But if your first sentence is true, then we should be able to trace this growing militarization and violence to an actual increase in deaths on duty.
But as far as i can tell from the figures i’ve been able to find, there has been no dramatic, or even steady, long-term increase in the danger of policing. Figures on this page suggest that officer fatalities have remained remarkably steady, within a broad general range, over the past decades.
Since the end of WWII (which seemed like a reasonable place to start), the number of law enforcement fatalities in the United States has been between about 100 and 300 every year, with an average of 167 fatalities per year. These figures include fatalities such as car crashes. Unfortunately, they don’t break down the number of fatalities related to violence directed explicitly against police.
Figures on this page show that deaths over the past decade demonstrate the same general pattern, and also show that assaults, and assaults with injury, against officers have fallen slightly.
It’s also quite well understood by criminologists that violent crime as a whole has fallen considerably in the United States over the past few decades, especially in large cities. New York City had 2,262 murders, 3,216 rapes, and 44,122 felonious assaults in 1990. The numbers for 2013 were 335 murders, 1,378 rapes, and 20,297 felonious assaults.
If officers have recently become, as you suggest, too militaristic and too quick to respond with violence, there does not seem to have been any significant change in the circumstances of their jobs that would justify this changing behavior. Yes, any officer death in the line of duty is one too many (and i say that as the stepson of a retired cop), and officers should be able to protect themselves from harm, but i believe that there are ways to do that without leaving so many unarmed people dead as a result of police encounters.
And it’s also not simply a matter of taking them down violently, on the one hand, or “ask[ing] suspects to put handcuffs on themselves,” on the other, as suggested so asininely by doorhinge. There are times when force is both necessary and justified. I don’t claim to have read every piece of testimony or forensic evidence, but from my own understanding of the case, i believe that police use of force was necessary and justified in the Michael Brown case. I’m still not completely convinced it was necessary to shoot him so many times, but i recognize that the officer, alone and under assault, had the right to protect and defend himself.
The Garner case in New York is much more troubling, and i think it reflects a basic problem in the way that police approach these situations. There was basically nothing to be lost by taking a little more time with this situation, rather than diving in with a banned chokehold. Yes, the guy was big, but there was a group of fully-armed officers around him, he wasn’t actually attacking anyone, and a less-belligerent attitude to policing could have helped the situation immensely. I think that people should obey the cops, but people might also be more likely to do that if police didn’t approach even the most routine interaction as World War Three.
I think a fundamental problem of policing is not so much that police end up using their guns too often (although that is a problem), but that the basic approach that so many cops adopt in dealing with the public is one of hostility and intimidation. I also believe that this approach tends to be used more often in poor communities, and communities with large minority populations. Law-and-order advocates say that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from cops, but i believe that the way police often act in this country means that this is not a true statement.
As i said, my stepfather’s a retired cop. My mother spent the last decade of her work life as a civilian employee in the police department. Her wedding to my stepfather was attended by half the cops from his large station. I’m a white, educated professional, and the worst lawbreaking i engage in is going 75 mph on the freeway. I like a crime-free, peaceful society. I’m someone who should instinctively trust and support the police. Yet, despite all of this, i would do everything possible to avoid any engagement with the police. Not because they’re all bad—they’re not—but because too many of them are assholes and despots and bullies who are attracted to the force precisely because it allows them to push people around.
The training they receive encourages them to think of the public as the enemy, and to use force earlier rather than later, and the legal system protects them from all but the very worst, most obvious violations of their duties and their obligations. Unfortunately, poor communities of color are the ones who bear the brunt of this system. I tend to agree with an article i saw the other day about the Eric Garner case: if this had been some big white guy in Utah, killed under identical circumstances by the ATF or the FBI, the case would be a massive conservative rallying point over the tyranny of government authority and force.