Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 356 posts

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#41

Post by zapataband1 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3

Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops becau…

Pizza guys are more likely to die on the job. Shout out to the real troops. ACAB.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#42

Post by pavlov »

bserge wrote: post #8
ceejayoz wrote: post #5

> Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong. Sounds like they've got some common ground with the "defund the police" folks, if they'd listen a bit.

I'm guessing it would've been better if they went with "Distribute funds properly" instead of "Defund the police".

You can write a polite editorial in WaPo or Bloomberg with that title, but nobody will remember it five minutes later.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#44

Post by bmmayer1 »

Am I the only one who thinks that police officers should be paid more, not less? These should be highly specialized and trained jobs that are hard to get and easy to lose if you're bad at them / criminal -- seems like the reality right now is that they're easy to get and hard to lose.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#45

Post by hanselot »

Wow, this thread has an insane amount of activity. I estimate more than 50% of the replies here are just shaping narrative in a direction.

Edit: They are sliding this thread. How did something with this much engagement end up on page 2, when it clearly has some very reasonable content? This has to be deliberate?

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#46

Post by phkahler »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5

> Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong. Sounds like they've got some common ground with the "defund the police" folks, if they'd listen a bit.

>> they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses

Shouldn't the EMT be called for a drug overdose? You know, someone to treat the patient rather than someone whose primary job would be to arrest them for illegal activity.

Related: I know an EMT and he says people they are there to help will sometimes attack them. That's a stressful job too.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#47

Post by uhtred »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3

Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops becau…

In civilized countries where guns aren't ubiquitous most police call outs won't be for something that can kill them. It's bizarre to me that it's just normal in America to expect someone to have a gun. Also, let's not pretend a lot of them aren't doing it for the power trip.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#48

Post by dfxm12 »

Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong.

Yes. Untrained people should not be sent to deal with these issues. Hopefully, this leads to municipalities actually training people to deal with these issues instead of continuing to try to shove cops into obviously non-cop shaped holes.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#49

Post by YinglingLight »

ct0 wrote: post #17
_fat_santa wrote: post #3

Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops becau…

My opinion of cops has changed as i've gotten older. I used to think they had nothing better to do but bother me, the youth, but in hindsight they have too much to do and are expected to always be on, alert, and accountable. Something that takes a lot of courage. I respect them more, especially after the extremely divisive events of the past 2-3 years, riots, attacks, etc.

The force that wishes to sow division within the US is also the force that wishes to create a Federalized 'Police' Force. "These cities whose mayors have coincidentally punished and gutted it's own police force need help, let's create Gestapo v2.0!"

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#50

Post by bestcoder69 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3

Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops becau…

https://fee.org/articles/by-the-numbers-how-dangerous-is-it-...

If that’s the case, objectively, many other jobs deserve more respect first.

Post reply on HN