prevent crime, but respond after the fact to sort things out. There's also no reason a cop, as understood today, needs to show up for some paperwork stuff, like credit card fraud. Any type of civilian government representative should be trusted by the credit card company to file that away.
• zzzeek 5y ago
  the middle-of-the-road opinion that defund activists hate is the "just get rid of the bad apples!" concept; that most police are good people and a few of them are bad apples. But let's say you're in the "bad apples" camp. When people like this, who are pro-police don't seem to be able to identify any bad apples whatsover, including an officer as egregious as Derek Chauvin, it points to the possibility that they don't actually believe in the "bad apples" theory and it's just a smoke screen. "bad apples" might not be satisfying to anti-police activists but it would be nice if more people could agree on some of the obviously very bad apples that are present.
  • bradklein 5y ago
    Also people who says "good apple" "bad apple" don't think accessory after the fact applies to LEO's, like it would in normal situations.
• popileviz 5y ago
  Good.
• y0ssar1an 5y ago
  Coincidentally, the murder rate is way up. > A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. (The final official numbers for 2020 will not be released until late September.) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/upshot/murder-rate-usa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/upshot/murder-rate-usa.ht... Thanks, BLM.
  • devrand 5y ago
    Conveniently ignoring that there was a global pandemic going on for most of the year with record high unemployment. Crime went up basically as soon as the pandemic started.
    • MarkMc 5y ago
      At least in England and Wales the pandemic seems to have led to a reduction in crime: > Total police recorded crime decreased by 4% in England and Wales to approximately 5.8 million offences in the 12 months ending June 2020; police reported crime levels were relatively stable from July 2019 to March 2020 and the annual decrease was mainly driven by substantial falls during the April to June 2020 period, particularly in theft offences. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingjune2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
      • devrand 5y ago
        As far as I know this is fairly unique to the United States, and even then the crime stats are a bit... strange. Overall crime stats are just coming in at the federal level so the picture is very much incomplete, but if we look at particular cities (ex. New York City), we can see a sharp increase in murder and burglary, but a decrease in basically every other type of crime (leading to a net reduction) [1]. This seems to be the trend in cities across the country including Dallas [2], LA [3], and Chicago [4]. Murders are way up, but overall crime is down. [1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0106a/overall-crime-new-york-city-reaches-record-low-2020 https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0106a/overall-crime-new... [2]: https://dallaspolice.net/resources/CrimeReports/NIBRS%20Weekly%20Admin%20Council%20Report%20EOY.pdf https://dallaspolice.net/resources/CrimeReports/NIBRS%20Week... [3]: http://lapd-assets.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/cityprof.pdf http://lapd-assets.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/cityprof.pdf [4]: https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shootings-2020-shooting-crime-stats-statistics/9250374/ https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shootings-2020-shooting-crim...
• vvilliamperez 5y ago
  For people against the concept of police, what do you see replacing it? Privatized security forces? Community members/ local militia? A more limited public police force? National guard?
  • say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
    I think the majority of activists think that recording abuse on their cell phones and sharing it on social media will protect them
  • MrRadar 5y ago
    I think most activists recognize there will still need to be people authorized to use violence in certain circumstances, they just want to minimize the number of those people and make them more accountable. Most of the proposals I've seen call for the creation of a public safety department whose employees would not be authorized to use force and who could be sent to deal with situations where violence is not necessary (such as, say, a person trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, like George Floyd was doing when the police were called on him).
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• tryingtogetback 5y ago
  Maybe it's finally the time for private sector to step in? Privately funded regional and/or local (HOA-funded) police departments that are immune to political games with funding that's independent from political trends. Private security startups must be working in this area, right? Just take a look what amazon is doing to shipping industry, how well researched and optimized their deliveries are. Policing is no different (infinite potential for optimizations and innovations) given that private entities (not government) are managing it and (most importantly) are accountable for it.
  • JohnWhigham 5y ago
    I hope this post is a troll.
• rootusrootus 5y ago
  I certainly wouldn't want to be a cop. The downsides right now seem so much greater than any upside. And you already needed to be doing it for some reason more than just money. But a lot of the problem is self-inflicted. The bad apples may be few, but instead of making a show of culling those from the force, they celebrate protecting them. We need less militarization, a lot more transparency, an actual separate oversight organization that has the power to police the police. And we need to 'defund the police' only in the sense that we need to quit asking them to be social workers, and actually shift funding to that department so it can be properly staffed. It's possible, and very desirable, to rebuild trust in our police force. But we do need to agree on that first. It's become yet another front in the ongoing tribal warfare so I don't think anything meaningful will change in the near future.
