....which is exactly the kind of judgement most cops are called on to make every single day, and which most of the rest of us aren't. I don't want to beat handog up either, because I have posted in his favor many times about that particular incident......which remains an object lesson to ALL CHL holders of what can happen, even unintentionally, if we are not deliberate about concealment.gigag04 wrote:My experience with the phrase "with all due respect" usually means that person feels little is due...
I know handog had a situation that would frustrate most of us here so I can view his comments in that filter.
There are jobs which, in some purely statistical sense, year in and year out, might carry some higher degree of danger.......meaning more people get killed every year doing that job than any other. But, those dangers are related to machinery, hot metal, slippery surfaces, etc., whereas there are NO other jobs (outside of being an infantryman in a war zone) where the greatest danger, every single day, and every single encounter, is from your fellow human beings. That job description alone is the province of LEOs and nobody else's. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and they are not there because they run faster, have bigger teeth or claws, or more powerful muscles than any other animal. Humans are at the top of the food chain because they are more intelligent and more cunning than any other animals, AND humans are the only animals capable of one other thing: deliberately evil intent.
THAT is what makes LEO work so dangerous. How many fishermen, loggers, or airline pilots have to pull over a carload of people who are manifestly up to no good, and process whatever it is they are up to? At 2:00 a.m.? When your nearest backup is 10 minutes away? Several times a night? EVERY shift? Fishermen get killed by weather and the cold ocean. Loggers get cut down by falling timber and out of control equipment. Airline pilots get taken by defective aircraft and weather. But the dangers they face are either impersonal......they're just in the way at the wrong time....or sometimes their own errors, such as pilot error. Cops are different. Their lethal threats are TRYING to hurt them or kill them.........and that makes all the difference in the world. That's why (A) we hold them so much more accountable for screwing up when they do; and (B) why we owe them an extra measure of respect when they don't.....because they face that danger so that we don't have to.......and that's the difference.
I don't think they get paid enough for the responsibility they are asked to shoulder. But, as I have also posted before, I insist on accountability, because the very fabric of our society depends on every LEO rising above the baser instincts many of us would succumb to when pressed out of our comfort zones. Any cop who pulls that off has my unfiltered respect. Every cop who fails to meet the standard has my unfiltered condemnation, because our culture and social stability depend on respect for authority (not the same thing as "subjugation" to authority). Cops who abuse that respect threaten our social order. Those who uphold it are part of the ties that bind us together, and we're all better for it.
It's really that basic.