Highway patrol officers have a similar risk profile to construction workers. Mostly car accidents. Patrolmen in cities or towns get hurt in town or in altercations all of the time.
Court officers do not. Detectives largely do not. Police are more likely to get shot at, but way more likely to get hurt in a bunch of acute and long term ways. The nature of the stress that many police experience measurably shortens their lives.
The biggest issues with police with regard to officer and public safety are poor governance and macho culture. I live in New York so I’ll use them as an example. NY State Police are highway patrol focused - they wear grey and black uniforms and Stetson hats. NYPD Highway patrol units wear black leather jackets and cavalry breeches. It looks cool and has a certain elan — but officers would be safer in more functional dayglo attire.
In terms of governance, like many areas of American governance, checks and balances are weak. Example: Cozy relationships between various departments, prosecutors, and perhaps elected judges mean that many NY police avoid prosecution or and sanction for DWI.
My understanding is that the most predictive thing that harms you after traumatic events is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury
which can even come from situations where you want to help people but you can't so it also badly affects teachers, nurses and other people who come across people's dysfunction and suffering. It's worse to be made to feel that you violated your own values than it is to, say, get shot.
It’s part of the reason why an observant person can usually spot a cop or firefighter in plain clothes. They put on a facade as a coping mechanism that leaks into life.
Most problems at their root are a result of people not treating people like people. Many “advocates” for police are really just attracted to the perception of power, and see failures of accountability as a sign of strength. It’s the opposite.
Sure, but both construction worker and police officer are significantly more dangerous jobs than most of us here have sitting behind a desk.
Obviously it’s not a job where people are dying routinely, but suggesting death or serious injury are the only two risks of interacting with the public and responding to threatening or unstable situations is ignoring the reality. It’s a tough job. Much tougher than my time spent sitting at a desk.
I'm not convinced that being a cop is such a tough job. Most of it is sitting in your car waiting for speeders, or to warn traffic about road construction, or driving around looking for something unusual happening.
US courts have determined they don't even have a duty to risk their own lives to save civilians. Kinda the entire purpose of their job's existence, removed.
There's a lot of aggrandizement by and for cops; it's completely parallel to the worship of the military.
The tough parts of a job aren’t defined by the routine work. It’s the risks and edge cases. That’s like saying most of a construction worker’s job is measuring things and reading plans so it can’t be that tough.
It’s pretty obvious that a lot of commenters here have never known an actual police officer. They’re just choosing between two extreme archetypes that aren’t accurate: Either the heroic person risking their life on the daily to protect to the public, or the bumbling donut-eating cop who has been relegated to traffic duty only. Neither are true and comparing it that way is a false dichotomy.
The irony of us sitting at desks in our warm and comfortable offices while calling the job of someone who gets called to deal with troubling public situations “not tough” is ironic. I wouldn’t want to do that job and I bet you wouldn’t either.
Not only "not risk their lives", US courts have ruled they have no duty to act to prevent any crime in progress.
Along those lines, I think it's weird that in some cities, a cop who dies choking on a chicken bone on his day off in his own kitchen gets the same benefits and massive traffic-clogging live-streamed publicly-funded funeral with politicians and media spectacle as a cop who gets killed by a bad guy while on duty.
Removing that one step just for community policing would completely change police interactions. Community policing is not the place to inject warrant enforcement, it too completely changes the dynamics.
