> If they were higher on that list, wouldn't it mean they were bad at their jobs? Police officers face people intentionally trying to kill them, the other jobs generally face some sort of accidental risks.
That is the same line of thinking that leads to people playing up other reasonably low risk threats (i.e. Terrorists) and ignoring high risk threats (i.e. medical errors).
Statistical risk is far, far more important than people's feelings that humans are more dangerous than trees.
Flip your logic around, are you going to argue that loggers are bad at their jobs because statistically they are more likely to be killed by a tree than police officers are by human violence?
The goal for the worker in both cases is not getting killed while performing your job function.
The simple fact is the police have a far, far less dangerous job than most people are willing to admit.
Even staunchly Republican sources are ready to admit that as long as they aren't Fox News.
> According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 58% of likely voters believe there is a “war on police” in America today. The same poll found that 60% believe “comments critical of the police by some politicians make it more dangerous for police officers to do their jobs.” But misinformation also abounds.
> According to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), which keeps data on officer deaths going back over 100 years, 24 officers have been shot and killed by suspects this year. This puts the US on pace for 36 non-accidental, firearm-related police fatalities in 2015 [I calculate 35 deaths in 2015 based on 24 during the first 251 days this year]. Each one of such deaths is a tragedy for the officers killed, their families and the communities they serve, but this would be the lowest total in 25 years [ more than 125 years according to the ODMP website] aside from 2013 which saw 31 such deaths.
> In the study, researchers wrote that their analysis of the 990 fatal shootings in 2015 “suggests the police exhibit shooter bias by falsely perceiving blacks to be a greater threat than non-blacks to their safety.”
> In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.
I'm more worried about the police shooting unarmed civilians (given it happens more often) than the reverse, particular since trees are more dangerous to loggers than civilians are to police.
There are several things wrong with a facile analysis like this:
* The risk is not evenly spread among all cops (desk job vs. patrol, Detroit vs. small town cops).
* It got safer because they keep changing tactics to minimize their risk. Some of those tactics are things you're complaining about: they know that people are less likely to shoot when faced with overwhelming force, which scares the crap out of normal people.
* All your links prove is that they've become successful in reducing officer deaths. They're not facing accidental death here, the drop is a deliberate effort, calling them out for being successful at reducing deaths is silly.
I'm amazed at how many people wax poetic about how awful it is that they should, say, turn on the light when their car is stopped, but have no problem asking the cops to face people who want to shoot them. And you can say there's no "war on police" because some stats are down, but doesn't that make it a bit hard to explain the parade of crazy people shooting cops simply because they hate them? You compare this to terrorists, but I think it's pretty clear that they believe they're warring against us. If, in fact, they're not very good at it, that's a good thing.
We're just asking to make our police force worse by driving anyone with better options out of the force, creating a downward spiral. Given how few people would live in a place without cops, this doesn't seem like a solution. One of the things you don't seem to realize is that the police hating culture is one of the things that helps make cops extra edgy and it makes things worse for everybody.
Now, there's a sensible option here, where we ask "how can police adapt their tactics to scare people less while remaining safe" and "how can we adapt things so that we minimize police + civilian deaths?"
> I'm amazed at how many people wax poetic about how awful it is that they should, say, turn on the light when their car is stopped, but have no problem asking the cops to face people who want to shoot them. And you can say there's no "war on police" because some stats are down, but doesn't that make it a bit hard to explain the parade of crazy people shooting cops simply because they hate them?
Those always existed and are not new or news. They are actually fewer than before.
See the problem here is the argument it is increasing and it is a "war" when literally no part of that argument is based on fact.
I could call the fact I've had my home broken into and physically assaulted in the past by someone who specifically wanted to harm me a "war" against me. I don't do that either.
The difference here is the amount of media coverage it gets, that is literally all of it. If every source of death caused by people got equal coverage, the police would not even be noticed because of how rare it is.
