Inspired by these threads (1,2 ). Cops and people in the military seem to get an undo amount of respect in this country. Why is this the case? There are the obvious things that jump out at you.
The job is dangerous. True, but rarely does it ever even make the lists of "most dangerous jobs ". I’ve read that many, if not most ops never fire their gun.
Police officers protect us, but so do prison guards, judges, and lawyers. yet, few businesses offer the local DA, or security guard free coffee.
Police work is important, and underpaid. Perhaps, but plenty of jobs are. Many of those jobs are also vital to our nations health and welfare.
Do cops really deserve all the admiration they get. If so, why?
I’d prefer to turn the issue around. I’m happy to see cops get the respect they do. What’s more, I’d like to see others get it too. This particular aspect of civil behavior is too often treated as a zero-sum game, with people careful not to pay out more than they feel they’re getting.
To answer your question, policemen/women may seem to get more respect from the community at large for a couple of reasons. First off, their efforts at helping the community frequently make the news, so everybody knows about them. Second, it’s easier to feel benefitted even by police accomplishments that didn’t directly impact you, because of the understandable feeling that any individual crime unthwarted is a threat to everyone. Third, policemen are handy recepticles for appreciation: they wear distinctive uniforms and move among the public they serve. Fourth, their uniforms usually include firearms, which tend to command deference. Fifth, they’re public servants – they’re not working for hire, which would mitigate the gratitude they earn. Sixth, there’s a wide range of responses to them – from “undue” respect to healthy appreciation to indifference to a vague sense of superiority to contempt to anger. Other professions may well prefer to forgo the free coffee and not be the subject of wildly successful pop-culture admonitions by Ice-T and G. Gordon Liddy.
They get incredible positive press from TV. Every day there is a cop show with crimes solved and people saved. Plus TV shows how pretty they are too. How can you not love them.
Having worked with many cops, I have to add: Because they are insulated from society. It is hard for police officers to make friends outside of other police officers, for the sole reason that someday you might have to arrest your friend. This makes friendship opportunities few and far between.
Unless you get alone with your coworkers, it’s a very lonely existance in my experience. You gotta respect someone who would choose that to help others.
I think it’s because police officers are willing to put their own lives at risk in order to serve the public. This is the same reason soldiers and firefighters are similarly respected as professions. Occupations like farming or mining may have more fatalities but they are accidential; there’s a sense of misfortune in these deaths rather than sacrifice.
There’s a subtle but important difference between a job that’s dangerous because an improperly maintained boiler might explode and one that’s dangerous because you might have to chase an armed bad guy into a dark alley. It seems pretty clear-cut to me.
Consider the cop and the refuse/recyclable material collector. You have to decide if the ability to summon courage and bravery in the face of an unexpected situation and to act accordingly (such as a cop must do) is more impressive than to voluntarily enter a profession where you are statically more like to be killed or injured (as a refuse collector does). Personally, I admire them both, and am damn glad they are doing their jobs so I don’t have to.
All of the above. I’ve known a lot of cops, and have admired most. They and other first responders must, as has been often noted, rush towards danger, when most of us would much prefer run the other way.
That was pretty much my first response as well. Personally, I don’t think police deserve any more respect or freebies than any other profession, and I think they should be punished much more harshly for their transgressions than those in other professions because of the betrayal of trust issues.
Cops do deserve respect because of the reasons already listed. However, I’d add fear to the list. Just about everybody does something illegal from time to time. When dealing with a cop most people show respect out of fear.
Whether it’s getting pulled over for speeding on the highway or simply having a beer with a neighbor at a backyard bbq who is a cop, there is that fear of the authority and power that the cop has.
I believe I treat pretty much everyone with the same degree of respect, absent any immediate indication that they deserve less respect, or more. With that said, I don’t think, without knowing something about the specific person involved, that police deserve more respect than anyone else, nor do they deserve less. I don’t really think fear promotes true respect. That’s just, well, fear. I am sure that I’m going to be more careful about what I say and do around them, purely due to the threat implied in their authority, but that’s not a greater degree of respect.
Going a bit further, I’ve been around enough cops in casual circumstances that I’m not going to feel especially intimidated or muzzled in a mainly social situation, but I suspect that’s mostly because I don’t have much to feel guilty about at present. Even then, I’d be fairly unlikely to discuss my slightly checkered past in any detail if I knew the person I was talking to was a cop, regardless of duty status.
This is a bit confusing to me, and I’d like to request a clear-up as non-confrontationally as possible, but…
it appears to me that what you’re saying here is that you want to hold police to a higher standard than other occupations, yet you don’t think that being in an occupation where a higher standard is warranted is worth of respect.
Easy to explain. I don’t like cops. Never have. Almost every cop I have ever encountered, under any circumstances, has had an attitude I don’t like. It comes with the job, apparently. Since they aren’t legally obligated to even come to my house if I call, but have all the power in the world to harass, detain, imprison and even kill me with reasonable impunity, you could say I have a problem with them. The Blue Line protects its own, always, so the rotten ones stick around much longer than they would in any other job. That explains part one.
Because Society has put them into a position of power, they should be held to the strictest standards of behavior and ethics. The slightest transgression that violates the trust that Society (not me) has placed in them should be dealt with with the most extreme punishments possible. I feel the same way about several other professions, my own included. That’s part two.
And I will say as a law-abiding citizen cops have always been unfailingly kind to me, even when I was doing something wrong. I would never do the job and they do garner more respect for me.
On the same token, the ones that do fuck up get greater scorn from me. It isn’t one-sided.
I don’t really comprehend people who don’t like cops. **Silenus **is one of my favorite posters and I’m sad to see this opinion in him. I don’t understand what those of us who simply do not have the resources to defend ourselves are to do; how we are to protect ourselves. One other poster, and I’m not suggesting it’s **silenus **at all, said we should all have to hire our owns ecurity. What??? But I don’t have the money or resources, and that then leads towards feudal times and local warlords - just in a very modern sense.
I have mixed feelings with respect to the OP. I want to respect my police officers. And usually I feel I can. But when they violate trust, I’m a demon about it. Then there’s the way that the legal system makes it clear that a cop’s life is worth more than a civilian’s. I understand the reasoning for it, and don’t think it should be changed, but it still sticks in my craw.
I think part of my feelings is that being a cop is so-often a life changing profession. The hours, stressors and friends concerns that were mentioned up thread make for terrible family stats. (At least as I understand it. If anyone can point to a study that quantifies to educate that impression, I’d be grateful.) Then there’s the need and expectation that the cop must be ready at a moment’s notice for violence. It’s always there. I’ve had a cop stop to help me, when I was pushing my car home (long story - ran out of gas and was feeling stubborn. The house was only about half a mile further) and he was visibly worried that I might do something irrational, until we got things established. (Since it turned out the next door neighbor appartantly had a pot farm in the basement, I now know why he was nervous…) Again, another stat I’ve heard, but haven’t bothered to check, is that most cop killings are from routine traffic stops.
So, all those stressors leave me wanting to give respect to cops.
Of course, I have no idea how the cops themselves feel about it. They might find it as odd as I found it a few weeks ago when I was stopped while wearing my old command ball-cap and thanked for my service.
Its their job to put their lives on the line in order to protect mine. Its their job.
It doesn’t matter if they haven’t had to do it for me yet or will never have to do it. They chose to make that their job.
That deserves greater respect in my book. As does any other profession that has the same requirement: soldier, fireman, coast guard…etc.
