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The 25 most dangerous jobs in America (usatoday.com) (You'll see Law Enforcement at #14)
Every time you hear a law enforcement officer claim they need to BE dangerous to society because society is dangerous to them, you should remember that a large percentage of law enforcement fatalities are actually traffic-related.
"2006-2019, 809 officers died due to motor vehicle related incidents (struck by and crashes) – 43% of all line-of-duty deaths"
-National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. This is why as a truck driver (Driving 8-11 hours a day) i was actually more likely to die at work than when i was in law enforcement. Law enforcement officers take time off from driving to write reports, run traffic, testify in court etc. In 4,5 years of Law enforcement work, with perhaps an average of one person resisting arrest in some way per 2 days, i think i can only recall three instances where a suspect directly attacked me with the intention to harm me. It was always clear to me their intent was to escape custody. So the next time an officer tries to justify pulling a lethal or semi lethal weapon before s/he has even assessed the dangerousness of the situation i want you to understand, that most of us do the most dangerous thing an officer does without even a second thought...driving. Also when there are more than 3 officers on a scene, 99.99% of the time it is NOT necessary for every single one of them to have a firearm drawn, it's actually MORE dangerous for the officer. Many officers who are shot in the line of duty are shot with their own firearm ("1994 through 2003, 52 were killed with their own weapon, amounting to 8 percent" -Police1.com)...logically I suspect that would not be the case if the "close contact officer" did not have a weapon out. Officers have special "retention holsters" and are well trained in tactics to keep someone from pulling their firearm from the officers' duty belt, not so much when they are waving a gun two feet from someone's face. I'm 6'3" I used to be a 250lb+ rugby player. I considered it a point of pride that I did not have to injure people to arrest them...if I had backup my partner stood by with a weapon (of his choosing) and I would quickly control hands and handcuff. (The one time someone filed a brutality complaint on me, a video came out of me LITERALLY bringing someone over to the grass area so i could take them down to get control of their hands, instead of grinding their face into the pavement...and yelling to them that this was what i was doing, and why i was doing it). The Law enforcement culture of "being at war" with the public is sold to officers, and then sold to the public. As a society, we need to stop allowing this lie as an excuse for unwise and fatal policies. You'll notice i favored using police data, and not civilian data, no one can say I'm making up stats that they themselves published.
The data speaks for itself.
RJ, thanks for the insight! Very interesting to hear from an ex-cop.
Sadly, in my opinion, it's a combination of many facts, a few of the ones that i am aware of include:
It sells newsprint, if you can have a news program that teaches nothing but TELLS people they are correct about their pre-existing biases, and that they should be: afraid, or angry, statistics show viewership spikes. If you tell people the facts and highlight grey areas the general populace tunes out. Reference "The Mythology of the Criminal Justice System" (a masters level textbook). Before i move on, i'd like to point out a logical conclusion i came to on my own. One of the easiest ways (other than sites like AllSides.com) to check your biases or your news source biases is looking at the advertising. If they're selling you FEAR they will be advertising doomsday prep/survival stuff, ANGER- they will sell you weapons/security systems. if they are selling you your own pre-existing biases, the advertisements will be for exceptionally stupid one am infomercial type stuff. remember ADVERTISING is targeted, they know what kind of stupid they are advertising to, think about what that advertising on the sidebar, or in the commercial break implies about your fellow viewers, and by association the ideas you are being sold. Publicly held media companies have a fiduciary duty to increase revenue...not at all costs, but it's a recognized duty, one of the easiest ways to do that is to market "entertainment" as news, that can be done responsibly, or more often not. On the police side, it breeds what the military calls "unit cohesion" eg. the same thing that gets us the "thin blue line" idea where no cop is willing to testify or inform against even the most corrupt of their own force, because he sees that person as a brother warrior in the "good fight." I'm sure there are others, but class starts shortly.
This post is powerful for many reason, but most of all thank you for using data and sharing a first hand perspective on the reality of policing and the risks involved.
You mention the law enforcement culture of “being at war with the public..”, in your opinion, why does this narrative continue continue to persist?