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Comment by exelius | Hacker News Reader

I see a disconnect between what the public believes the job of the police is and what police officers believe the job of the police is.

In my mind, police officers sign up for a dangerous job knowingly - that's why they're revered as heroic by many in society. They are willing to put themselves at risk to protect society from harm, and that's noble.

What most police academies teach is the opposite. They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect. Turns out it's really hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy by looking at them, so they play it safe and treat everyone like a bad guy.

Not every officer thinks this way, but it's common enough that it leads to a lot of police shootings. IMO a police officer should be more willing to take a bullet than put one into someone. I realize body armor isn't foolproof, but the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that - something a person on the street doesn't get.

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Let me start off by saying I agree with you (if you're bored, crawl through my HN history and you'll find some very strong condemnations of certain LEO practices).

However... let me also explore a different perspective on this.

Do you feel the same way about paramedics and firefighters? We choose to put ourselves in harms way for the sake of others. Heroic, right? No... not really... My first priority on any scene is to go home to my wife and daughter at the end of the day. In fact, my priorities (usually...) are me, then my crew, then you.

Firefighting is not without risk, but in reality, modern firefighting is very conservative, and growing more so every year. There are practical reasons for this though. When a cop or a firefighter is out of the fight, they're not doing anyone any good. In fact, they are now causing a division of resources in the operation as they have now become someone else we need to rescue.

I am my first priority because I can't do anyone any good if I'm injured. My crew is my second priority because they are the ones that are going to take care of me if things go sideways. Keeping those priorities straight is what maximizes our effectiveness in preserving life.

I realize this comparison is not perfect (it's generally easy enough to identify fire vs innocent civilians), and I am by no means excusing the military mindset of many modern police forces, but I hope that gives you some insight into the mindset behind some of the tactics used.

The people you are helping are already in peril, and only remain in that peril if the situation is not safe enough for a first responder to reach them. That seems eminently reasonable, and I don't think there's any expectation to ignore overwhelming risk to yourself to get to someone.

But for someone who is, say, selling cigarettes illegally, their life is not in peril until a police officer takes it upon himself to put that person in a choke hold or take other potentially deadly action. It's especially galling when the officer's life and safety was never in danger.

I think the distinction is in the ability to perceive the risk.

A burning building is a burning building (ok... there's actually a lot that going into assessing the risk posed by a fire in a building, but you get the idea...). A potential confrontation with someone selling cigarettes is an unknown. Odds are, it's not going to be a problem at all. However, there is a small (but non-trivial) chance that it will become a violent encounter (even with fantastic deescalation skills). Given that unpredictability, the safest course of action, it makes sense to have enough manpower on handle to safely deal with a violent encounter.

That being said, the cops in Eric Garner's case did not attempt any deescalation at all (quite the opposite, in fact). The resources on scene were not the issue, the rapid escalation was the issue.

Even at that, it was not the 'chokehold' that killed Eric Garner. It was being placed on his stomach, with his arms behind his back. It's difficult for anyone to breathe in that position, and _very_ difficult for someone of Eric Garner's size. The fight dramatically increased his body's need to get oxygen (and more importantly, get rid of carbon dioxide), and then he was placed in a position that made it all but impossible for his body to do that. We have known for years that this is a dangerous thing to do, yet it happened anyway. Even the EMTs on scene later ignored the risks of his position, and in my opinion, are just as culpable in his death.

Do we actually know whether that was the case? It seems like he might just died from a stress induced heart attack. The preliminary report said that he died of cardiac arrest in the ambulance. I never was able to find a full copy of the final medical examiner report. The summary of the final report was that he basically died of everything, which was not at all helpful.

Obviously I did not examine his body (nor would I be qualified to do so), but a "heart attack" occurs when the myocardium (heart muscle) is not getting enough oxygen. The fight (brief as it was) ramped up his myocardial oxygen demand, and his position limited his body's ability to deliver that oxygen. That's a recipe for a heart attack.

I should note that while "positional asphyxia" is a generally accepted theory, it's not without its detractors, and more research needs to be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_asphyxia

Does it matter? The position probably could have killed him, and there was no compelling reason to keep him in that position.

> Do you feel the same way about paramedics and firefighters?

No, because I don't think they do the same thing. A police officers job often isn't to save the subject, it's to save third parties and apprehend the subject. It's also to have power over us, a measure of control which firefighter/paramedics don't. We surrender power to them so to speak.

