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Oh, come on. Learn to use an internet search engine.
900k 'sworn officers' - http://www.nleomf.org/facts/en...
(although other sources suggest 1.1m people working in law enforcement, so the 1 million number stated may not be inaccurate)
1093 deaths in 2016 - https://psmag.com/social-justi...

40 million times a year feels like a terrible under-estimate - that would involve each police officer contacting the public just 40-45 times a year. Less than once a week. Reality is likely to be an average of multiple times a day.
E.g. there are approximately 240 million 911 calls a year (https://www.nena.org/?page=911Statistics) so even though a lot of those wouldn't be answered, responded to, or require police attention, it's reasonable to assume they account for somewhere between 10 and 60 million interactions a year even without the various traffic stops, patrols and other police work going on.

The next time you need help make sure sure you call a hacker, they are always virtuous. Remember every police office is some low IQ sadist, yes yes they are. 123 police killed in the line of duty in 2015,( http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of...) thats ok they all had it coming. Of course every one of the 985 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/12/26/a-year-of-reckoning-police-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000/) people killed by the police were angels on mercy missions, shot down deliberately by the blue minions from hell. Lets see 11.2 million arrests in 2014 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stori... So that's a failure leading to death of the arrestee of .00879% of the time, not getting hysterical over a tiny failure rate nope. Where is the frantic indignation for the 16,000 homicides http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastat... we don't care about them as they were killed by their fellow victims of police brutality? Or the 38,300 traffic fatalities? ( http://www.npr.org/sections/th...), we don't care about them because they must have all been killed by accidents caused by police chasing peace loving missionaries? I wonder why I have never been shot? Could it be that I follow directions, and lawful orders of the police?

there are a _lot_ of local police doing good work

Until that work includes investigating and arresting their corrupt co-workers, I'll consider them part of the problem and not a part of the solution. A cop that doesn't enforce the laws broken by other cops is an accomplice, not a "good cop"

sometimes quite dangerous work.

More like "mostly NOT quite dangerous". LEO doesn't even make the top 10 in most deadly professions. That is reserved for jobs like logging, fisherman, construction trades, mining, etc. Last year there were 117 fatalities out of 900K+ sworn LEOs in the US. Of those, 49 were related to a vehicle crash, and 20 were related to a SINGLE VEHICLE crash. If anything, LEOs should be lobbying for better driver training, and changing procedures to make dangerous vehicle pursuits less frequent. Instead, they want body armor, assault rifles, and MRAPs.

brutal enforcement with the public as "the enemy" are terrible

Yes, I'll agree to that. We seem to be moving/have moved away from a community policing model where officers proactively engage with the public, to an aggressive, everything-is-a-threat model that is more appropriate for a military occupation than it is for internal policing. LEOs act like terrorists, and then have the audacity to wonder why the public is scared of them and their actions.

It's why it's so important that police, prosecution, courts, and lawmakers are kept at odds, so they can and do limit each other's power.

When did that start in the US? The current system seems to have all of these entities trying to be on the same side. None of them want to appear "soft on crime", so they all conspire to keep arrest and conviction numbers high. The police don't want to get on the bad side of prosecutors or the courts, and don't want to lose jobs despite the falling violent crime numbers. Prosecutors are less interested in justice, and more interested in keeping their conviction numbers up, so won't damage any relationship with police or the courts, even when it involves known lying, corrupt LEOs. Courts (especially where the judges are elected) and lawmakers have to be perceived as being "tough on crime", else the right-wing law-and-order types will have a fit.

Uhhhh - you're pulling emotional strings here. How about we examine the actual numbers of cops killed, nationwide?

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of...

It doesn't appear that the number of cops killed in a given year in the US has EVER EXCEEDED 300. The highest year on that chart looks like 1974, with 280.

How does that compare with other occupations? Hmmm . . . .

The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Logging workers

Killed: 104

2. Fishers and related fishing workers

Killed: 127

3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers

Killed: 71

4. Roofers

Killed: 60

5. Structural iron and steel workers

Killed: 18

6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

Killed: 30

7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

Killed:

8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers

Killed: 485

9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers

Killed: 268

10. Construction laborers

Killed: 15

I saw a similar list yesterday when I wrote my message. Insteresting you think the number 300 is an indicator, since none of the six most dangerous jobs come near that number. They have a high percentage just because of the low number of people in the field.

Uhhhh - you're pulling emotional strings here. How about we examine the actual numbers of cops killed, nationwide?

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of...

It doesn't appear that the number of cops killed in a given year in the US has EVER EXCEEDED 300. The highest year on that chart looks like 1974, with 280.

How does that compare with other occupations? Hmmm . . . .

Have you ever expressed similar sentiments for logging personnel? Pilots? Fishermen? Truck drivers? (I'll give even odds that you are one of the millions of Americans who INTENTIONALLY CUT TRUCK DRIVERS OFF on a daily basis) How about auto mechanics? Have you ever given a thought to them? Do you think about miners, in the same way you think about cops?

There are a lot of occupations more dangerous than police work. I get so tired of the cops getting all the glory, all the sympathy - but you have none to spare for the people who keep the cogs of civilization working.

