I would worry more about PTSD than about death or injury if I was a cop.
Almost getting killed tends to cause PTSD, but the tendency is stronger if someone intentionally tried to kill you.
And doing violence to another person is also potent cause of PTSD.
For those 2 reasons, I would expect rates of PTSD to be higher among cops than among the other 15 occupations you list.
I would also worry that the habit of suspicion needed to be effective as a cop would be bad for my marriage and other relationships. In other words, I would worry that the work might make me pathologically cynical.
Finally, some people really enjoy having power over others and using that power to inflict pain. Even if the other disadvantages of police work did not exist, it might be wise for me to avoid it just to pessimize the probability of my needing to work with someone like that. It is a complicated issue, but certainly I find such people distasteful and suspect that most adults in my country (the US) share my distaste.
I would argue that this applies to the people being policed as well, if not more so. A black man has little recourse if he is assaulted by a police man, or if his wife or child is killed by them. Families are torn apart by drug laws and prison pipelines.
While thats true, I can’t imagine the slow bleed that ptsd from working 50 hour weeks of stress can do to the human brain. It would be a surprise if you retired and weren’t screwed up after decades of that imo.
Oh no, cops are fucked over for sure. They suffer in many ways themselves. They also benefit in other ways, and IMO are not innocent, but they are definitely fucked over by how we do policing.
How about the slow bleed of living your entire life knowing you're always one random police encounter away from being shot. The whole law enforcement system creates a slow bleed of stress and trauma on both officers and citizens.
Because that's the narrative that gets your sentence reduced and what any lawyer would advise: from now on, publicly you'll condemn the drugs that got you here.
It's because they are mourning their lost years, their failing health, their dead friends, their dead parents, their dead cousins and brothers and sisters. Oh, and their dead wives, girlfriends, and children. And probably more often than anything else, their fear that they will just go straight back to doing it all again when they get out, just like the last time they got out.
> It's because they are mourning their lost years, their failing health, their dead friends, their dead parents, their dead cousins and brothers and sisters. Oh, and their dead wives, girlfriends, and children. And probably more often than anything else, their fear that they will just go straight back to doing it all again when they get out, just like the last time they got out.
For a lot of drugs, it's not the drug that killed all those people and tore apart those connections, it's the illegal nature that causes violent black markets and heavy policing.
It's not violence and police that are killing them where I live. It's drugs. I'm not saying the jail system is the solution, but let's not kid ourselves about what's going on.
I can see that perspective and also say that I think what it speaks to is that we don't provide a better systemic solution to drug addiction than imprisonment, which is an embarrassing failure of American culture and society.
>A black man has little recourse if he is assaulted by a police man, or if his wife or child is killed by them
To be clear, those are not statistically significant events. In fact, they are insignificant at the population level, and there is no discrepancy across racial lines (as in, the numbers do not show Black Americans being targeted more than other demographic groups).
One of the challenges is that if a demographic group disproportionately engages in criminal activity (more or less), then it will necessarily have a disproportionate negative (or positive) interaction with the entire judicial system (police and courts) - but you cannot fix that with police reform. You can still make the case for Police reform and there are a lot of places of improvement (e.g. the practice of 'swatting' should NOT be a thing - police and judges that issue these warrants should be MORE discriminatory !!!), but that will not lessen the proportion of negative interactions.
>Families are torn apart by drug laws and prison pipelines.
That has NOTHING to do with police. Police enforce laws on the books - typically municipal and state laws. Most cities have progressive Democratic leadership (from mayor, to council, to police chiefs) and those cities also had the biggest issues with protests against police brutality.
One needs to look at who the police are choosing to interact with to understand the denominator properly. The numbers seem to show that they are biased towards interacting with black people.
I get it and I have no disagreement with qualifying the numbers. It's a very complicated issue, but, if it is in fact true, when controlled for all other factors, if a particularity defined demographic group engages in disproportionate amount of criminal activity (less or more), then wouldn't you expect that that would filter down to the individual interactions?
If an individual police officer is choosing who to frisk (or interact with), and the only things they have to go on are visible superficial characteristics (i.e. age, gender, ethnicity, clothing, etc.), and the global fact that those characteristics are statically correlated with more or less crime, that would be impossible for an individual to control their biases.
We know this is a painful exercise, because people are not just those superficial characteristics, and it's unfair for an individual to be singled out for those characteristics - but that's the ONLY information available to the officer.
The officer cannot control their bias, because if they try, they will either over or under compensate and because they are human. It's why we have double-blind trials and the scientific method - we know even well-meaning humans cannot control their biases. And this isn't an example of racism, because it could clothing or gender that trigger the frisk (I guarantee you that men are stopped more than women - WHY?!?!?), but aspect of human cognition. The only way to control for that is by introducing a non-biased random decision maker. For example, in airport security, there will be a device that will randomly flag passengers for extra screening. Perhaps something like that should be the case in these 'stop-and-frisk' policies? But even that has limited value. If a particular neighborhood with issues of crime, is dominated by an ethnic group, even random sample will involve disproportionate 'harassment'.
A while back Sam Harris had a debate with an airport security expert on profiling in airport security[1]. Sam Harris advocated for profiling and security expert was not. Sam Harris was 100% wrong and didn't admit it. The security expert talked about how proper airport security should work (and the problems with profiling and how to control for that). That debate has analogues to this conversation, because police should adopt some of those strategies because profiling is socially painful and breeds resentment and has limited success ... and individuals will not make the right decision in context.
