I would opine, that about a quarter shouldn’t be cops at all. Then there’s the ones that want to ,one day, use their weapon in a situation. There are some who are culturally ignorant about the environment, that they are tasked with policing.
Overall, they all have to do things that I consider brave sometimes. Pulling someone from a burning car, or jumping into a waterway to help people. That shit happens.
The biggest issue with the job is, you have to go into situations, where there may not be a right answer. But they have to make a decision, and quickly, with lives on the line, possibly their own. It’s a tough job, for the best cops. Entering a situation, they don’t usually have much information. The worst situations, are typically at night time. So visibility is an issue. There are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation. I’m just saying that cops deal with a lot.
The biggest problem, as I’ve said before, they need a lot of cops. With the numbers required to fill needs, they have to take officers that they expect will be subpar. So. We have people who shouldn’t have passed the vetting process on the streets with guns, and a badge.
There are of course, some fine officers as well. And honestly, even most of the shitty ones took some pride in their jobs. Some just don’t do well in stressful, or dangerous situations, or can’t gage the force required for given situations. Others are hotheads. They have no business in the uniforms.
This is an example of a situation where I responded to a fight in a hotel room. 3AM. About 15 years ago.
“Knocking on a door, when the only thing I know for sure is that you can hear people fighting. I don’t know what is about to happen. I don’t know why you hear glass breaking, and a woman screaming. But I need to enter the room, because whatever is happening needs to stop. Every second I hesitate, someone might need me in that room. There could be injured people who need help immediately. There could be knives, guns, or I could be outnumbered. There could be killers in the place. I’m alone.
I identity myself multiple times, and demand the door be opened. I seem to be ignored.
I kick the door in, and everything stopped. There was a woman, naked , lying in a pool of blood on the ground. She’s breathing, but barely responsive. She has apparently been badly beaten.
Standing in the room by the bed, breathing hard, is a large man, in his 40’s. I knelt by the woman, never taking my eyes off of the guy. My look was of disgust, and anger. Shame, and fear washed over his face. He ran to the door, smashing into me, as a tried to tackle him. Back up arrived just then. The guy slipped away from me, and split the other to officers, and dove into a nearby sewage river thing. The other two I saw him down there swimming underwater. Trying to avoid our lights. Two other officers eventually apprehend him. He swam through a disgusting river, full of used condoms, syringes, broken beer bottles, and dead rats.
I sat with the injured lady, until EMS arrived. I put a towel over her shoulders. She wouldn’t let go, and was crying and violently shaking. A female officer, eventually took her to an ambulance.”
That was about 15 minutes of being a LEO, in North Charleston, SC. That was just a sliver, of the situations you enter into, and what you find, and what you ultimately decide to do.
I dealt with countless domestic dispute calls. Sometimes many a night. All with different variables. Some were not as bad as my story. Some were FAR worse…
Knowing that you are mortal, makes it hard to apply the appropriate force. You have the means to stop what’s scarring you, and your instinct is to do so. I ended up in hand to hand in most situations. Which worked ok, and I needed the experience for when I latter became a bouncer part time.
Not every officer is comfortable, with restraint techniques versus just pulling a weapon.
Cops aren’t brave is an oversimplification…
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