On the other hand, firefighters and paramedics are more often concerned with directly helping the subject and don't have this power over us.

There are complex situations with various crossovers (particularly in firefighting where extinguishing a fire might save third parties for instance) but in general the above holds.

I think this is an important distinction because we expect the preservation of life. A firefighter can let a building burn (die) and save some third parties and they aren't (necessarily) penalised for it. A firefighter/paramedic is also only concerned with the preservation of life, that's their sole motive. Police officers motive are necessarily more complex, so if a firefighter can't get through a fire to save a subject we forgive them because their intentions could only have been noble - all they would be trying to do is save life.

A police officer on the other hand must be seen to save the subject and third parties lives. We seem to demand of police officers that if the subject is trying to kill third parties for example, the officer should step in and take the 'hit' and get killed. He/She must be restrained enough to not kill the subject and brave enough to sacrafice themselves for the good of the third parties.

I don't think this is demanded of firefighters and paramedics.

I think this extra demand is placed on police officers because of their position of superior power. If they are to be afforded superiority over us citizens, over our liberty and with the power to ruin our lives - we demand of them that they have a noble streak and are prepared to sacrafice themselves for us if the shit hits the fan.

I think you've done a great job outlining the differences between the two missions (and many of the things you mention are why I agree with the OP).

However, I think there is value in understanding _why_ LEOs seek to minimize risk, rather than assuming they all just want to be Rambo (though there are certainly those too...).

The article itself discusses this: what we're seeing is spillover from a militarized environment, with criminals and police (and criminals versus other criminals) in an arms race. This started with criminals adopting new 9mm semi-automatic handguns in the 1980s, then police switching to the same weapons after the Miami shootout, and a series of other problems as documented in the article. These days, drug dealers routinely keep huge packs of pit bulls, and release them when the police show up; without ten policemen and an IFV, the law could easily lose a fight like that.

The problem is that the same people responsible for pitched battles with heavily-armed drug dealers are also expected to do ordinary police work. It would be better to make this sort of thing the responsibility of the FBI, or even the military, ensuring that there would continue to be a lightly-armed, non-military police force to handle more ordinary situations.

>It would be better to make this sort of thing the responsibility of the FBI, or even the military, ensuring that there would continue to be a lightly-armed, non-military police force to handle more ordinary situations.

There is an endless supply of people with nothing willing to replace a busted dealer. Rather than call for a special anti-drug military, how about we just let people use drugs.

Why not let people use drugs? For the same reason we don't let them drive drunk or refuse to wear seatbelts.

The Japanese legalized heroin in occupied China in the 1930s, as a way of encouraging the Chinese race to die out -- and heroin dependency isn't a pretty way to go. Marijuana is less potent (although modern marijuana has been bred for potency), but what's true of heroin is true of other hard drugs (and persistent hallucinogens) as well.

I think a bigger factor in police switching to semi-automatics was the introduction to the Glock, which as I recall was the first "respectable", widely adapted service handgun without an external safety. That, just point it and pull the trigger, like the revolvers the police were used to, something previous manufacturers apparently weren't willing to do.

Now, I wasn't paying close attention to this at the time, since I was in localities where owning a handgun was impossible to impracticable and I'd already settled on another model for when I could buy them (M1911), but this would suggest it was a combination of ergonomics and a perception that a semi-auto without an external safety was safe enough for police (and also note things like the extra heavy "New York trigger), plus of course the superiority of semi-autos in combat, in functioning in dirty conditions, etc. (They are more likely to jam, but you can clear that in the field, a revolver jam is generally a job for a gunsmith.)

I'm pretty sure this wasn't all that related to the 1986 FBI Miami shootout, the biggest conclusion from that was the correct observation that penetration is critical, in this case, through someone's arm and then into their vitals.

Ballistics Nerd details: 9mm is much better than stock .38 Special, but inferior to the .357 Magnum, which had been a big thing since the 1930s, and could easily shoot lighter loads equivalent to 9mm or wherever you want to trade off recoil for power, an inherent advantage of revolvers.

4 of the officers were carrying .357s, one a .38, all loaded with a .38 Special +P over-pressure rounds, presumably the "FBI load", that falls quite a bit shy of 9mm. But 3 were carrying 9mms, and the FBI's answer was a very powerful 10mm round, which they then backed off to what became the .40 S&W, and now they say bullets have evolved enough that 9mm is OK (and cheaper, and many say easier to fire).

