Rescue Humor The Entertaining Side of Police, Fire & EMS
For the past few weeks I have been holding off writing about some of the anti police rhetoric currently permeating social media. Today I just feel the need to come out and say a few things.
I know I don’t share a lot of personal stuff here so you may not know this, but I have a supervisory role in law enforcement. All of the brave men and women working for me know I am a numbers guy. So the other day after reading about how our police need more training to “end police brutality” I decided to run a few numbers.
As of Friday December, 12, 2014 my PD has had just over 123,000 “official” police/citizen contacts in 2014.
In all these contacts we had only 74 instances that required “Use of Force” documentation (physical fight/pepper spray/TASER) and 1 officer involved shooting.
Even with out doing the math the idea that police brutality if rampant just does not seem right. We talked to over hundred thousand individual people yet only got physical less than one hundred times. Our officers barely got into physical confrontations more than once per week.
Just to make sure I was looking at the number right I did the math. In my jurisdiction if you have contact with a cop you only have a
0.0006% of getting physically “brutalized”
and/or
0.000008% of being shot
Can someone who thinks that police brutality is rampant explain these low statistical likelihoods to me?
Are the police I supervise being lazy and do I need to tell them to go start brutalizing people more?
What bothers me most about all this is the fact people who should know better are also calling for police reforms to end the excessive amount of brutality. The President, the Attorney General, members of congress and local mayors are all on the anti-police band wagon. These people know that police are not “out of control” yet they still call for sweeping reforms just to make sure their voice is one of the many sound bites on the nightly news.
Seriously think about this, the NYPD just told the New York Mayor to stay away from police funerals due to his anti-police position.
It is getting to the point where things becoming dangerous for police. Just last week two Milwaukee, WI Police officers decided not to shoot a make armed with a knife attacking them. After the fact they said it was due to fears of them kicking off the anti-police riots. These officers got lucky! But that luck might run out for others who second guess their actions due to fears of social outcry.
In closing I know many others are calling to make sure the hash tag #policelivesmatter gets used on social media. Please don’t be the silent supporters of police, show officers you care but dropping that hashtag on something pro-police.
