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Comment by pacbard | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the stress comes from how a police officer dies on the job rather than the absolute death rate of the profession.

Lumber harvesting is the most dangerous profession in the US but I imagine that most deaths would be described as "accidents". For example, someone cuts a leg with a chainsaw, a tree snaps in a weird way, someone gets pushed off a cliff.

Police officers, on the other hand, usually due to violence while interacting with other people.

In other words, a lumberjack, roofer, etc could think that they won't die today on the job because they are being careful, because there are safety protocols set by OHSA, etc. The same might not be true for police officers because there is little that they can do to address how others will interact with them.

In a sense, police officers might process their job more closely to how a soldier process their job than a lumberjack/roofer.

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> I wonder if the stress comes from how a police officer dies on the job rather than the absolute death rate of the profession.

> Police officers, on the other hand, usually due to violence while interacting with other people.

Incorrect. It's mostly traffic accidents. https://www.npr.org/2010/12/29/132441719/Traffic-Accidents-L...

In 2020, it was mostly COVID. https://thedaily.case.edu/study-finds-more-active-duty-polic...

> there is little that they can do to address how others will interact with them

Don't police generally get training in conflict de-escalation?

Indeed they do.

The training documents that I’ve seen publicly available on the internet explicitly incorporate de-escalation techniques as the first and preferred option.

On the other hand, you have people like Dave Grossman (of the "Killology Research Group") telling cops at police seminars that one of the "perks" of the job is that, after killing another human being, they'll have the "best sex [they've] had in months". https://twitter.com/RzstProgramming/status/13852746532292853...

I understand your point, but it is a little disingenuous to bring that up as a point without considering the relative rates of attitudes such as that with the mainstream attitudes of law enforcement trainers.

Is this individual representative of the mainstream?

I mean, are the training documents that you've seen publicly available on the Internet representative of the mainstream? Why is your inclination that those are normative but this seminar is anomalous?

> Intensive specialized training is provided to offic- ers in departments using a police-based specialized police response. This strategy involves having sworn officers with specialized mental health training pro- vide crisis intervention services and act as liaisons to the formal mental health system. Deane et al.2 found that only three percent of departments use this ap- proach—among them, the Memphis Crisis Inter- vention Team (CIT). CIT officers make up about 15 to 20 percent of patrol officers and receive 40 hours of training that focuses on scenarios derived from actual incidents. Officers receive extensive training in de-escalation techniques.9 The second approach, a police-based specialized mental health response, was used by 12 percent of the departments. Mental health consultants, who were not sworn officers, were hired by the police depart- ment to provide on-site and telephone consultation to officers in the field. The third approach, a mental- health-based specialized mental health response, was used by 30 percent of the departments. This strategy involved reliance on mobile crisis teams. The teams were part of the local community mental health ser- vice system. The teams had developed a relationship with the local police departments to provide assis- tance on the scene.

http://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/33/1/50.full.pdf

Of note, the remaining 55% of the departments in that study did not have a formal policy at the time (2005).

edit: additionally, in that paper they discuss the notably high proportion of police officers expressing interest in mental health training - almost all of them

To be clear, this is referring to a very specific subset of police: "crisis intervention team" officers within the 3% of departments that use a "police-based specialized police response" to mental health issues.

That is not a correct reading of the quoted analysis.

In tabular form:

CIT 3%

police-based specialized mental health response 12%

mental- health-based specialized mental health response 30%

no formal policy 55%

Agreed. And the relevant sentences, within the paragraph about CIT:

> CIT officers make up about 15 to 20 percent of patrol officers and receive 40 hours of training that focuses on scenarios derived from actual incidents. Officers receive extensive training in de-escalation techniques.

It's ambiguous whether "officers" in the second sentence refers to all officers or only CIT officers (I read it as the latter). Regardless, according to this analysis only 0.45–3% of all patrol officers receive this training that is specifically with regard to people with mental illness.

Edit in case my math is unclear: according to this research, 3% of all department use CIT or similar. Assuming 100% of officers in those departments receive the training, that works out to 3% of all patrol officers. Assuming only the ~15% of CIT officers receive the training, that works out to 0.45% of all patrol officers.

I didn’t understand why they chose to include that extra information about CIT, but maybe the authors were just being thorough.

I did read it as if it were written: 15-20% of Memphis Police patrol officers are also CIT officers

edit: I’d highlight that the authors did emphasize the intensive nature of de-escalation techniques for CIT training and that perhaps they were singling out Memphis as “state-of-the-art” police policy, at that time, with regard to law enforcement officers being tasked with mental health care.

In reply to your edit, you also need to account for the same training that may or may not be provided in all the other cases. This review article did not highlight any such data, but it likely exists in the research under review or in other available research

Sure — but the point is that given the evidence we’ve discussed so far, there’s no reason to believe de-escalation training is more normative than that disturbing seminar.

There is some suggestion in the presented data that police are asking for normative mental health training.

Can dig into the research to find out if anyone has empirically studied the attitudes of the trainers, themselves.

There is no reason to believe that de-escalation training is less normative than that disturbing seminar, either.

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