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Football player Tyreek Hill was arrested the other day during a traffic stop. Because he refused to keep his tinted windows rolled down for the officers, they commanded him to get out of the vehicle. Because he refused to get out of the vehicle, the officers forced him to the ground for a detainment. In Florida, officers have the right to command you to keep the window low enough for (1) communication and (2) officer safety. This appears to be a universally agreed upon fact before this event, as for instance in a video by a criminal defense attorney specifically about a Floridian just two weeks ago, and in legal advice proffered online just a month ago.
Let us assume that the officers knew who Tyrell Hill was, which isn’t a given because of the arresting officer’s thick Latino accent. They would have every reason to treat him with precaution because of his domestic violence and assault record, meaning that a concern for officer safety is legitimate despite the subject’s fame. And really, even thinking about a subject’s level of fame before enacting a law or police procedure should make us recoil. We don’t want to do that, right? We should treat everyone the same. The typical talking heads, of course, are calling this police brutality.
I am interested in how this scene would be treated if the subject were of a different appearance and nature. Tyreek, a 1%er super-wealthy person of privilege, is extremely rude to a working class minority police officer. Let’s imagine some white CEO stammering to the minority police officer, “don’t knock on my window… I’m going to be late… don’t tell me what to do!”, while ignoring the officer’s requests. We would all agree that this behavior is unacceptable. We would rightfully delight in his retribution, being placed on the ground in subservience to the Law. The comments would read like, “white man realizes the law applies to him”. But Tyreek, a (former) criminal, has a social privilege that would never be afforded to a white CEO: he is a star athlete and the public implicitly expects less of him because of his genetic nature. I can understand the public behaving like the public, but it’s annoying to see media figures excusing the behavior, too.
The police in this case have that "when I say jump you say how high" mentality. Which isn't totally unreasonable but also you don't need to shove a guy onto the ground because he's moderately uncooperative/bitchy. Like at one point they ask him to sit down, he says hold on, and a cop shoves him down, and this is after he's been handcuffed. It's not some super shocking police brutality but just kinda unnecessary.
Would your mentality be different?
I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."
It's interesting how this "moderate" lack of compliance often precedes attempted lethal violence. The number of criminals saying, "I'm going to reach for my gun and shoot you after the count of 10" keeps declining every year.
"but just kinda unnecessary."
Funny how "unnecessary" a lot of actions become when the conditions for death are present. Again, your average patrol cop is dealing with so many unknowns where the penalty for misjudging them tends towards loss of your own life, your partners life, maiming, or endangering other bystanders. Offending the sensitives of a single individual as a rough hedge against those other outcomes seems like a pretty obvious tradeoff, no?
For everyone who thinks that police are predisposed to tyrannical behavior and/or are drunk on power, I would offer that their job description is "interact with highly emotionally activated individuals on a daily basis, often with a very real threat of violence."
Cops aren't even in the 10 most dangerous jobs and most on duty deaths are car accidents.
Their odds of being killed by guns are lower than the average citizen. At 1 in 11,800
Regular citizen odds are 1 in 8,000
Cops need to chill out. The math says so.
You don't see commercial tree trimmers freaking out on people all the time and mag dumping when an acorn hits their own vehicle's roof. https://abcnews.go.com/US/deputy-fires-weapon-after-mistaking-acorn-for-gunshot/story?id=107229338
FLMAO
Comparing the homicide rates of police and "average citizen" is flawed. The “average citizen” is not the same thing as the “average law-abiding citizen”. The cohort used to calculate the risk of death due to homicide for the "average citizen" includes violent criminals who make up the vast majority of homicide victims. This group is excluded from joining the police force creating a sampling bias that distorts the comparison you’re making.
Additionally, you're conflating the risk level after implementing mitigation strategies with the inherent danger of the job. Police engage in work with high-severity hazards of varying likelihood. They employ risk mitigation strategies that reduce the potential severity (e.g., wearing ballistic vests) and the potential likelihood (e.g., situational awareness training).
The effectiveness of these risk mitigation strategies likely contributes to the lower fatality rates among police officers, masking the inherent dangers of the job. So claiming police officers have a low risk of being killed, so they don't need to employ such strict mitigation techniques, is flawed. It's akin to arguing that because few firefighters die on the job nowadays, entering burning buildings isn't actually dangerous and firefighters overly cautious.
The comparison to commercial tree trimmers is also flawed, as the nature and unpredictability of threats faced by police officers are fundamentally different. Unlike tree trimmers, who face primarily environmental hazards, police officers confront unpredictable, potentially hostile human actors. This introduces a level of situational volatility and stress that is not comparable to most other professions, including high-risk manual labor jobs.
I hear what you're saying and some of those are valid points. I would add that when comparing to other dangerous jobs, they all take mitigation and safety equipment into account as well. They don't just count tree trimmers killed without a helmet. Criminals, just like cops, are also citizens, their lives do count towards statistical death rates and can be included in national averages. A counter point is that not all cops work in places like south side chicago, yet most act like they do. I certainly understand that it can be a stressful job when no one is ever really happy to see you and you're dealing with a lot of the worst people on their worst day, I've had good and bad encounters with cops, 99% of the time while driving; I'm always polite, there really was no excuse for the bad encounters and it certainly soured me on the whole profession from a young age.
To quote the late great Warren Zevon. -"The Sheriff's got his problems too, he will surely take them out on you"
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