So you really think that nearly 30% of all cops have shot at someone?
True, Memory is far more unreliable than many of us think. Sure we all know we forget stuff, but some of our memories are either colored or just plain false.
Indeed, this could be the reason, but the poor specifics on the question is clearly a major issue.
This wasn’t a survey of retired cops. It was a survey of active cops (with an all-too-typical nonresponse rate). So you would want to divide by their average years on active duty.
Lemme see. 660,000 cops. 27% is 178,200. Say the average years on duty is 15 - so that’s 11,880 shootings per year. Probably more, because some of these cops fired their guns more than once over those 15 years. Others, a lot more. About 1000 people are shot to death by the cops every year. So for every cop that shoots somebody, more than 11 other cops shoot something else or the shooting results in injury. Maybe they miss. Maybe they’re hunting deer. Or dogs. Or squirrels. Maybe they’re firing warning shots. Maybe they’re locked in a room and need to shoot their way out. Maybe they’re gun range trainers. Maybe they’re jugglers.
Or maybe this survey is off. I figured it was off by 5 since 27%/5% ~~= 5. But it could be more.
ETA: Ok, it’s not as crazy as I implied. 85,000 people suffer an injury after a police encounter that requires hospitalization. So that’s a big factor, though I doubt whether it adequately explains the survey results. U.S. Data on Police Shootings and Violence | Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project | University of Illinois Chicago
For example, this chart suggests that the bulk of injuries are not gun related. Types of injuries suffered by civilians in interactions with law enforcement | Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project | University of Illinois Chicago
I don’t agree on the injured animal part. Leaving an animal to suffer while hours or even days goes by waiting for a game warden is inhumane and unneccessary. A State Trooper, Deputy Sheriff, or Police Officer already have the tools to deal with that.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least 30% of fictional cops in TV and movies have shot at someone. Add to this the fact that real-life cops are armed, and the fact that the crimes and incidents involving police that we hear about on the news are hardly a representative sample of a cop’s typical day, and I don’t find it all surprising that the popular perception is that it’s normal for the police to occaisonally have to shoot at people.
Danny Reagan has shot dozens of people at least. He barely had to do any paperwork afterwards. He does seem to be in fewer gun battles lately. The cops on Chicago PD are probably worse.
Law & Order, Chicago PD - they have assorted shoot-outs and often kill perps. I presume there’s an inquiry - there’s usually a thing about turning in badge and gun temporarily, desk job etc. What i wonder is how long this typically takes in real life - since mostly, these seem to be settled by the next episode in TVland.
Much more than that. Even The Rookie, which is somewhat realistic, has more gunfights in a single season that the average cops gets in in his/her 20 year career.
Mind you if you average in all the Brit detective shows, that will lower it quite a bit.
For a gunfight, the inquiry is brief. But if the evidence the perp wasnt shooting also isn’t clear, yeah, there is a serious inquiry done. So it depends.
It’s a small sample but the police shootings that I’ve had personal knowledge of (beyond what the public sees in the media) it takes months for the officer to be back to full duty. And those were all cases where the outcome wasn’t really in question (suspect was armed actively attempting to kill or seriously harm the officer).
The process will vary from state to state. In my state and probably most others a higher authority has to conduct the investigation, either the county or state. The findings are typically presented to a grand jury. They are in no hurry to complete their tasks. Then the officer has to be cleared psychologically. Things were probably different in the past but now no department wants to be seen as putting a traumatized officer back on the streets too soon. Even after cleared criminally the officer is often on light duty for a while.
I do understand it makes for a boring TV show. If a cop gets in a shootout at the 20 minute mark he’s not going to be on duty to catch the big bad guy at 55 minutes.
How about lets say 99.99%+ that a cop doesn’t shoot in a given month? If you apply your math to what I cited as the figures in NJ you end up with something far different than what was reported. I’m terrible at math so maybe this doesn’t make any sense but here goes.
In NJ, 31,000 LEO s worked a collective 961,000 “officer months” during the period October '20-July’23. There were 8 instances of police firing at a person during that period or one every 120,125 officer months. If we say a career is 300 months, that’s one shooting per 400 careers.
Now, there’s probably a flaw in that logic that I’m missing but being bad at math/statistics was one reason I ended up in my chosen career. That said, the number is much closer to what I experienced in my little part of the word. 27% seems wrong by orders of magnitude. My agency (70 sworn) had exactly 1 OIS during my career. It was the first ever in the 100+ year history of the agency. Granted, this was a DAs office without a patrol function where almost all OIS take place. We did have active drug, gang, SWAT (part of a regional team) and homicide units where I spent my entire career.
Given that the vast majority of cops never fire their weapon at a person in a 30 year career, your 0.1% chance in a given month is probably closer 0.01% or less. Can a real statistician chime in?
I have to do more paperwork if I punch, kick, baton strike, Taze, or OC someone than if I were to shoot them.
Here an officer involved in a shooting is treated as a witness or a victim (even if they weren’t injured) and are interviewed as such and make statements as such. All the reports are done by other officers. Per state law the incident is investigated by an outside agency. So an officer involved shooting in Milwaukee might be investigated by the Waukesha County Sheriffs Office or the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation.