So you wanted to know why cops are such assholes? Go ahead, ask.

[Subatomic]

I'd like to know how much training is involved in becoming a police officer in the U.S. News media here (in Germany) are saying it's only a 6 month training course, which if true seems like a recipe for unprofessional behaviour to me. In no way can half a year of training prepare you for the complexities of modern day police work, especially in a working environment that's much more dangerous than around here (where police training involves 2,5 to 3 years split between on the job training and police school). And even we have problems with police accountability and cops covering each other when something goes wrong, though it luckily rarely involves shooting people.

 

[sumanoskae]

Where is this 10% of cops (which FYI, is about 111,000 in the US) shooting down innocent people like dogs and getting away with it? Perhaps I haven't checked the news often lately, but I seems to have missed the story where over 100 thousand innocent people got shot by corrupt police.

Perspective, please use it.

Fine, 1%. Hell, 0.1%. You can do a 30 second google search on police brutality and find plenty of examples of police officers abusing their power. The actual number is secondary; the lack of accountability in the system itself is the core of the problem.

Yea, doctors and surgeons are never poorly trained nor make any mistakes.

Oh wait.

Every year somewhere between 98,000 to 444,000 people die in hospital due to mistakes and preventable harms.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-us-hospitals

given the level of indignation and outrage directed at the entire police profession by the posters in here due to police misconducts, I would imagine people will also be raging at the entire medical profession, lamenting how they can never trust a medical professional ever again for the rest of their life.

False equivalence; being a surgeon is far more demanding than being a police officer. You're far more likely to have someone's life put on your shoulders when you literally cut people open and mess with their insides for a living, than when you're job is to maintain the peace and enforce the law.

A doctor also doesn't CREATE the situation; if a police officer injures someone due to misconduct, they are the ones taking action. A doctor only reacts; they do not choose to put the patient in mortal danger.[/quote]

See above for how well that rigorous training is working out.

So the sum of your argument is that "Doctors fuck up, and people don't get mad, therefore people shouldn't scrutinize the police so much"?

A: Two wrongs don't make a right. Even if the situation was equivocal, it would not make the actions of the police force any less objectionable, it would just mean that the medical industry is equally objectionable.

B: The situation is not equivocal. A surgeon has no choice when they take a lethal risk; the service they perform is inherently dangerous, but absolutely necessary. There is no way to safely perform, say, brain surgery.


Since you want to talk about perspective; in the USA, every year for the past five years we've had over 100 deaths via police. The UK, Canada, Germany; their numbers COMBINED don't even come close. Something is obviously not right here.

 

[sumanoskae]

The pathway to the ideal is just the roadway to ruin. Or something like that. Perfection is impossible to attain. We simple do the best we can. I don't think anyone is surprised anymore, at the negative perceptions of police put out by media, but I still don't like it.

Oh, btw, doctors kill way more people by accident than police do (whether accidental or intentional).

A surgeon's job is inherently lethal, and far more demanding than a police officer's. Perfection is unattainable, we're nowhere near needing to worry about that. We haven't even gotten to Acceptable, forget Perfect.

Perfection may be impossible, but we sure as hell ARE NOT doing the best we can. The reason you tell people to strive for perfection is not because they will attain it, but because they should try. If people fuck up when they aren't trying their absolute hardest, think about how bad they would be if they weren't giving it their best.

Even if you can't always do the right thing, you should never lose sight of what it is. Being able to tell right from wrong, even if circumstance should force you to choose the lesser of two evils, is what ensures that you will choose the lesser.

 

[kyp275]

Fine, 1%. Hell, 0.1%. You can do a 30 second google search on police brutality and find plenty of examples of police officers abusing their power. The actual number is secondary; the lack of accountability in the system itself is the core of the problem.

Sure, but then that's not my point, which is pointing out how ridiculous your hyperbole was.

False equivalence; being a surgeon is far more demanding than being a police officer. You're far more likely to have someone's life put on your shoulders when you literally cut people open and mess with their insides for a living, than when you're job is to maintain the peace and enforce the law.

A doctor also doesn't CREATE the situation; if a police officer injures someone due to misconduct, they are the ones taking action. A doctor only reacts; they do not choose to put the patient in mortal danger.

Please put that goalpost back where it was. You made a statement in no uncertain terms that you do not accept incompetence or accidents for civilian deaths, and that you would never allow poorly trained people to perform the duty of a surgeon. Both of which I simply pointed out happens in abundance in the real world.

And please, you think those deaths all came from open heart surgery and the like? You may want to think more along the lines of prescribing the wrong medicine, grossly incompetent misdiagnosis, and just plain incompetence in general. Hell, people have died to DENTISTS.

Also, reactive? there are doctors that prescribe medications and treatments that actively hurts/killed patients needlessly just to line their pockets, but I guess in your book that's all ok.

So the sum of your argument is that "Doctors fuck up, and people don't get mad, therefore people shouldn't scrutinize the police so much"?

No, the sum of my argument is that your analogies are terrible, and you should probably get some basic understanding of the things you're talking about before you, well, start talking about it.

 

[sumanoskae]

Sure, but then that's not my point, which is pointing out how ridiculous your hyperbole was.

My exact statement was that cops can, and often enough do, get away with killing innocent people. Are you questioning the validity of the statement?

Please put that goalpost back where it was. You made a statement in no uncertain terms that you do not accept incompetence or accidents for civilian deaths, and that you would never allow poorly trained people to perform the duty of a surgeon. Both of which I simply pointed out happens in abundance in the real world.

And please, you think those deaths all came from open heart surgery and the like? You may want to think more along the lines of prescribing the wrong medicine, grossly incompetent misdiagnosis, and just plain incompetence in general. Hell, people have died to DENTISTS.

Also, reactive? there are doctors that prescribe medications and treatments that actively hurts/killed patients needlessly just to line their pockets, but I guess in your book that's all ok.

Nowhere did I say that incompetence on the part of Doctors was acceptable, I said that an error on a surgeons part is evidence of far less incompetence than on a police officer's part. It doesn't take a poorly trained surgeon to make a deadly mistake.

As for misdiagnosis and the like, you are correct.

I did not and am not exalting the medical industry; I have a fair bit to say against it. Perhaps I should have used a different example, but that isn't the core of the point. As I said, simply because the medical industry displays similar incompetence does not excuse the police force.

So why am I more wary of police than doctors? Well, first of all, I can't avoid police. I only have to deal with doctors if I get admitted to a hospital.

The second issue is this: If medical incompetence is the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA, only below cancer and heart disease, it still doesn't change average life expectancy. I'm still more likely to get old and die of cancer.

You are correct, death via an officer is an extreme example; you're much more likely to be abused or harassed in other ways. If you recall, the point of the statement was NOT that police officers are likely to kill you, but rather that they can and have gotten away with murder, and police brutality is a hell of a lot easier to get away with.

The likelihood of me dying in a hospital before the age of 70 is still pretty low; same for being murdered by police. Me being harassed or injured by a cop? Much more probable.

No, the sum of my argument is that your analogies are terrible, and you should probably get some basic understanding of the things you're talking about before you, well, start talking about it.

You have yet to dispute anything I've said regarding the police force, all of your arguments have been directed at my mistakes regarding the medical industry. All you've said is that I used a poor analogy, you haven't said anything about me being wrong about cops.

I'm not going to defend medicine, that isn't what the forum is about.