It's also interesting to note that while violent crime and homicide in the United States have been declining for many years interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.

It seems unlikely the cause of this is more violence among Americans. Since the overall rate is going down. It seems like changes in policing and attitudes and tactics have resulted in more officer deaths from interpersonal violence. Perhaps more de-escalation would save more police officers lives.

>interpersonal violence has overtaken accidents as the leading cause of police on the job deaths.

Do you have a source for this? Not trying to argue, I would genuinely like to read more.

Upon closer inspection it seems it's more a result of decreasing accident rates than increasing homicide rates although that is a factor lately.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...

That gives a homicide rate for cops of about 7.5 per 100,000. That's a bit less than twice the US national average, and about on par with the overall murder rate in the Carolinas or Mississippi. Seems pretty good for a profession that would logically bring a substantially increased exposure to murderers.

To really emphasize this, car crashes are the top source of police deaths. Yet less than 50% of police use their seat belts.

The justification most give is that they may need to be able to quickly get out of a car and pull their gun in a confrontation.

The only way this makes sense is that

A) Police aren't being properly trained based on data

B) People have an irrational psychological fear of murder over other types of death

A is the likely part.

B isn't necessarily irrational. Many other types of death are at your own actions. Things like drinking alcohol, eating whatever you feel like, not exercising, doing drug, even driving, etc provide some self-identified "benefit" to the individual that they choose to partake. It's rationale that someone is more afraid of dying from an activity they recieve no benefit from than an activity they do.

This is such a common argument that’s basically a fallacy. Many of those dangerous jobs are dangerous because of human error. So it’s funny that you think 60% of deaths being on purpose is normal, what other job in the dangerous top 10 has 60% intentional deaths? Like seriously?

It's a common argument because police and their supporters regularly claim they need to roll up in tactical gear and treat every encounter with civilians like it's a life-and-death struggle because they have one of the most dangerous jobs, yet the truth is they have about an order of magnitude fewer workplace fatalities than roofers and loggers.

This is despite the fact that police regularly escalate their encounters, making them more dangerous for everyone, police included.

Maybe loggers need to start doing their jobs with miniguns like that scene in Predator.

> So it’s funny

They didn’t say it’s funny.

If you have something meaningful to say, then say it. Don’t twist someone else’s words instead.

> human error

Choosing to train police to act with an “warrior mindset” instead of training for de-escalation seems like it could be classified as human error, too.

I think intentionally and willingly doing something whilst informed of the consequence doesn't count as human error. At least not in this context.

Though it would make more sense, since these humans are likely largely erroneous.

I agree. It’s actually systemic error.

Tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year in the us is crazy stuff. In the early 80s the number was ~1500/year. More than an order of magnitude increase in no knock raids while violent crime has fallen.

I didn’t say that they said it’s funny. I was saying it’s funny. You just twisted my words.