Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

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Being a cop is dangerous, but the danger is drastically overstated. Being a cop is significantly less dangerous than a bunch of other jobs that typically get ignored, such as construction, landscaping, being a crossing guard(!), pilot/flight engineer, roofer, gargbage collector, mechanic (several types), mechanic supervisor, or even a delivery driver. None of those other groups seem to have developed the same siege mentality that police officers have, despite having a better statistical argument for it.

Even on the violence front, it's overstated. In 2020, 45 cops were shot to death on purpose, 5 shot on accident, 13 were purposefully struck by a car, and 1 died from an unspecified assault. That's 59[0] purposeful killings out of an estimated 665,280[1] police officers in America, or 8.8 per 100,000. Meanwhile COVID19 killed 221 cops, and various vehicular accidents killed 39 cops. Obviously 8.8 per 100,000 is not great, but it's far from how being a cop is portrayed in popular media.

For a grim comparison, consider the risk of being murdered as a cop to the risk of being murdered as a pregnant woman. A 2005 study connecting female homicide deaths with pregnancy information came to the conclusion that the homicide rate among pregnant women might be as high as 10.5 per 100,000, or about 25% higher than the murder rate for cops.

Given that the estimated domestic violence rate for police officers is 40%[3] and the known link between domestic abuse and homicide[4], a pregnant woman married to or living with a cop might have a higher chance of being murdered by her cop partner than her cop partner has of being murdered on the job.

It does strike me as an awful job though. No disagreement there.

0 - https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2020

1 - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449445

3 - https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

4 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/investigations/...

Thanks for engaging. I agree that there are other jobs that are more dangerous in terms of on the job deaths.

I think that an interesting distinction is that when it comes to police, the danger comes from other humans. That is to say, their threat model is people intentionally trying to kill them, opposed to workplace accidents. In this way, the police are more similar to military forces, who also have a siege mentality.

While you point out that there were 59 police killings, this number may not capture the full picture. It is worth considering that there were 1000 fatal shootings by police and an estimated 2000 non-fatal shootings.[1] That is 450 per 100,000 per year. This is just the tip of the iceberg as it doesn't include shootings where nobody was injured, or violent interactions without guns. Violent nonfatal injuries and illnesses resulting in days away from work among police officers occurred at a rate of 121.7 per 100,000 FTE workers in 2018; the rate for all occupations was 7.3. [2] In one study 10% of police surveyed reported that they had killed or seriously injured someone during the first three years of their career. The average officer experiences 188 traumatic events in their career and have PTSD and depression rates 5X the general population, and the highest suicide rate of any profession.[3]

For me, this paints a picture of a job where violence and hostility is the norm. I point this out not to excuse the bad behavior of some police, but increase our understanding of it.

>Given that the estimated domestic violence rate for police officers is 40%[3] and the known link between domestic abuse and homicide[4], a pregnant woman married to or living with a cop might have a higher chance of being murdered than her cop spouse.

This would not surprise me at all, given what I stated above. The really interesting question is WHY and what conclusions can we draw from this?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02601-9

https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-2018.htm#:~:text=P.... https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2019/09/police-at-highe...

https://rudermanfoundation.org/white_papers/police-officers-...

To a pizza driver, a more dangerous job than being a cop, the biggest threat is another human as well. That doesn’t mean they can go around shooting undeserving people. You’re rationalizing criminal behavior.

I’m not rationalizing or endorsing anything. I’m describing the nature of the problem. We will never see any change unless people understand the problem.

People understand the problem, all the recommended fixes are being stymied, lobbied away or plain ignored.

What solutions have >50% public support and are being ignored?

Always on body cams, ending civil forfeiture, replacement of police unions with individual liability insurance, third party review boards are just a few.

First off, I think most of that is a fine start.

I think the strongest are review boards and body cams, and the weakest are busting the unions and individual insurance. For the latter, I haven't seen any data showing public support over 50%.

I think the most productive changes would be legalization and demilitarization of the the war on drugs. A centralized database of police violence and complaints would be the next step, and this could go hand in hand with third party review boards.

Even if your proposals and mine were adopted entirely, I don't think they would resolve the fundamental problems with police violence and bring behavior in line with expectations.

The police unions have too strong of an influence on government and are rife with corruption, nepotism, favoritism and worse. Breaking up the union and individual insurance are the number one priorities to break the back of the excessive authority the cops currently wield. Everything else is a nice to have.

> While you point out that there were 59 police killings, this number may not capture the full picture. It is worth considering that there were 1000 fatal shootings by police and an estimated 2000 non-fatal shootings.[1] That is 450 per 100,000 per year.

You raise a good point; being involved in a shooting even as the shooter is a traumatic event. It's not terribly uncommon for people to have PTSD after shooting someone, even if they didn't catch any return fire. There are also the cases where cops were seriously injured (as compared to "injured" in order to increase criminal penalties) but did not die or retire due to the injuries. Getting shot in body armor is still a pretty injuring event, especially soft body armor.

The important, and difficult question to answer is how many of these violent interactions were triggered by police, and how many were likely to happen no matter what the cops did? American police kill a lot more people than our OECD peers do; we're between Angola and Iran on the international stats, about 3.5x more than our nearest OECD peer (Canada). It's not unreasonable to assume that non-lethal violent encounters scale similarly[0]. Certainly some part of that is American culture in general, but it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily. If using violence is traumatic, then doesn't a lot of the blame for that trauma fall onto the same people who decide to use it unnecessarily, and onto the same people that have willingly adopted a warrior mentality[1]?

0 - Perhaps higher still. American emergency rooms are very good at treating gunshot wounds; part of the reason why gun fatalities are down since the 1980s despite still high shooting rates. It's not unreasonable to assume that the ratio of shooting to fatality by American cops is higher than say, Canada, implying that it's even worse than the death statistics imply.

1 - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/warrior-police-train...

American police kill a lot more people than our OECD peers do, but again, it is worth noting that overall gun violence is higher is the US. US police killings are 3.5X that of Canada, and the US gun homicides are 6.5X that of Canada.

>it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily.

I think that the cops are one cog in a poorly designed machine, and in my opinion, not the most impactful one. Changing police policy is necessary, but not sufficient change to reduce police violence. We live in a relative police state, and it is convenient to place the bulk of the blame the replaceable enforcers opposed the system of laws and policies which perpetuate violent crime and violent police. Only changes to the latter will result in lasting change. To tie in the Canada comparison, The US also has 6.5X the incarceration rate.

>it would be unreasonably deferential to cops to presume that they have no part in the problem, especially with so many high-profile anecdotes of cops escalating or using force unnecessarily. If using violence is traumatic, then doesn't a lot of the blame for that trauma fall onto the same people who decide to use it unnecessarily, and onto the same people that have willingly adopted a warrior mentality

There are some cases where there is obvious misbehavior by officers and they should be held accountable for their actions, although I think this effect is overstated by focusing on the most outrageous examples. Most often, my understanding is that police shooters are acting in accordance with police training and policy to use lethal force when they perceive lethal threat from others. In these cases, think much of the "blame" falls on the policing institutions. The question becomes if a different policy exists would result in fewer unnecessary civilian deaths, with minimal increase in officer deaths. Perhaps there are win-win solutions where both death rates are reduced by avoiding dangerous scenarios entirely (e.g. avoiding unnecessary no-knock raids).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

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