Police Myths

There are many myths skewing people's opinion on the way a country is governed. One of the most persistent and deeply rooted of those myths is that the police exist to protect us, that they're "the thin blue line" between us and total chaos. Or that being a policeman is one of the most dangerous jobs.

One would hope that the recent tragic mass shooting of children and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has dispelled both these myths. Whatever your opinion of the police in general, this event must have shown that 1) their first concern was their own lifes, not that of the children, and 2) that they instead arrested some of the parents who tried to do the job of rescuing children, even tazed and handcuffed them. Let's make that as clear as possible: the police protected a mass shooter from desperate parents. Okay, that's putting it harshly as I'm sure some of the motivation was to protect those parents as well. Some of it. Still the result of their inaction was that the shooter could take his sweet time, 40 minutes at least, to terrorize and murder innocent children and teachers. One mom managed to jump a fence and rescue her children after first having been handcuffed. The teachers and parents were the ones who tried to protect the children here, not the police.

This single event shows perfectly why police exists, what their true purpose is; they exist to maintain the the status quo of the current capitalist order. Not to just maintain order, but to maintain a very particular order. I've written on several occasions about the origin of police departments in America, but I'll briefly refresh our memories here; in the rural, agricultural south they began as the "slave patrols" who hunted, retrieved or killed escaped slaves, and in the much more industrialized north they existed mainly to suppress workers unions. The police was invented to crush any threat to the rich white upper class, be they land owners or industrialists. And that's what they do to this day. "To serve and protect" means to serve and protect established power hierarchies, not citizens or children.

Keep in mind that we're not talking about individual police officers here, but about the police as an institution. Although it must be said that there are a lot of shady individuals among their numbers as well; search my posts on "police" and you'll find information about police acting like organized criminal gangs as well as legislation that incentivizes this behavior, like the civil forfeiture laws that allow the police to keep any assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. And who do the police arrest? Criminals? White collar criminals? Well, no, not exactly:

That data shows that of more than 10.5 million arrests made every year, the bulk are for noncriminal behavior, drug violations, and low-level offenses. Since 1980, arrests for drug violations have increased by 170 percent, and racial disparities in enforcement have grown even more stark. Still, a majority of victims don’t report their experiences to police, and police solve only a fraction of the crimes that are reported.

In recent years, after a series of police killings sparked nationwide protests, a growing movement for police accountability also exposed systemic problems with everyday policing practices. Most arrests are ultimately dismissed, but aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, especially in communities of color, causes long-term damage to those communities and their relationship with police.
_{source: The Intercept}

So, is policing a dangerous job? It's dangerous enough for me to not aspire becoming part of law enforcement, that's for sure. But if we look up what jobs are truly dangerous, policing doesn't make the top 10. Not even the top 20. The most dangerous job by far is logging with more than 100 deaths per 100,000 workers. The second most dangerous job, Aircraft pilots and flight engineers, claims around 50 lifes per 100,000 workers each year, with most crashes occurring with privately owned planes and helicopters rather than commercial jet aircraft. Police officers come in at rank 22 with 14 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's still 4 times as dangerous as an average job based upon the workplace fatality rate and puts them on par with maintenance workers, construction workers, and heavy vehicle mechanics. Here's the Top 25 most dangerous jobs in the United States published in November, 2020.

Police deaths have gone up since then, but that has nothing to do with the job; it has to do with the pandemic and their political affiliation. It should be common knowledge by now that Republican voters, and especially Trump supporters, are much more likely to be killed by the virus. The reason why also needs no explanation. Seeing that police officers overwhelmingly lean Republican, it's no surprise that the fatality rates have gone up. But that's not the whole story; violent crimes have gone up during the pandemic and record numbers of police officers were killed in the line of duty as well. This year over the first six months the number of officers killed by gun violence has gone up while the overall number killed in the line of duty went down by 30 percent. And covid-19 still remains the largest killer of police (source). These numbers should inspire politicians to do something about gun-control, but instead both parties lean towards increasing the police; more guns instead of less guns... That's so disheartening... And the below linked video isn't a pleasant one as well, but I recommend you watch it anyway, as it dives deeper into the myths we're told about the long arm of the law.

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