Last I wrote, it was to defend the financial viability of the teaching profession. Do I still think teachers are underpaid? Yes. That's because I think most folks in the labor force are underpaid, though. We can't simultaneously be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth and have the housing crisis that we have without extreme inequality. What's that look like? People not being able to afford housing, families, and daycare, to start. & before you start - I am not even so liberal as to believe that people deserve all of these things as a right (in a better world, I might). However, it is my fundamental belief that people who work full-time should get to do those things, no question. & if you don't agree with that, then I have no issue saying you're part of the problem. That's a whole other post in itself, though, so let me loop back to this entry: the (myth?) of police officers being endangered on a daily or even regular basis.
First, a few numbers: 30% of American adults have a gun. I'm sure there's quite a bit of regional and racial variance. In Rhode Island, the gun ownership rate is 5.8%. In Alaska, the rate soars to 61.7%. In California, we sit at 19.8%.
Well, as I continued research, I found a page that was much more informative and relevant. I planned on compiling numbers and putting together some reasonable scenarios, but even that would have been guesswork on my part. Without further ado: the official data for assaults on law enforcement officers in California. I know clicking links is a hassle, so I'll def. run down some numbers from that page. Let's start at a serious bottom line - how many officers do you think were killed in the line of duty in California in 2018? The CA pop is ~39.5 million, and there are about 78,500 sworn officers (as in, that doesn't count civilian staff).
Waiting for a guess.
Waiting for a guess.
Still waiting for a guess.
That's right, you guessed it - in 2018, a whopping 7 officers were killed in the line of duty. To add to that stat a little more - 3 of those 7 were accidental. 4 deaths of 78500 officers returns a .005% likelihood of death. As a comparison, you are MORE likely to flip heads with a coin 14 times in a row than an officer in California is to die on the job. If that doesn't impress you, you have a poor understanding of probability.
You might be wondering - well, that's just deaths. Surely officers encounter danger otherwise? Before I talk about those stats - I want to underscore the fact that if you do something and are endangered .005% of the time, it is incredibly safe. You might not like that number because you're used to planes, trains, and other vehicles having a much higher threshold of safety, but in the historical scheme of things? It's incredibly safe to be an officer in California. Now, on to these other stats.
In 2018, there were 11,148 assaults on officers. Eye-popping number, right? Well, let's pump the brakes. 9175 (82.3%) of those assaults involved hands, fists, and/or feet. So... I'm gonna go ahead and file none or very close to none of those as life-threatening, because you can damn well believe that someone would be riddled with a dozen or more bullets before they managed to kill an officer without a weapon. And please - if you pull up one counterexample where a cop is threatened, you are still ignoring the other 9174 cases. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of numbers if you think that case matters to my overall argument.
How about the other 1,973 assaults? 279 (2.5%) of them involved a firearm and 200 (1.8%) of them involved a knife. 1494 (13.4%) of them involved some "other" dangerous weapon. The word "involved" is tricky, because I'm willing to bet these stats are inflated by assaults that don't include the use of said weapon but merely possession. I wish I could have these stats boiled down more simply: # of assaults where officers were stabbed, shot, or bludgeoned. Why? Well, I just wouldn't want the numbers to include instances where cops are bruised or scratched up because... I don't really consider that dangerous. If you do count those instances, you have to admit that you are seriously lowering the bar for officer endangerment. It's also sad because we are at such a low number of "dangerous" incidents that you have to split hairs between what a reasonable person would consider dangerous compared to someone who is pro- or anti-cop (who are vested in inflating or deflating those numbers, respectively).
So, there you have it. By the numbers, officers in California are not regularly putting their lives on the line. & if you really, for some strange reason are so vested in believing that throwing on a uniform to enforce the law makes you a goddamn hero - I have another number to soothe you. I don't know about the rest of the state, but officers in SJPD are well-compensated. If you don't click the link, it just shows that 19 of the top 20 highest-paid employees of the City of San Jose are all cops - and none of them took home a dime less than $300,000 (in 2017, at least). So you can rest easy knowing that those who patrol our streets are paid quite handsomely.
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