Anybody feel like talking about how being a police officer compares with other jobs? Especially public sector and helping professions which are also high stress? Obviously in most other jobs you are not as likely to be putting your life in danger, but can be similar in a lot of other ways.
I wonder if there is a high burn out rate with cops like there is with other high stress jobs likes paramedics, nurses, social workers, fire fighters, etc. And I wonder if these different professions deal with burn out differently. And is there pressure to stay on the job when they're burnt out, which could be for different reasons, maybe pensions, maybe feeling like they have to "man up" or just can't afford to quit or it's too hard to find work in a less stressful environment. So are burnt out cops walking around doing their best but fucking things up sometimes? Which if that is true, would be addressed as part of the larger problem of police violence or just the culture of police in general.
I also wish there was some way to get the real scoop on the different reasons police officers go into this line of work to begin with. It would be fascinating but it's also a point that always comes up - are these guys motivated by wanting to do good, because it runs in their family, or is it the power hungry thing? There are totally social workers who wield their power in truly awful ways, but I don't think they get into it for the power to begin with, in my experience.
I heard on the radio the other day someone talking about how cops have to do too many things. They have to deal with domestic issues (not always violent), people with mental health issues, traffic violations, and this person listed a whole bunch of really different stuff. This was a good point in how important training is for police officers. It also made me think that there could be more people with different professional backgrounds sharing some this work. I know some places are trying to do this to deal with mental health issues. In the public health sector (in Canada anyway) there is this push for a "multidisciplinary approach" which is a barfy buzzword and if our health system wasn't so fucked it could actually be great. People fall through the cracks all the time and don't receive the help they need. I think you could look at policing the same way, they are serving a lot of different people with different needs. Obviously funding is a major issue for why public services are so dysfunctional and then that leads to the professionals getting burnt out and their ability to do good work goes out the window. Not sure if police are lacking in funding - as they are armed up to their necks with all kinds of handy devices, but I digress.
I come from a family of nurses and worked in foster care and publicly funded care facilities for adults with disabilities, so burn out is familiar territory. Sorry if it is kind of a disorganized tangent, but I've got one more "I wonder" and then you can fling poo, as they say
I wonder if more police officers will start speaking up about things they would like to see change or what they think are problems in their departments. Most of the ones I've heard are former cops, but there was one who made a video of herself speaking her mind and she is currently working as a cop.