All that said, the conclusions about the Miami shootout certainly didn't hurt police adaptation of semi-autos.

Thank you for your perspective as a fighterfighter.

There is a huge difference between giving ones life to save others, and taking "reckless" chances and dying.

One comparison would be when a fighter pilot ejects out. No fighter pilot wants to eject out. Pulling the handles and ejecting is the last ditch attempt to save their lives, but in certain situations, its the only way to save their lives.

The problem is that police training doesn't seem to teach that use of deadly force should be the last option to save lives. It shouldn't be the first choice for police.

Cops carry guns and hence should be held to a (much) higher given the ready ability to cause grievous harm.

>In fact, my priorities (usually...) are me, then my crew, then you.

So you take an inherently unsafe job and then act to maximize your safety? If those are your priorties then why do you ever go out on a job? Certainly the safest place for you and yours to be is playing cards at the firehouse.

You know, I know, the reason you go out is because if you don't go you'd be fired for insubordination. You'd be fired because you're being paid to go out on those calls and take those risks. So you do the next best thing: you go out on the call, but you make a series of operational decisions that, essentially, make you as safe as if you didn't go out on that call. And what's your justification? So you can be well enough to go out on the next call - and not take risks there, either. So you end up going on call after call, and on each call acting for your own benefit, rationalized, you say, to keep you healthy for the next call.

No, my goal is to remain effective on _this_ call. If I take a stupid risk and fall through a floor, now the entire operation stops, all but guaranteeing no one else will be able to effect a rescue either. That does not mean I never enter a structure. It means I consider the construction type, the size, nature, location, and duration of the fire, and make an educated decision about whether or not the risk is worth the potential reward. If I decide it's worth it and end up going through the floor anyway, well... that was the choice I made. It sucks, but it's the nature of the job. Here's hoping the RIT is ready to pull my ass out.

Firefighting is a dangerous job, I'm not disputing that at all (not as dangerous as say, farming... but still).

My point is not to avoid all risk. My point is to avoid needless risk, and to prepare as thoroughly as possible for the risks we do need to take.

Are you in the business? From the sounds of things you either just started out, or retired years ago, before we started applying actual science and data to firefighting tactics.

I don't know that it is universal, but placing self-protection first is normal in all the training I've had, or have heard about. It is the same principle as the patter you hear on planes about putting oxygen masks on yourself first, then assisting others.

Dead/injured/incapacitated first responders don't respond, they require assistance, which just make the situation worse.

Before you go imputing others' motives in a topic you don't know about, mayhap give some thought to learning a little first. I promise you that anyone who has any sort of first-responder training just wrote that post off as clueless.

My guess is he is either a very young firefighter or a gung-ho, but fairly inexperienced, volunteer.

He uses some firefighting 'slang' (referring to a call as 'a job', etc).

I remember being surprised by this sequence of priorities when first learning them on first-aid course. I guess we like to picture people like you as heroes, bravely stepping in to save the day, ignoring the risk to themselves, but we don't stop to consider that this may not be the most effective course of action. As usual, the optimal way of doing stuff is quite different from what we see on TV.

Yeah, it's a far more pragmatic business than many people realize...

Risk a lot to save a life, risk a little to save property, risk nothing to save nothing (i.e. if it's past the point of being saved).

Because a dead firefighter is useless? Because he has a training that would help save many lives in the future for the many other fires to come. Sure a "heroic/fool" firefighter could have saved one more life that particular day, but if instead he ends up dead, he might have sentenced to death future fire victims.

So in term of life saved these priorities seems perfectly good.

You assume "maximizing his safety" means going home without any bruise. You assume he is a coward.

>We choose to put ourselves in harms way for the sake of others.

You don't get paid? If you are getting compensation, then you're not doing it for the sake of others.

>Heroic, right?

Nope! No more heroic then the gas station attendant who puts his life on the line every single night so that others can fill up their cars.

I would say that the gas station attendant is a hero to his family, in that he does put his life on the line to feed, clothe and shelter them. And I am sure your family feels the same way about you!

I am compensated as a paramedic. I volunteer as a firefighter. However, my compensation as a paramedic is $16/hr, which isn't awful (at least it's more than minimum wage), but I certainly don't do it for the money... The money that feeds my family comes from work as a software developer.

There are a variety of reasons why I do what I do. A desire to help others is certainly one of those reasons.

Did you just stop reading after "Heroic, right?" The very next word was "No"...

the job is inherently dangerous and the officer goes into it knowing that

I think that forums heavy with computer desk jockeys like HN tend to throw this idea around too casually.

