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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty attuned to reports of police abuse/corruption/overreach BUT

It’s a pretty crappy job: stop a car and you could be shot/run over; you tend to see people in extremis and encounter a lot of, well, let’s say “jerks”. Naturally it doesn’t encourage a lot of people to take the job. I have a friend who became a cop a few years ago and she has definitely become very very cynical which she had not been at all before.

None of which defends this heartless search; I’m just providing a contextual response to your comment.

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On the other hand in 2018 144 out of 850,000 sworn officers were killed. Roofers, farmers, and groundskeepers have higher fatality rates and cause a lot less harm in their daily work. As for encountering jerks, try nursing, and again their daily routine doesn’t involve quite as much violation of the rights of others.

The truth is that cops are far far more likely to kill someone than be killed by them.

I don't deny your conclusion (much less the facts). But it's a scary job typically around a bunch of scary people (it's not Andy Griffith). Also there's the psychological factor that (people tend to believe that) you'll fall off the roof through your own error, which you'll be smart enough to make, while when you walk up to the stopped car the person could pull out a gun unrelated to what you do beyond walking up to talk. The stress comes from belief, not statistics.

I think the oppositional model and recent (last 30 years) glorification of militarism has caused grievous damage to the functioning of civil policing. Non of which excuses police abuse -- and in fact AFAICT encourages it.

To be fair, most of the videos I see of the US Police abuse is generally caused by the fact they're afraid. Then you watch the documentaries and interviews and see a constant re-enforcement of that fear. It's like they're trained to be afraid and every day they are told to remain afraid.

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