  • ethagnawl 5y ago
    > you already needed to be doing it for some reason more than just money. This just isn't true. It is a good, steady, well paying job with great benefits, _lots_ of overtime, a union that will fall over itself to protect you and (often) the ability to retire after ~20 years with ~50% pay. I personally know people who've chosen to "grin and bear it" and go down that path for these exact reasons. From a purely objective standpoint, I also sometimes wonder if maybe they made a better life choice than I did: If I'd chosen that route, I'd be retiring with a pension in about three years.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      I could have gotten the same by staying in the military 20 years, without the headache that comes with being a cop. At least where I live, you need (or needed, it could have recently changed) a bachelor's degree to become a police officer, and it pays 53K per year. It doesn't seem like a great gig to me, at least financially.
      • ethagnawl 5y ago
        > It doesn't seem like a great gig to me, at least financially. To each their own, of course, but compared to minimum wage or slightly more in retail/pumping gas/whatever, I could see how $53K (to start; before overtime) could be pretty compelling. Also, FWIW, it looks like Connecticut and New York (my points of reference) do not require a bachelors degree -- only a HS diploma or GED.
• david422 5y ago
  I've been wondering. We are citizens, police are citizens, "we" are all responsible, but it turns into an us vs them attitude. I wonder what society would be like if every person had a mandatory stint as a part of a police force (like countries that have mandatory military service). It would make everybody everybody part of both sides. Probably not practical, but an interesting thought.
• treis 5y ago
  I don't think enough people are talking about the huge change in the crime landscape. Here in Atlanta, violent crime is up 50, 60% while arrests are down 40%. We're down hundreds of cops and morale is terrible. Cops aren't doing their jobs because they fear politically motivated prosecution. And for good reason given that a handful of them faced politically motivated prosecution. We're still below the worst days of violent crime but it's an extremely worrying trend. It took US cities decades to recover from the high crime of the last century and we really don't want the cycle to start again.
  • thrwthatway1 5y ago
    Calling the previous century's reductions in crime a "recovery" is a flat out lie. The world was a much more violent place, and it's been steadily getting less violent. There's no reason we couldn't instantaneously recover from to the recent increases in violent crime.
  • colinmhayes 5y ago
    Maybe they'd be more respected if they respected the communities they're supposed to protect? I don't know about Atlanta, but here in Chicago I've had nothing but horrible interactions with the police. How can you expect people to support you when you treat everyone like they're out to kill you?
  • MrRadar 5y ago
    I wonder how much of this spike in violent crime is being driven by people just being burned-out by the slow-motion and, frankly, boring "apocalypse" that is the pandemic? I've personally noticed that reckless driving is also way up, and I have to imagine many other small crimes are too. If people don't feel like they care about the world, or that the world cares about them, why should they go out of their way to respect the law? If this is the case, hopefully this will just end up being a transient spike that will settle back down to the long-term trend as people readjust to "normality".
  • theossuary 5y ago
    I'm going to call BS on this. So many sensationalist stories were written about how there's "a spike in crime," but they're comparing this year to last year! Of course there was a spike in crime, last year there was a pandemic and national lockdown. Crime shifted to online and domestic, and now that the country is opening back up it's shifting back. Take a look at the actual reported felony offenses and you'll see that yes there's a YTD spike this year, but it's still below where it was in 2019. YTD crimes: 2019 - 10,963 2020 - 9,022 2021 - 9,928 Really the only scary increases in crime have been in domestic violence (which I bet also explains the increase in murders). See https://www.atlantapd.org/home/showpublisheddocument/3037/637138921337600000 https://www.atlantapd.org/home/showpublisheddocument/3037/63... Also I'd really question wanting to retain police in a department that were so fickle they'd allow violent crimes to occur because they aren't worshiped enough. That is a type of self-centered police officer I'd like to leave anyways.
• JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Honestly, I don't have a lot of sympathy. Many PDs have done this to themselves with bullshit like asset seizures, buying military-grade equipment for no reason, dragging their feet on officer investigations and complaints ("paid administrative leave"...what a joke) just to name a few. Over the past ~60 years as municipal budgets for infrastructure, parks, social services and the like have shrunk, you know what part hasn't but actually got larger? Police budgets. And look where it's got us today.
  • frankbreetz 5y ago
    While I agree there is a problem, we can still have sympathy for police who joined the force to help people and now feel like they can't. The system can be broken while the majority of people in the system can be good people.
