I don't know how to be an orthopedic surgeon. The closest thing I've had to medical training was a first aid and CPR class. What I do know is that if an orthopedic surgeon, upon first seeing an overweight patient complaining of hip pain says "lay off the cheeseburgers and your hip will be fine, you fat slob", that doctor is doing a bad job. Not only is it hostile and rude, it fails to attempt to adequately understand the situation before rushing to judgement.

I do know a little about how to be a police officer. I went to school for it, but decided that wasn't what I want to do with my life. Accusing a complainant of lying right off the bat without any investigation when the complaint is anything more believable than an alien abduction, then having the evidence of your rudeness deleted is not how to be a good cop. I don't think it really takes much training or experience to reach that conclusion.

Interesting, because most police officers don't need to go to school for it to get the job, right?

It's usually not a minimum requirement, but a degree, usually in criminal justice, can be a significant competitive advantage in applications.

You don't strictly need to go to school to be a professional programmer, either, but people still go to school for it.

If my arm was made out of a chair, I'd think I'd have difficulty throwing the ball to a wide receiver.

Yeah, no. It's not that dangerous.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/chart...

As far as straight up getting murdered, it's in the top 2, but #1 taxi drivers are murdered at almost 3x the rate.

For policeman it's their job to go to dangerous places.

Yes, in this example, I would imagine non-government job injuries are probably under reported.

>No one has it in for ... taxi drivers

Apparently they do. They get murdered almost 3x as often per capita as police officers. Maybe it's their money they're after.

>For policeman it's their job to go to dangerous places.

The same can be said for taxi drivers, delivery drivers, postal service, electric linemen, crab fishermen, loggers, proctologists ...

It boils down to, I guess police is a dangerous profession, but certainly not in the extreme as shown by the existence of more dangerous professions. Also, being dangerous profession certainly doesn't excuse other types of workers to blatantly use deadly force because they are scared of their profession, and it shouldn't be an excuse for police to do the same. Yet, here we are, in a thread talking about police misconduct, and someone comes up with "but their jobs are dangerous," as if it should stand as an excuse for misconduct. It does not.

I hear this every time someone with a difficult job has it pointed out to them that they're doing it badly. They don't even pretend that somehow makes it acceptable to do the job badly; I honestly don't know what effect saying it is supposed to have.

We only end up discussing the tiny fraction of police cases where things go badly.

It's easy to be an armchair pilot, but usually crashes are caused by more complex issues.

If we were as diligent with our police forces as we are with commercial airlines we wouldn't have as many bad cops.

"Given the power and trust we place in police, I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect they treat people with respect and that they're punished pretty severely when they betray that trust."

The next morning I get a call from the detective in the county to the South confirming he obtained video from the gas station where this all originated (the defendant approaching me while I’m pumping gas).

Next I get a notification from Apple my iPad has been found, which I placed in lost/stolen mode. I call the detective who doesn’t answer his phone and then the police station in the county where I escaped and my iPad was located. Dispatch informed me they would not go to the address provided by Apple to look for the defendant, my car or iPad until I drove back up to that county and met with the police.

I drove back to the county and met with two police officers who drove to the address (only 1.5 miles from the police station) but they did not see my vehicle, and apparently there was no way they would get a warrant to search the domicile for my iPad and they wouldn’t bother knocking to see if the suspect was there.

Unconvinced I worked up the nerve to drive by the property myself...I’ll be damned if I didn’t see my car driving up and down the streets of this neighborhood. I did my best to tail the car until it parked 1 house away from the address provided by Apple, and watched as the defendant got out of my car walked into the the street as I drove past. Once again I called 911 and plead they come back out to the address while I waited a few blocks away.

Once I saw a police car enter the neighborhood I followed until we arrived at my car which had already been relocated about a block away from where I saw it park and I drove past the defendant. On scene an officer was questioning 2 individuals on the front porch of the house where my car was parked and the defendant was standing on the sidewalk about 5 feet from my car. I basically yelled officer that’s the man who kidnapped me with a gun and car jacked me. He was handcuffed and taken into custody.

Shortly after I was asked to appear at the police station where I ended up being questioned and accused of trying to buy “the hard stuff”...I had to ask, apparently that’s crack. And this was the same detective who already obtained video of the gas station corroborating my entire story, I explained I was an attorney that I had just run 18 miles on the morning I was kidnapped (showed my run keeper app and everything) and otherwise I wasn’t celebrating my 18 mile run with crack. Almost immediately I was told I can go, of course I asked if he would get a warrant to recover my iPad and more important look for the gun, and I was told “no, those kinds of resources don’t exist.”

The defendant was arrested on Sunday, charged with grand theft of an auto and bonded out on Monday. Not until the “State Attorney Hearing” a few weeks later where the State attoney confirmed she had 2 prior cases against this guy where with similar facts: he stole a car in the county to the South and the cars were recovered in the county to the North, did I finally feel vindicated. Then, 1 week later his bond was revoked and the real charges came including assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping with a fire arm.

As to it being easy to be a armchair quarterback, I wouldn’t know but I’ll take your word for it.

Edit: deleted link to the public record of the case

I dont know about "deserved" but if they can make it a drug case then they can keep the car, the ipad, and probably steal err "seize" more property from the victim under civil asset forfeiture

Further they can use that statistic to point to an increase in "drug activity" in the county opening up the dept for grants from the DEA and other federal programs under the failed War on Drugs

A simple car jacking they get no money for. Violent crime they get no money for

Drugs is where the money is

And I'm being serious. If it's that big of a problem for you, and you're getting robbed at gunpoint, GET THE CRAP OUT OF THERE.

Mine just sent a guy on ten day suspension WITHOUT PAY for getting mad at his kids football game and throwing a helmet. He was off-duty and still reflected poorly on the profession and his department so BAM, 10 days without pay.

It even made the news because so many people care about it.

Contrast that with whatever cesspool you're stuck living in, and once again, I suggest: You should probably move. Unless you're just exagerating and you're not actually in fear of injustice. But if your story is true, you should be.

Because if you think every police department is like that, then you're either listening to non-stop propaganda, or, surrounded by actual shit police departments.

And before you think I'm some automatic "cop defender", when I lived just 100 miles away for college, I was surrounded by shit cops, some of which who went to prison for being shit cops, and one even lied on a police report that I tried to file when I was robbed.