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Comment by lenkite | Hacker News Reader

Do you really think that ordinary civilians will sign up for a term of enlistment as police where ~40-50 officers are shot and killed every year? (This only includes deaths by gunfire alone and not knifes/assaults/beatings). AFAIK more police officers got killed in active combat than American soldiers in the last couple of years.

You also need to work 70-80 hours in high stress situations.

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Being cop is not all that dangerous job and most deaths are traffic accidents. This is trying to create a sense of it being something more dangerous then other occupations and it just is not.

There is also nothing fundamental about policing that would require 70-80 hours of work per week.

Not only are most deaths traffic deaths, the next largest reason for deaths on the job are heart attacks, which are preventable with a proper diet and exercise.

Please re-read - those figures are from deaths from hostile gunfire not traffic accidents. 89 officers died in the line of duty in 2019. Offenders used firearms to kill 44 of the 48 victim officers. Only Four officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons - the traffic accidents.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...

My apologies, your second statement is fundamentally false in a very deep way. There is no metropolitan city in the US where the police are not overworked.

But perhaps we have disconnect in meaning - what do you define by policing ? My definition is the maintenance of law and order. But I have observed that activists refer to it as simply keeping the peace. These are two fundamentally different things. Tyrants and Crime bosses keep the peace far more effectively than the police.

The "cops work 70-80 hours a week" thing is a policy choice. Nothing more nothing less. I agree that this has negative impact on policing, maybe more then it would be with other jobs. It makes it less effective just like any other person working 80 hours a week becomes exhausted and ineffective.

But, it is still a result of policy and culture, not something inherent to the task itself.

Given that overall cop deaths are not unusually high, no I have trouble to see that as some kind of super high risk occupation. Overall, being cop does not make me more likely to die and most of deaths are actual traffic accidents due to cops being in the traffic a lot.

Traffic is the primary danger for cops.

Cops make a median salary of $105,100 a year before overtime and bonuses[1]. They can make over $250,000 a year with overtime[2].

Many cops want to work overtime, because they can make more than double what they do otherwise.

[1] https://www.nj.com/news/2017/05/how_much_is_the_median_cop_s...

[2] https://www.nj.com/somerset/2019/11/4-cops-in-this-nj-town-e...

I have heard of a scam with firefighters, and it wouldn't surprise me if police do a similar thing.

There are standards for how many firemen are required to be working: https://www.iaff.org/wp-content/uploads/Departments/Fire_EMS...

To increase their take-home pay, firemen call in sick on a coordinated, rotating schedule, and the minimum staff requirements force off-duty firemen to be called in to work and get paid overtime.

Back in the years from 2003 to around 2008 Iraq was very dangerous and hostile. You should check out the historical press releases from the DOD. The ones where the DOD announced the casualties. It was depressing. However, there were always people enlisting in the military and in fact the USMC and the Army expanded.

I think going to a term of enlistment would be a good think and would allow the police department to only retain the best. The default could be that the police department could only retain 50% of the first term police officers.

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