> We're just asking to make our police force worse by driving anyone with better options out of the force, creating a downward spiral. Given how few people would live in a place without cops, this doesn't seem like a solution. One of the things you don't seem to realize is that the police hating culture is one of the things that helps make cops extra edgy and it makes things worse for everybody.
Honestly, based on the criminal acts that have been committed against me in my life, I might as well live in a place without cops. I've had to resolve 100% of the crimes committed against me myself because the cops took 0 positive action to resolve the issues. This stems from bike thefts to breaking & entering & assault on my person.
Cops have stolen my car and scraped off the registration tag when I called them on it.
They've damaged my property and refused to pay for it, arguing that since I don't have a video of the asshole on his motorcycle driving down a back alley and slamming into my fence it didn't happen. Even tho there were 5+ cops in the vicinity who saw him do it.
The police have caused me more harm through malice than actual criminals. However, how many criminal acts like these actually end up in the news? None.
Who ends up paying for this stuff like this? Me.
You can argue cops are the solution if you like, but as far as I can tell, the ledge is currently 0/6 crimes resolved by police. 2/2 acts by police that caused me financial harm.
Similarly, police shoot more unarmed black men than get shot...but hey, its the cops that need protection eh?
> Those always existed and are not new or news. They are actually fewer than before.
That depends on whether or not you consider motive. Sure, people shooting cops during their crimes might be down, but people going hunting for cops is quite clearly up and it takes a bit of cognitive dissonance to equate the two.
> See the problem here is the argument it is increasing and it is a "war" when literally no part of that argument is based on fact.
So, what exactly do you call it when people hate you and go out of their way to shoot you based on who you are, as if all cops are exactly the same and bear collective guilt.
> I've had to resolve 100% of the crimes committed against me myself because the cops took 0 positive action to resolve the issues. This stems from bike thefts to breaking & entering & assault on my person.
This only makes me wonder how you're resolving issues like that and if there's a correlation with your expectations that's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have completely the opposite experience, if we're working on anecdotes, and approximately as many interactions, including the case where my own mother was murdered. The officers there went out of their way to check on us and make sure that no one was mistreating us.
That is the same line of thinking that leads to people playing up other reasonably low risk threats (i.e. Terrorists) and ignoring high risk threats (i.e. medical errors).
Statistical risk is far, far more important than people's feelings that humans are more dangerous than trees.
Flip your logic around, are you going to argue that loggers are bad at their jobs because statistically they are more likely to be killed by a tree than police officers are by human violence?
The goal for the worker in both cases is not getting killed while performing your job function.
The simple fact is the police have a far, far less dangerous job than most people are willing to admit.
https://www.aei.org/publication/is-there-really-a-war-on-cop...
Even staunchly Republican sources are ready to admit that as long as they aren't Fox News.
> According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 58% of likely voters believe there is a “war on police” in America today. The same poll found that 60% believe “comments critical of the police by some politicians make it more dangerous for police officers to do their jobs.” But misinformation also abounds.
> According to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), which keeps data on officer deaths going back over 100 years, 24 officers have been shot and killed by suspects this year. This puts the US on pace for 36 non-accidental, firearm-related police fatalities in 2015 [I calculate 35 deaths in 2015 based on 24 during the first 251 days this year]. Each one of such deaths is a tragedy for the officers killed, their families and the communities they serve, but this would be the lowest total in 25 years [ more than 125 years according to the ODMP website] aside from 2013 which saw 31 such deaths.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/study-finds-police-f...
> In the study, researchers wrote that their analysis of the 990 fatal shootings in 2015 “suggests the police exhibit shooter bias by falsely perceiving blacks to be a greater threat than non-blacks to their safety.”
> In 2015, The Post documented 990 fatal shootings by police, 93 of which involved people who were unarmed. Black men accounted for about 40 percent of the unarmed people fatally shot by police and, when adjusted by population, were seven times as likely as unarmed white men to die from police gunfire, The Post found.
I'm more worried about the police shooting unarmed civilians (given it happens more often) than the reverse, particular since trees are more dangerous to loggers than civilians are to police.