If outsiders kept callously telling us "you signed up for it knowing that you would work 80 hours a week" or "you signed up for it knowing that your stock options would probably be worthless", we'd be up in arms and demanding that no one should be treated that way.

Yet we expect officers to put themselves into situations where they'll be hurt or injured unnecessarily. Take, for example, the Eric Garner case: "They didn't need 5 officers to tackle that guy who was resisting arrest". Really? That was a big dude. If he had decided to start punching; officers could have suffered knocked-out teeth, irreparably damaged eye sockets, and broken bones. Can you imagine going to work every day where the public expectation is that the risk of your knocked-out teeth when confronting someone resisting arrest is perfectly acceptable?

There are very few jobs I would never do, but being a police officer is one of them. The public is just way too callous in thinking that it's okay for you to be injured or killed because "you signed up for it".

[grammar fix edit]

Those police killed Eric Garner. Do you think the police would be so understanding of someone who killed another person in a bar fight because there was a chance of having a tooth knocked out? That's not a normal standard of behavior. Even if you don't think it's reasonable to hold them to higher standards of behavior, holding them to a lower standard seems really strange to me.

The police subdued Eric Garner in an effort to arrest him because he was resisting. What they did was reasonable and only the hindsight of his health problems says otherwise. Eric Garner shares a large portion of the blame in his own death since he is the one who resisted, was breaking the law, and knew about his own health situation.

Your bar fight scenario makes no sense because there are lots of ways that a bar fight could result in one participant's death and the other participant would be judged to have acted reasonably just defending himself from an injury as "minor" as a knocked-out tooth.

No, what they did was not reasonable. You're assuming he died because of the fight... In reality he died because of how he was positioned after the fight (on his stomach, arms behind his back). We have known for years that this is a dangerous thing to do (it makes it _much_ harder to breath, at a time when he was already working harder than normal to breath). The NYPD actually has a policy against exactly this sort of positioning...

I partly agree with you and I definitely concur with your post above on this whole issue. I'm regretting mentioning Garner in my own post since it's a rathole of preconceptions.

But I will point out that reasonable is not the same as perfectly following every policy. It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

> It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

OTOH, those who complain about police excesses usually also complain about prosecutors being uninterested in pursuing abuses by police as crimes, seeking indictments, etc. So, "no indictments" can be viewed different ways.

True, but I've yet to see the decision-based situation in the universe that couldn't be viewed differently by someone.

Compared to Internet second guessing, the lack of indictments is a pretty strong data point.

It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

The USA court system is every bit as flawed as (and certainly more corrupt than) USA law enforcement. This appeal to authority completely misses.

Absolutely not. Gauging your response to a purported suffocation on the false assumption that "if you can speak, you can breathe" is not at all reasonable.

(Incidentally, that's pretty scary: to be made to suffer by someone who doesn't realize it and has constructed ironclad "proofs" that you must not be suffering.)

Are you justifying unnecessary force and unnecessary force multipliers by invoking hypothetical situations? This is madness. When any hypothetical situation is a valid excuse for use of force, all uses of force will fall back on hypothetical situations as justification.

And most do, when it comes to the police and use of force.

Have you ever seen the South Park episode where they forbid the killing of animals unless in self defense, so hunters shout "it's coming right for us!" before lighting them up with automatic gun fire?

Yeah, this is like that.

Go back and read the post to which I was responding where the author stated that in his mind he thought that officers signed up for a dangerous job knowingly because they're heroic and self sacrificing.

I'm saying it's a job, in many ways similar to your job and my job where putting all this heroic self-sacrificing burden on them isn't fair.

Interesting how you criticized me for creating hypotheticals which are almost direct quotes from everyday stories on HN and then tried to prove your point by referring to a South Park episode - a cartoon that features fictional characters doing outrageous things for the sake of comedy.

I read it, and I disagree with your evaluation of the situation. There is risk with all jobs, and for cops, firefighters, etc., that risk can be great.

You referenced Eric Gardner, which really sat poorly with me. It's pretty universally accepted that he was murdered by cops with no care for the public or their constant overuse of force. It was a terrible example.

South Park is not just a cartoon - as with many shows like it, it's pretty heavy with political commentary - which this is.

It's pretty universally accepted that he was murdered by cops

Do you have some polling data on that? That's not at all the impression I get from the wide variety of news sites that I peruse.