• Decabytes 5y ago
  My father is a Police Officer and he and any other officers with military service are using their service time to retire early. None of them enjoy being cops any more. I don't think anyone, even the cops are saying that there aren't issue with today's current policing. And I think that is the biggest problem with the whole defund police movement. When you have one side shouting "All cops our bad" "F the police" etc, why would you expect the other side to listen, even if there were valid complaints/criticism. Of course the cops are going to bristle, dig their heels in and be stubborn. It's just human nature. I think the movement would be more effective if this was treated like how the people tried to convince coalminers to get green jobs. Retraining for other jobs, financial support etc. I can guarantee you that plenty of cops would love to be park rangers, park wardens, student mentors, etc, especially in todays climate.
  • smileysteve 5y ago
    > When you have one side shouting "All cops our bad" "F the police" etc, To keep with the hacker news software developer metaphor; It's not dissimilar from the industry often seeing Facebook developers as unscrupulous about privacy. Or Solarwinds (CEO blaming an intern).
  • gpm 5y ago
    The target audience for those calls isn't the police though, so police bristling and the message not convincing them isn't a major "problem" with the message. It's not a goal either, and it brings with it some negative side effects, but given the effectiveness of the message the people behind it almost certainly consider the negative side effects worth it. The targets are politicians (to redistribute funds), voters (to vote for politicians who will...), and prosecutors (to prosecute criminals who happen to wear a uniform). Nor is the goal to convince cops to get other jobs. Cops don't decide on what the police budget is or how many cops there will be. The goal is to get the people who do decide that there should be less cops. Coal miners is different in that the goal was to appease the population of coal miners... I'm not sure the message is a good idea myself, its seems unnecessarily divisive to society, and that's a bad thing. It's pretty important to understand the goals of the message when evaluating whether or not it does what it intends to though.
• mindslight 5y ago
  The Rule of Law is the most powerful tool we have to stop grievances from building up into irreconcilable feuds. The problem is that the police have long found ways to escape the rule of law, through conspiracy and corruption with public attorneys. And now with the prevalence of cameras, this has been laid bare. It shouldn't ultimately matter that many officers are racist, latently or overtly. It shouldn't matter that an officer is having a bad day, or feels disrespected. It shouldn't matter that an officer is frustrated that a suspect is running away, or scared that a citizen might be armed. Just as it doesn't matter when any other citizen is such things - because the consequences of committing second degree murder are similar regardless of your backstory. If cops truly want to be the good guys, then they need to support criminal punishment for their colleagues that commit crimes and then hide behind the uniform - even crimes that they perceive as helping punish the bad guys. Not with their current standard of "did this violate internal policy?", but rather with the usual criminal justice standard of "was this use of force necessary to prevent imminent harm to self or others?". Because when criminals are allowed to take cover behind the uniform, it makes the uniform a symbol of criminality. This certainly wouldn't solve every issue, especially the injustices that don't rise to the level of murder. But visible justice for the most severe victims of criminal police would go a long way to restoring public trust.
• 835Temporary 5y ago
  Just a week ago I needed an answer re interstate transportion of controlled items. I realized I am the only person I know who knows any cops. This struck me as ludicrous as many people I know have strong (>75% negative) opinions about police. I got my answers directly. In the US, a typical metro area police is what I descrobe as a janitor of humanity. Domestic violence, mental illness, drunks and drug addicts, vehicle accidents, and various antisocial acts make up a good portion of a day's chores. Being insulted, spit on, bitten, having offenders intentionally defecate in patrol cars, and of course a rainbow of physical confrontation are all common occurences. Imagine dealing with that everyday, every week, every month, for years. The "us vs. them mentality" is of course not good, and not how police ought to be thinking, but as I came to know cops, it became clear to me that I would not have the moral fortitude to maintain a default empathy. Now, add in politicians, activists and media asserting that you are a agent of oppression, a sociopath, and liable for outcomes in the thousands of conflicts you will encounter in your career.
