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Comment by mrestko | Hacker News Reader

I think the general public is unaware of how dangerous physical altercations are. The antisepsis of staged fight scenes on TV make it seem like any well-trained person can recover from a tussle and be back to normal by the next scene. In the real world, it only takes seconds for a struggle to turn fatal, even discarding the presence of any other weapons.

In the case of a police officer carrying a gun, all physical fights have to be assumed to be fights to the death. If the officer gets knocked out, there is now a loaded weapon on the table that is no longer under the control of the officer.

(Edited to fix typos.)

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Watch some police documentaries from the UK - I'd recommend the BBC's "Traffic Cops" or Channel 4's "24 Hours in Police Custody".

Even accounting for the presence of cameras, what's really striking is the politeness of British officers. The whole character of an interaction changes when it starts with a cheery "alright mate, do you know why I've pulled you over?" rather than "license and registration, keep your hands where I can see them".

A confrontation starts long before a punch is thrown or a weapon is drawn. In the UK, there's a doctrine of verbal de-escalation and an acceptance of risk that just isn't there in the US. If you treat everyone you encounter as a deadly threat and escalate your response accordingly, it quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well there's this infamous interaction which is shown to most U.S. officers during their training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOSELcrJ7Kw

Admittedly, the officer starts the interaction with a command rather than a cheery, "aright mate," but I'm not certain that would have changed the outcome. The murderer later said during questioning that he killed the officer, "because he let me."

There is a very different dynamic in the US with regard to authority compared to the UK. I do think that US police have become too militarized. In particular with regard to the military-style raids discussed in the original article. However, I'm not certain that US cops can simply assume the attitudes of British cops without wider cultural transformation in the country at large.

Police work is much less dangerous than many civilian jobs, yet the police are paid to assume risk. I think the balance is off, and society as a whole is suffering, because civilians who generally are nonviolent are much less capable of taking on that risk than the tainted police officers who are paid to do so.

It wasn't even in the top 10 in 2014 according to the BLS Census of Fatal Occupation Injuries[1], as summarized here:

http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs-america/

Police and sheriff's patrol officers was number 15, at 13.5 fatal occupation injuries per 100,000 and it appears that around half of these were traffic related fatalities.

The top 5 are:

    Logging workers
    Fishers / fishing workers
    Pilots and flight engineers
    Roofers
    Refuse / recyclables collectors

[1] http://www.bls.gov/iif/cfoi_revised14.htm

Ahem... "police work is much less dangerous than many other civilian jobs".

The police ARE civilians. That they imagine themselves to be a branch of the military is the very problem!

They are civilians... however, colloquially "civilian" can refer to a non-insider, someone outside the profession.

A group of boxers might say "yeah, civilians wouldn't understand why we love the sport".

In other words, it's not always used in the strict sense of military vs non-military.

it's not always used in the strict sense of military vs non-military

When people with machine guns and armoured vehicles, etc refer to others as "civilians", I think it's clear what sense it is used in.

Well, is some countries (France, Spain, Italy) they have the concept of a Gendarmerie [1] which is a para-military police force. This is in contrast to, for example, the UK Constabulary, say, which is simply a policing organisation. A Gendarmerie is more disciplined, with a stricter enforcement of hierarchy and chain-of-comment. Related to this, I notice that some police forces in the US (all?) have military style titles - Lieutenant, Captain, etc. - rather than Officer or Constable. Is there a reason for this? Maybe the military-style ranks reinforce the idea in individuals that they serve a military-style role?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie#Role_and_services

I think the kind of danger police face is scarier though, and leads to more stress. Most people aren't very afraid of getting into a car or drinking soda, even though those are probably the two most lethal things any of us will ever do. It's not scary because the way in which they harm us is abstract and seems controllable.

When there is a shooting, on the other hand, everyone is terrified, and we spend days and weeks worrying about it amongst our friends and on the news. Because getting shot is very concrete, and totally out of our control.

And I think danger from human beings is in itself more scary than danger from inanimate objects. Maybe because we know that deep down if a human being is trying to hurt us they'll probably succeed. We know we really can't control another human being. We rely on social graces to keep us safe and when those are gone we are in a very scary place.

American police operate outside of those social graces all the time, and they never know when they'll depart them. It creates a lot of stress that "one day I may be pulled over the edge of the boat into the sea" doesn't.

Incidentally, this is a justification for de-arming first responder cops. It creates the assumption for all parties that the cop will stay inside social graces, keeping everyone safer, and de-stressing a situation.

If the officer doesn't get knocked out, there is a loaded gun on the table under the control of a uniformed thug. For some reason, that scares me a lot more.

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