Regarding South Park, yeah, I know all that. I love SP. But you were the one criticizing hypotheticals.

I don't require police to martyr themselves. My own problem with the Garner homicide is that I don't think they needed to tackle Garner at all. An even more cynical view is that they wanted to tackle him, wanted an excuse to act violently, and cultivated that situation hoping for that end (not necessarily that they wanted to kill him, but they wanted an arrest, and were game for a use of force). I don't know the whole truth of it but I do know that the basis of it was tax evasion, not an imminent threat to public safety that needed immediate detention at all costs.

Saying "it's dangerous" doesn't mean "accept being hurt or killed", just the same as saying "they'll expect 80 hours a week" or "stock options may be worthless" don't mean "accept being abused and left poor".

It means "make sure your contract guarantees hours or appropiate payment for extra hours before you sign". It means "research the markets and the startup and demand proper pay if it looks bad". It means "make sure the citizens are safe, make sure you are safe, but don't pretend that killing someone is anything but the last resort when you failed to properly address a tactical situation".

"If outsiders kept callously telling us "you signed up for it knowing that you would work 80 hours a week" or "you signed up for it knowing that your stock options would probably be worthless", we'd be up in arms and demanding that no one should be treated that way."

No, not really. It's really only irritating because I started out every day telling myself that.

"Can you imagine going to work every day where the public expectation is that the risk of your knocked-out teeth when confronting someone resisting arrest is perfectly acceptable?"

Yeah, I've known a few bouncers in my time. Also, some farmers and ranchers.

...farmers and ranchers.

Haha, somehow I've refrained from shooting the cow that broke two of my fingers last week.

Except those 5 officers had no need to arrest Eric Garner. They could have issued a citation and left. Discretionary arrests are a police officer's method of punishing someone in advance of that pesky finding of guilt (or not) -- now that person has an arrest on their record, may have to spend a night in jail prior to receiving a bail hearing, may be stuck in jail until trial or a plea arrangement if they can't afford bail, etc.

> The public is just way too callous in thinking that it's okay for you to be injured or killed because "you signed up for it".

Agreed with this point. A police officer effecting a routine traffic stop to potentially issue a citation should not be cause for alarm. And perhaps, most of the time it's not. But that 1/x times it does turn violent, the officer needs to be ready, or risk not going home.

A police officer should not have to believe that pulling over a driver may be a life and death situation. Yet, they train knowing they are entering a potentially dangerous situation. The public telling them, it's okay they signed up for it, is reprehensible.

There is a balance between the need to preserve officer safety and the acceptance of danger required to do the job.

There is no universal public belief that police are guardians. People who are protected by police think they are guardians; but people suppressed by police probably don't have that belief.

That's why there is so much controversy around police violence, because some people genuinely believe police are protectors, and they have no reason to suspect otherwise based on their own and threir aquaintances' experiences.

With this attitude, no one will want to be a police officer. Or at least, no one who has any other reasonable options. That means when someone has to call 911, either no one will show up or the person who shows up won't be the highest caliber individual.

It sounds like you expect everyone who becomes a police officer to be willing to dive in front of a bullet like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. There are noble and heroic people who are willing to do this, but they are few and far between. Most of police work is routine and boring: mediating domestic disputes, filing paperwork, processing evidence, etc. We need people to do all of those things without having to be willing to sacrifice their lives for strangers.

I'm sorry but a cop that stands by and does nothing when duty calls is worse than a cop that goes on a shooting spree killing people. (To go off on a tangent, people who don't want to do a job, shouldn't have to do the job to not starve to death. Any employee/worker/volunteer/service member whatever should not have to take a job just to put food on the table. This is where some kind of a basic income should come in. I'd rather have a smaller police force of people who belong there than a bigger force of people who do not.

and no I am not saying sacrifice life but at least show some initiative in something other than writing tickets and meeting quotas.

http://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-p...

I can't upvote this enough.

However, even the phrase "law enforcement" implies a different mindset rather than "To serve and to protect (the public)". It seems that phrase got perverted into "to serve and protect (thyself)" instead. Which makes me sad.

We need more officers to think like this one. [1]

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-bernardino-officer-ill-bullet-s...

This is correct. And reinforces my personal belief that it is policy that needs to be repaired. For the most part, these officers that are doing bad things are only acting in ways that have been encouraged. Until we can make an adjustment, we will continue to see police on people violence.