• frankbreetz 5y ago
  I wonder if it is mostly "good" cops or "bad" cops quitting. Bad cops might be sensing that there time is up and are upset that they might be held accountable for something they wouldn't have before. They also feel like they might be losing some power, which might be what attracted "bad" cops to the position in the first place. Good cops might be finding it too hard to do their job, and be fed up with being demonized even though that got into the profession to help people. Which is what the article seems to indicate, but this seemed to be based on interviews with retiring police officers. Of course they are going to think that. I am sure the internet mobs attacking retiring police officers is not the correct way to respond. >>last summer had chipped away at his professional pride why do cops get to have "professional pride" when basically all other dangerous jobs are un-glamourous and lower paid? [0] Do these people contribute less to society? I am in the camp, which I assume most people are, where most cops are good, but they need additional qualification and help dealing with different problems (homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, evictions ...). The fact that someone can graduate high school and, before the rest of their class starts college, can be a full blown police officer doesn't sit right with me. Also, the fact that it is nearly impossible to arrest a police office is not right, if anything they should be held to a higher standard. Overall, I think change is needed, but it is important to not take it out on individual people, nobody thinks they are the "bad guy". [0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• JamisonM 5y ago
  As an observer from the other side of the northern border I have always been keen to see the US temper its general culture of "police worship" that seems very contrary to the interests of the general public. I have likewise been hoping to see the vast number of smaller forces consolidate into larger forces that might have better training & resources with less nepotism and petty corruption. I feel a lot of sympathy for the officers referenced in the article and their personal stories seem very genuine and troubling. I have no idea how to "solve" the more general problem that seems to be the thesis of the article. Anyone can see that the political valence of modern police forces in the US as expressed by their unions is now so hostile to a majority of the people being policed it seems entirely untenable. And in places like New York City that is despite the force getting better at reducing violent incidents with residents over the last decade or so. The very extreme bunker mentality expressed by police unions likewise make them bad-faith actors in any attempts to improve the relationships involved here. The Newark success story seems like the solution: https://www.nj.com/news/2021/01/newark-cops-with-reform-didnt-fire-a-single-shot-in-2020-moran.html https://www.nj.com/news/2021/01/newark-cops-with-reform-didn... Of course that sure makes it seem like my original position that "larger forces" would probably be better look quite incorrect, it would be hard to imagine implementing a reform like Newark's if a regional police force were in need of reform with multiple stakeholders across jurisdictions to convince and satisfy. I do think that I would really love some journalism that goes deep into what other forces think of the Newark reforms and the results at a union & officer level. Back to the original article, some of the numbers here are bit misleading, I found this article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/18/us/police-reform-year-of-reckoning-blm-invs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/18/us/police-reform-year-of-reck... "The retirement bubble is bursting There's another, older, reason behind so many officers leaving the force: the 1994 Crime Control Act, a controversial law overseen by Joe Biden in the Senate and signed by Bill Clinton, which provided $7.6 billion in federal funding for tens of thousands of police officers. "All these cops are coming up for retirement now," said Ivonne Roman, one of those so-called "Clinton Cops" who retired as police chief of Newark on April 1. "This past April alone 200 cops retired in Newark. This was always coming regardless of Covid or the protests."" Nearly 10% of the officers in the US are apparently eligible for retirement in the US as of the end of 2020, and with the risks of COVID-19 I can see why you would see a large uptick in resignations regardless of any other circumstances. Not that this takes away from the very real experiences that other officers are finding pushing them out of the policing earlier than they would otherwise like.
• underseacables 5y ago
  I don’t blame them. We’ve spent decades pumping the police into a paramilitary force that when reality meets expectations it’s just another human (often I believe) trying to make the best of their situation. Personally I distrust most police and I’m suspicious of them, but removing funding is a bad idea in my book, and I’m sad to see police leaving the profession. When it comes right down to it, many of us need the police more than they need us. We think we’re a bunch of badd asses that can defend the homestead if we had to, but we still call 911. When the police don’t show up, we get horrible outcomes, and it’s worse for everyone.
• sanjiva 5y ago
  About 20 years ago, when I was living in Yorktown Heights NY (in Westchester county - a pretty high end county just north of NYC), we had to call 911 once because my then wife slipped on the ice and fell when she returned from work late night. I called and said what had happened and within a short time we had police, ambulance and a fire person show up (I guess they were all bored). IMO that's part of the problem in US policing: The assumption is that the people are bad (in my case that I had hit my wife I guess - I was interviewed by the cops before she was taken to hospital for a checkup). I called 911 for a medical emergency, not a criminal issue so why do cops have to come and treat me like a criminal. If you think that something is wrong then you find a way to find something wrong. I wrote a blog about US policing a few years ago because I feared for my son's safety: https://medium.com/@sanjiva.weerawarana/police-in-us-need-to-grow-a-pair-1d07f11c68b1 https://medium.com/@sanjiva.weerawarana/police-in-us-need-to....
• RickJWagner 5y ago
  Let's see.... - Dangerous work - Cast as the villian by national media and politicians - Under constant scrutiny - Low Wages - Target of organized agitators - Occasionally doxed, with threats to family TBH, it was the last political cycle that spelled the tipping point.