I could have been a bit more clear in my summary. The article cites statistics that claim a higher rate of police stops of Black and Hispanic people are unfounded than those of white people. If true, this is evidence of police targeting practices that are disproportionate with actual underlying criminal activity rates.
Taking a step back to look at the historical context... The brutal wake of slavery and ingrained systemic racism are primary contributors to heightened criminal activity we see in some predominantly black neighborhoods. Black people didn’t collectively choose to live in worse conditions with high crime rates... After unlocking their literal chains, a savagely racist society pushed them in that direction.
If society were savagely racist why are asians not pushed in that direction?
But lets say this is true: it still means the whole police thing is a symptom, and not the cause. So the big question (and elephant in the room) is, what can be done.
> if a particularity defined demographic group engages in disproportionate amount of criminal activity (less or more), then wouldn't you expect that that would filter down to the individual interactions?
What you're asking is "is it legitimate to discriminate against individuals because of the demographic group to which they belong".
I realize that it's not obvious that that's the question you're asking. But when reframed in that way, my answer is obviously no. You should engage with an individual if you have evidence of a crime or suspicious activity. Existing while black is neither.
> Sam Harris advocated for profiling and security expert was not.
I don't think "profiling" by itself quite captures what Harris was arguing for. He was arguing for profiling based on a characteristic--being a Muslim--that can't be directly observed. This was a key point of Schneier's rebuttal. So Harris's version of profiling isn't workable even if we admit that the characteristic in question does increase the probability of the person causing harm.
The profiling done by police does not have the same problem, because the characteristics involved are visible. However, visible characteristics are not limited to the ones you note: they also include behavior. So your statement that visible characteristics like age, gender, ethnicity are the ONLY ones available to the officer is not correct. The officer also sees what the people are doing and whether it looks suspicious, the people's body language, and so on. It is not unfair to single out people for their behavior.
It demonstrated in a very straightforward way how the given statistic can result from very different underlying realities, and then provided evidence of the less obvious possibility. The fact that police stops of black people are less likely to find contraband than those of white people seems rather significant.
> Almost getting killed tends to cause PTSD, but the tendency is stronger if someone intentionally tried to kill you.
I'd be more concerned about being the first on scene of traffic accidents, fires, etc, especially those involving kids. I have vivid visions of stories I've been told from first responders, so I can only imagine it is worse for them.
No it actually doesn't. This is anecdotal but... my father in law is a police officer in a city with 1.2 million people and the way he talks you'd think officers were dropping like flies. I looked it up and in the last 150 years 20 officers have died while on duty in his police department. Many were traffic accidents. One was a heart attack.
I found it disturbing to discover that my local cemetery has a memorial already up for local officers killed in the line of duty. The only name on it is a police dog. There is a lot of empty space.
I'm sure this came from a salesman at a law enforcement expo who has been selling these to every community in the country. It suggests a national narrative where the police are convinced that people are plotting to kill them at every moment, and even if none actually have, it's only a matter of time.
Every encounter with police begins with hostility. You know they're armed. You know they're assuming you are, too. I can only imagine how that's magnified for people who "fit the profile" solely because of the color of their skin.
The police have been made good by decades of "good cop" "bad guy" TV dramas.
I mean look at Law and Order, or Chicago PD, or Blue Bloods. There's a token episode about police brutality or corruption that is "solved" by the "good apple" standing up to them.
I often (disgustedly) hear "it's a war out there". The only "war" that is equivalent to the current policing in the US is the occupation of the axis post WWII. It's absolutely a war, but it's a war where the natives are being raped and pillaged by the occupying force with no recourse because they already lost.
I'd be willing to wager the source of violence in police|public interactions is the public in less than 5% of interactions, probably less than 1%.
You don’t have to almost die to get ptsd. You can get it from
* responding to a bad domestic violence call
* responding to a bad child abuse call
* getting attacked by someone on PCP where you ended up shooting him five times because he wouldn’t stop coming until you physically blew out his knees
* any situation where death feels possible, but unlikely, in the way that car accidents can cause ptsd because you thought you would die, but car technology makes it unlikely for that type of accident.
In all these cases, watching the amount of damage someone has taken can easily cause ptsd.
This is undoubtedly true. But EMTs, firemen and emergency physicians encounter trauma every day on the job and we don't hear them taking it out on wives, children and the general public. What gives?
Good points. PTSD stressors can come from minor traffic stops too, since while it may be rare, they can turn into a lethal situation in a blink of an eye.
I think on that last point it would be dangerous if everyone that that way. What the police need are honest good and moral cops who are not afraid to stand up to their colleagues.
Almost getting killed tends to cause PTSD, but the tendency is stronger if someone intentionally tried to kill you.
And doing violence to another person is also potent cause of PTSD.
For those 2 reasons, I would expect rates of PTSD to be higher among cops than among the other 15 occupations you list.
I would also worry that the habit of suspicion needed to be effective as a cop would be bad for my marriage and other relationships. In other words, I would worry that the work might make me pathologically cynical.
Finally, some people really enjoy having power over others and using that power to inflict pain. Even if the other disadvantages of police work did not exist, it might be wise for me to avoid it just to pessimize the probability of my needing to work with someone like that. It is a complicated issue, but certainly I find such people distasteful and suspect that most adults in my country (the US) share my distaste.