Deleted comment

In the 3 cities I see most, yes. They almost always wear a "second-chance vest" under their uniform.

(Oops; didn't see that you'd replied before I deleted my comment. My deleted comment asked whether cops routinely wear body armor. I figured I could research that on my own rather than ask.)

I agree with your position and would also like to see officer pay increased to reflect the dangerous nature of their work.

Are you sure about that? There are officers already making a very good salary...

http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/arti...

And police officers don't make the list of top 10 most dangerous jobs.

Most police officers die in routine traffic accidents.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-c...

Fascinating. So in addition to increasing pay for police officers there are other careers that warrant hazard pay. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah I'm positive. Median in my area for police officers is 50k. While we're at it, teachers, firefighters, and (especially) EMT/Paramedics could use some love.

> Median in my area for police officers is 50k.

Yeah, most paramedics would kill for that...

I make $16/hr working as a paramedic (which is why I only do it part time and keep my day job as a developer).

I've made double that delivering pizza and that was almost 20 years ago. It's criminal what you guys are forced to try to live off off.

I'm for pay for performance here. Bonus for successfully descalating situations without taking of lives.

Paying for performance in a problem fixing job is dangerous. Even if you concentrate on deescalation. We already know of many cases of planted drugs. This would be just an invitation to "Hey, he had drugs (that I totally didn't plant) and I solved the situation without violence, even though he had a gun (that I also totally didn't plant)".

I think I understand the sentiment behind this and agree overall but have fun trying to track that metric without introducing perverse incentives.

I think many individual public servants would be happy with pay for performance, if a workable scheme could be devised. Unfortunately, public sector unions would fight that tooth and nail.

Police officers are not a top 10 dangerous job. For that, it would start with construction, logging, fishing. If fact, I think I see a negative correlation between pay and dangerous jobs in general.

> I agree with your position and would also like to see officer pay increased to reflect the dangerous nature of their work.

Police officer pay and benefits relative to other public sector employees already are high, largely justified by the dangerous nature of the work.

Who are you kidding? Vast majority are there for pensions, donuts and occasionally (the 1% of cases) the thrill of the chase.

Where do you think LEO come from? Do you think if one dies there are 10 more people willing to stand in their place?

Reducing officer casualties is a must in order to even have law enforcement at all. To enforce the law there needs to actually be people to enforce the law. Can't do that if a number of them are dying on the job which also hurt future employment rates.

There is some disagreement with what I am saying being factual reality. Can anyone point me to the nearest LEO tree? Or maybe there's a secret VAT lab growing clones to be our guardians of the future that I'm unaware of?

Dead officers aren't easy to replace. They aren't goldfish. You can't just go out and buy a new one to replace the old one. Expecting them to take needless risks that end up with them dead isn't a realistic option if you expect to maintain a police force.

There is a reason Kyle Dinkheller's video is used in training. "Hesitate to use deadly force. Don't hesitate so much that you end up dead."

There is a huge difference between putting your life on the line and throwing it away. Putting it on the line is having a gun drawn on them. Throwing it away is letting the other person take the first shot. It seems many here are asking they not only put their lives on the line, but that they throw them away too.

Most of the police I've met came right out of the military. And there are plenty of people in the military with skills not marketable anywhere else.

"I know that people wouldn't usually rap this

But I got the facts to back this

Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets"

For the criminals creating urban chaos, they don't expect to live to 25 years old.

However the police do have a reasonable expectation to live to see their kids grow up, and that means they can't get into 50/50 situations with borderline suicidal gunmen.

I think all us sheep on HN will rue the day the good guys are selected for low-testosterone personality.

"I think all us sheep on HN will rue the day the good guys are selected for low-testosterone personality."

Certainly.

That is, if you can give us a way to separate the good guys from the bad guys.

> They teach officers to put their own safety over that of everyone else. They talk in terms of "reducing officer casualties" and "overwhelming force". This is not a heroic police officer sacrificing himself for society; it's jackbooted thugs threatening, terrorizing and killing the very civilians they are supposed to protect.

This is patent nonsense. Emergency workers (police, fire, paramedic, rescue... even nurses) takes a lot of training (and good ones need a lot of experience) and are hard to replace. They can't be considered disposable, and preserving themselves is the first order of business. A civilian might have an emergency once in a year (usually less). Emergency workers have them every day, usually multiple times.

The first order of business of any emergency worker should be protecting themselves. Police are not bodyguards - they're there to keep order in society, not to take a bullet for you.

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