Being a police officer is a privilege. The population grants you the authority to detain us, accuse us, and even kill us. Few professions should be subject to higher scrutiny.
Yes. It should be an aggravating circumstance in charging/sentencing akin to hate crime enhancements.
If you knew any police, you would know it sure doesn't look like a privilege. It is often an unpleasant job. Policing is much more dangerous than the average job, often involves dealing with the mentally ill, intoxicated, people in some form of crisis, people who are just antisocial criminal jerks, etc. It is not very well compensated profession. Society cannot function without laws and enforcement of laws. Police deserve the basic respect we accord to teachers, firefighters, and other vital civil servants.
If you want to solve a problem, it is first useful to gain an accurate understanding of the current state.
Thus I find it alarming that on average, US officers spend around 21 weeks training before they are qualified to go on patrol [1] while a teacher needs at least a bachelor degree so 4 to 5 years of training [2].
I find compensation for both professions laughably low in the US (teacher: $57,220[2], officer: $62,600[3]) however police equipment budget [4] is orders of magnitude higher than that of teachers that need to spend their own money on school supplies [5]. So there is an argument to be had about the difference of quality of life of these two very important professions. The LAPD gets a $2 billion budget [6] which is equivalent to the total military spending of nations like Lithuania [7]. Maybe a lower barrier of entry to the force and bigger crime and arrest statistics with everything that it entails and it implies on the ground to create such numbers in the books is what it takes to maintain this kind of budget?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733 [2] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-... [3] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/police-offi... [4] https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-fund... [5] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/out-p... [6] https://knock-la.com/lapd-budget-2023-increase/ [7] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/military-spending-by-...
In the same way I fought for my country in the military with pride, I hope our police forces can exert pride about their job, instead of cowering and complaining about how dangerous it is. If you don't have the propensity to be a cop, then get the hell out.
You can project this lack of understanding on others if you want, but the power cops possess vs civilians is easily observable. Just because being a cop is often unpleasant, doesn't mean they should only get a slap on the wrist for abusing their power. There are many benefits to being a cop, don't act like they're poor little puppy dogs.
It's wishful thinking to believe all people will respect police because they are by definition authoritarians. There are tons of people who don't respect veterans but do I let it bother me? No, because I'm not a fucking cry baby.
You could say the same thing about convenience store workers, yet somehow they do it without infringing on people’s constitutional rights, shooting unarmed people, and murdering 25 pets a day[0] . Over 600 convenience store workers are murdered on the job per year [1] compared to about 60 per year for police [2]. Convenience store workers are murdered at about 7 per 100k, while police are about 7-8 per 100k [3]. Many jobs deal with intoxicated or the mentally ill or other potentially dangerous situations, yet they don’t carry guns and body armor and know how to deescalate situations.
[0] https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol17/iss1/18/
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/assaults-and-violent-acts-i...
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
Not on paper, perhaps. Retiring at 50 with full pension changes the math quite a bit. Especially if they pad that pension...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newyork-pension/public-wo...
"For example, a police officer with a history of zero overtime worked more than 800 hours of overtime in his last years on the job, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said in a report. The pension benefits that state and local employees qualify for often are partly determined by how much they earn in the last few years at work."
> Police deserve the basic respect we accord to teachers, firefighters, and other vital civil servants.
Citizens deserve the same basic respect from the cops.