> In exchange, they place the well-being of every citizen over their own. That's the deal.
Sadly, this hasn't been the deal in my lifetime and, to hear my parents--both of whom were police officers--tell it, for longer than that.
Every person I've ever interacted with who is or has been a police officer has said that the message is that your first duty is to "go home to your family." The "bad guys" aren't worthy of self-sacrifice and heroics. Now if you, as an officer, happen to die because you selflessly saved "a civilian" (notice how that's different from "a bad guy"), then you are seen as deserving of all of the heroic writings ever to be written about a human.
But if you die as a result of a supposedly-preventable outcome of a confrontation with "a bad guy", meaning that you didn't fire soon enough or you tried non-lethal methods in a situation such as described here, then you're just an idiot. So you've not so much sacrificed as a hero but simply failed.
I genuinely don't think that any police officer, or at least any significant number of them, sees themselves as having placed the well-being of every citizen-including-"perps" over their own. I kind of get it; when it comes to me versus the other guy, of course I want to be the one still alive at the end. I guess that means there's something fundamentally broken with how we parcel out state-backed forced.
> I genuinely don't think that any police officer, or at least any significant number of them, sees themselves as having placed the well-being of every citizen-including-"perps" over their own.
I agree with this depiction of the current state of affairs.
I am saying that it is bonkers and wrong, because it is bonkers and wrong.
You can't have a free society that fears its police.
I can simultaneously be okay with the police shooting a man coming at them aggressively with a pipe and not fear the police, because I have no intention of going after the police with a pipe.
Didn't even have to click the link. I still generally don't fear the police because I do think that video was an exception, but yeah... that man was murdered.
Sadly, this hasn't been the deal in my lifetime and, to hear my parents--both of whom were police officers--tell it, for longer than that.
Every person I've ever interacted with who is or has been a police officer has said that the message is that your first duty is to "go home to your family." The "bad guys" aren't worthy of self-sacrifice and heroics. Now if you, as an officer, happen to die because you selflessly saved "a civilian" (notice how that's different from "a bad guy"), then you are seen as deserving of all of the heroic writings ever to be written about a human.
But if you die as a result of a supposedly-preventable outcome of a confrontation with "a bad guy", meaning that you didn't fire soon enough or you tried non-lethal methods in a situation such as described here, then you're just an idiot. So you've not so much sacrificed as a hero but simply failed.
I genuinely don't think that any police officer, or at least any significant number of them, sees themselves as having placed the well-being of every citizen-including-"perps" over their own. I kind of get it; when it comes to me versus the other guy, of course I want to be the one still alive at the end. I guess that means there's something fundamentally broken with how we parcel out state-backed forced.