The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Logging workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
4. Roofers
5. Structural iron and steel workers
6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
10. Construction laborers

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

You may, of course, find and cite your own sources - but no credible source places police among the most dangerous professions. I, for one, have always resented the damned cops for asserting that they are in a dangerous profession. They lie, and the gullible public believes them. And NONE OF YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT US WHO DO DANGEROUS WORK!!

The statistics aren't broken down by cause of death, either. They attribute the largest single source of fatalities to homicide, but many other sources (such as this) put vehicle accidents much higher.

police injury rates are _much_ higher than most work

Welp...sort of. The U.S. BLP recently published their 2013 census of fatal occupational injuries. The overall fatality rate for the workforce was 3.3 fatal injuries for every 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers per year. Management employees averaged 2.4; sales 1.6--no surprises there, really.

For employees in the "protective service occupations" - police, firefighters, correctional services, animal control, security guards, and so forth - the rate was 6.9 fatalities per 100,000 FTE. (I haven't been able to find data broken out by occupation within the category. If someone can find that, that would be great.) So that's what we expect--police, firefighters, and others do have a riskier job than the average, and riskier than the typical office worker. Somewhat surprisingly, the relative risk is only a factor of three or four different when comparing a police officer to, say, an IT manager.

But...there's the rest of the table. "Intallation, maintenance, and repair" occupations? 7.2 fatalities per 100,000. "Construction and extraction"? 12.2. "Transportation and material moving"? 14.9. "Farming, fishing, and forestry"? 23.9.

The real manly men, in real danger on the job, are apparently out there working with tools, building stuff, drilling for oil, driving big rigs, and cutting down trees.

And let's be honest--a lot of the injuries and fatalities sustained by police officers aren't directly attributable to violent suspects. A big chunk of them come from the fact that the typical frontline officer spends a lot of time moving around--in a patrol car, on a motorcycle, on foot, or on a bicycle. Special laws protecting police officers from insults don't actually reduce their likelihood of being in a vehicular accident, or getting clipped by a passing car during a traffic stop, or slipping on an icy sidewalk in the winter. Looking at the last ten years' police fatalities for the United States, the total number of officers killed in motor vehicle incidents (car and motorcycle crashes; hit by car) is 605. The total number of officers fatally shot, strangled, or stabbed is 553. (And I suspect that the proportion who get shot is even lower in Canada.)

LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.

Sorry, but any LEO that gives this line is flat out wrong. Since 1980, there have been only 2 years, 1980, and 2001, where there were more than 200 officer deaths. In 2013, there were 100 deaths, and 51,625 assaults, and 14,857 assaults with injury. Last year, out of over 900,000 sworn officers, there were 117 fatalities (didn't find the assault numbers). Of those dealths, 49 were related to a vehicle crash, 20 of which involved 1 vehicle. It sounds like driver training might be what they are lobbying for.

Top 10 deadliest jobs by death/hr worked include things like logger, fisherman, construction, farming/ranching, powerline techs, miners, and truck drivers.

there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time,

hmmm, the math doesn't seem to add up there. If there was one every day, then total officer deaths should exceed 365, which hasn't happened since...ever. 1930 was the last time the number was over 300.

The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.

I'll give you the first two, but not "I only enforce the law" part. Police unions, owners of private, for profit prisons, and prison guard unions are the largest contributors to campaigns intended to roll back drug prohibitions. There is also a profit motive, at the department level at least, on the law enforcement side. Civil Forfiture allows police to confiscate personal property with no trial or conviction.

These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.

You have the beginning of a point there. The rest of the point is, the so called "good" officers won't cross the blue line of silence by reporting and testifying against the problem officers. Instead, you get the opposite. Just this week in South Carolina, officer Michael Slager shot and killed an unarmed man, Walter Scott, who was originally accused of trying to take the officers taser. Another officer statement confirmed this report. But wait, independent video later showed that Scott was unarmed, running away, and didn't have the taser. Well, he didn't have it until officer Slager dropped it near the dead body.

Until the LEO community is willing to apply the law to themselves, they will continue to have a reputation as corrupt thugs.

the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly.

They also never tell a story about a positive outcome from drug use, citizen use of a firearm in self defense, and plenty of other stuff. So how does that make the police shooting case much different?

Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."

So LEO have just as many stereotypes as the general public? If your friend doesn't want to deal with types of people and situations that come up in that job, they should look for something di

LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.

Sorry, but any LEO that gives this line is flat out wrong. Since 1980, there have been only 2 years, 1980, and 2001, where there were more than 200 officer deaths. In 2013, there were 100 deaths, and 51,625 assaults, and 14,857 assaults with injury. Last year, out of over 900,000 sworn officers, there were 117 fatalities (didn't find the assault numbers). Of those dealths, 49 were related to a vehicle crash, 20 of which involved 1 vehicle. It sounds like driver training might be what they are lobbying for.

Top 10 deadliest jobs by death/hr worked include things like logger, fisherman, construction, farming/ranching, powerline techs, miners, and truck drivers.

there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time,

hmmm, the math doesn't seem to add up there. If there was one every day, then total officer deaths should exceed 365, which hasn't happened since...ever. 1930 was the last time the number was over 300.

