Quote Originally Posted by the_real_MSU_is_us View Post
Fun fact: being a police officer is actually the 22nd most dangerous career field after things like being a garbage man, roofer, traffic cop, USP delivery driver, etc. (https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748...-united-states)

FBI places it as the 18th most dangerous job. (https://usafacts.org/articles/how-ma...-line-of-duty/)

The number of people shot to death by police has been steadily increasing (https://www.statista.com/statistics/...olice-by-race/) despight the public not getting more violent -based on homicide data at least (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s...ta-table-8.xls).

Police are more than 20x as likely to shoot someone to death as they are to be killed themselves, and that rate has been climbing for years. About 16% of people shot and killed by police were unarmed (https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom...-as-in-whites/) which comes to roughly 160 a year.... which is 3x the number of cops killed by gunfire.

if you have different stats please share. I'm not a liberal and I don't trust a lot of stats I see because our media is awful. However, when it comes to policing I truly can't even find stats that make it seem like cops are actually justified in "fearing for their life", or that they're always exercising enough caution before pulling the trigger. I also see no evidence that things are "getting worse for cops" over a 5, 10, 30+ year timeperiod.

If a roofer is scared of heights and is violent with others due to the stress of "fearing for his life", we say "sorry, but you should probably get a different job". But cops? Despight their cob being significantly safer than the roofers, we DO allow the cop to be violent as a 1st response due to that fear. And we call then heros for doing it too. I'm saying we need to hold our cops to a higher standard. They get away with behaviors we'd never allow from those working in the ACTUAL dangerous professions. UPS drivers are more likely to die than cops. But if a UPS driver pulled a gun and shot another driver because "I feared they were going to swerve into me" we'd say they should go to prison. When a cop shoots someone unarmed, "he made a motion that seemed like he might be going for a gun" is accepted as valid reason. It's ridiculous
Logging, roofing, picking up garbage etc. aren't more dangerous than being a cop. Cops are just better trained at navigating the danger. They treat every single thing they do as a life and death situation, because for all they know, it is. Just because more people get hurt or killed doing something doesn't mean it's more dangerous. Think about all the rigorous training police go through, and then consider the fact that a lot of people in those positions mentioned never get training (or property safety equipment) at all. I can start a roofing company or a garbage pick up service today. I can literally hire 4 derelicts for $15/hr and have them working tomorrow. It's not a 1 to 1 comparison.

Everything a cop does is dangerous. Most of their time is spent dealing with criminals or unstable people, or simply patrolling high crime areas. Simple traffic stops end lives all the time. They don't know who may be in the vehicle, if they have a warrant, or any other reason they may be scared enough to do something stupid. Then, even if it's a little old lady, there are idiot drivers who can kill or maim them because they are too important to move over a lane or even look up from their phone. Police are trained like the military. They are always looking for who or what can kill them. They survive a lot of situations most of us wouldn't simply because they are trained to. Part of that training is to deal with any perceived threat immediately. Stats about killing "unarmed civilians" are useful to people who want to spin a narrative. Like the Michael Brown story. He was technically unarmed, but he was fighting an officer for his gun and got shot. Police don't go out each morning looking for someone to kill that day. Since I take it you don't have family in the profession, talk to any of them and they'll tell you - they all pray they never have to discharge their weapon. But, their main goal each day is to get home to their family, as it should be. It's a hard way to live. I've never done it, but I have family who has. I will never disparage them, because I haven't experienced what they experience.