The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.

I'll give you the first two, but not "I only enforce the law" part. Police unions, owners of private, for profit prisons, and prison guard unions are the largest contributors to campaigns intended to roll back drug prohibitions. There is also a profit motive, at the department level at least, on the law enforcement side. Civil Forfiture allows police to confiscate personal property with no trial or conviction.

These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.

You have the beginning of a point there. The rest of the point is, the so called "good" officers won't cross the blue line of silence by reporting and testifying against the problem officers. Instead, you get the opposite. Just this week in South Carolina, officer Michael Slager shot and killed an unarmed man, Walter Scott, who was originally accused of trying to take the officers taser. Another officer statement confirmed this report. But wait, independent video later showed that Scott was unarmed, running away, and didn't have the taser. Well, he didn't have it until officer Slager dropped it near the dead body.

Until the LEO community is willing to apply the law to themselves, they will continue to have a reputation as corrupt thugs.

the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly.

They also never tell a story about a positive outcome from drug use, citizen use of a firearm in self defense, and plenty of other stuff. So how does that make the police shooting case much different?

Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."

So LEO have just as many stereotypes as the general public? If your friend doesn't want to deal with types of people and situations that come up in that job, they should look for something di

1) Yes, the police have a siege mentality. Is it justified? Not by these statistics http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of... Officer fatalities are down, and have been down and in fact are not appreciably higher than they were 100 years ago.

2) Yes, modern media and CERTAIN POLITICIANS reinforce the siege mentality, because it benefits them. From selling military class hardware to police, to privatized prisons, policing is big business and is marketed to justify big ticket expenses just as aggressively as the next iPhone.

3) The war on drugs provided the POLICE with a strong profit motive as well, as their policy of seizing property disproportionately benefited police agencies to aggressively pursue even the smallest of drug cases.

4) The police make little to no effort to weed out the irresponsible officers, and in many cases actively pursue programs to recruit them. They defend these known disruptors to the ends of the earth and will do anything rather than admit fault. They no longer attempt to be members of their communities, just the biggest bullies in the community.

5) The media and body politic never make a story out of the DMV doing their jobs, or the garbage men doing their jobs or a hell of a lot of people DOING WHAT IS EXPECTED OF THEM!!!! Why should the public have to stroke LEO's egos for obeying the damn law and their own procedures???

That gives a thug less responsibility regarding human life? I don't buy that. We all have that responsibility. Cops are given weapons because they have to insert themselves into dangerous situations in which they may be killed or wounded, whereas the average citizen is expected to get away (or try) from a dangerous situation if at all possible.
Cops aren't supermen, they're humans just like everyone else. They feel pain, fear, have families, etc..
It is their job to stop crime; it is not their job to take a bullet for someone, or unnecessarily risk their life. An estimated 125 cops have died in 2014. The fact that there are a few asshole cops (as there are a-holes in every walk of life) out there shouldn't change the big picture about what they can do.

That is the way the California Motor Vehicle code was written. It states that ANYTHING which might interfere with your ability to drive a motor vehicle safely, which includes texting, adjusting the radio, even chewing gum for a sadly large portion of the population, is prohibited. It allows for the officer to make a judgment call based on the skills and performance of the driver in question. The anti-cell phone/texting laws are a bunch of politicians grandstanding to get attention, imagine that. There are exceptions for law enforcement persons so they can use their monitors to check vehicle plates and registration numbers. Statistics show that traffic deaths are the greatest killer of on-duty cops.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/

Actually, most states have similar laws. Ignorance is not a defense, btw. See my comment above about book and bookcase.

That is the way the California Motor Vehicle code was written. It states that ANYTHING which might interfere with your ability to drive a motor vehicle safely, which includes texting, adjusting the radio, even chewing gum for a sadly large portion of the population, is prohibited. It allows for the officer to make a judgment call based on the skills and performance of the driver in question. The anti-cell phone/texting laws are a bunch of politicians grandstanding to get attention, imagine that. There are exceptions for law enforcement persons so they can use their monitors to check vehicle plates and registration numbers. Statistics show that traffic deaths are the greatest killer of on-duty cops.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/

The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.

Sorry, officer, but you're full of shit. 160 police officers died in 2010, a 37% increase from 2009. Ten years earlier 150 died. That's out of 794,300 cops. And remember, those are all deaths including squad car wrecks.

To put that in better prospective, 774 construction workers died in the US in 2010.

Being a cop is a hell of a lot safer than being a construction worker.

Here's a little hint, Officer Moore: you might want to google before making a fool of yourself.

About 9,500 people nationally were killed by police during the years 1980 to 2005–an average of nearly one fatal shooting per day. And the failure to address unjustified shootings frankly is likely to lead both to greater community distrust of police and an increased probability that the hostile interactions that often precede the shootings will continue.

About 9,500 people nationally were killed by police during the years 1980 to 2005–an average of nearly one fatal shooting per day. And the failure to address unjustified shootings frankly is likely to lead both to greater community distrust of police and an increased probability that the hostile interactions that often precede the shootings will continue.