This may run long, so bear with me.

Law Enforcement employees tend to come from two specific groups of people. The first group is going to consist of people who actually joined up to try to protect people and make things safer for them. They are idealists who may grow jaded over time; because realistically if your only input on what being a LEO is the internet and reality TV, you are not prepared for the type of mental assault you will endure day in and day out. I'm not talking about angry people, but stuff like drawing circles around little chunks of brains on the highway from a teenage girl that went through a windshield.

As an officer at any level (except maybe a small town), you are going to see the absolute worst side of humanity on a daily basis and you aren't on a tour of duty like the military. You don't get to 'rotate' home and put it behind you. This will wear on anybody who is not a sociopath, it will grind you down to a nub. You could see professional help for this, but I will go into that later.

The second type of person who goes into law enforcement is someone who likes authority, a sense of power over someone else, a bully. This person is in the job because it gives them power over others and the law will protect them because it is vaguely worded in SO many cases. This person will shrug off the effects that cripple the first type over time, because they feel in charge of every situation. After a while, if they don't tone it down, they will get caught. Thankfully the cell camera and the internet tends to be helping clean them out due to their own incapability to see they can't ALWAYS be in charge, but it will be a long road because this group is the BULK of the ones that join LE organizations.

Now why do these two groups tend to be the ones that you are going to run into on a consistent basis? The simple, hard answer is that we pay our front line LEO's very little compared to other services that risk their life or experience the mental grind. Your average patrol officer is going to pull a median salary of about 35k with comparable benefits to someone working in a office job. A firefighter is going to pull around 45k and scales up much quicker, not to mention their benefits are beyond good. EMT's make about the same as patrol officers, but their benefits are also very good and they don't have the same stressors. I know that ranges will vary and State LEO's are very well paid on average, but we are talking about the people you are going to encounter most often.

If you have to choose between a job where you are going to be considered a 'hero' or a job where everyone is going to be biased towards you being a 'villain, and the hero jobs pay better, which would you logically choose? Assuming of course that you are not sorted into one of the two groups I described, most are going to run away from serving in LE. In fact, this is why more of the 'bullies' tend towards LE and the 'idealists' don't. So you already have created a situation where the 'stormtrooper' mindset is going to prefer this job and haven't considered options to rectify it. The people you don't run into that much are going to be the people that took college and got pushed through the ranks quickly. If you didn't take college or just took an Associates Degree, you have to beat these people out. It is extremely hard to do that, even if you do your job much better than they did.

The final factor that runs into this is the mental issues I mentioned earlier. If you seek help from your employers for mental stress, they are going to handle it differently if you are a LEO. You are going to find out quickly that you are expendable. If you seek help and get classified as PTSD, you set a chain of events in motion that is inexorable. You will be rotated to a desk. You will see a Psychiatrist who will prescribe anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. This person will meet with you for around 15 minutes 3-4 times a week, ask you questions, and ask if the medication is helping. If you return to functional status in a month or two, you get put back on duty. If you don't, they put you on short term disability for up to one year. Your visits drop to once a week, then once a month. One year later, your employment is terminated. They hire a new recruit and start the cycle again about the same time that you start your short term disability. You get to try to salvage your career in anyway possible, hopefully you paid through the nose for long term disability, or you can try to find a smaller department that doesn't bother to dig too deep on background checks.

Other related fields like firefighters/emts comprehend PTSD and work with their people much harder. They have better benefits so you they can see outside therapists as much as needed. There is less stigma if you have a problem, because they understand. You go on the fritz as an LEO and you will overhear people who used to respect you call you weak or a pussy. Sadly this type of thing happens at all levels of LE, even as a State Trooper you are expendable.

In any case, the point to this essay is that the system is flawed and is going to drive out the good LEOs and save the bad ones to protect itself from litigation. Protect yourself at all times with video, be advised of the laws and loopholes in them that bad LEos will exploit, and don't force confrontation with a LEO if there is a loophole. If the man had stepped outside and talked calmly, the incident would not have escalated as it did. In this case he did not inform himself of the loopholes correctly and got tasered (which was improper, they didn't warn him correctly or anything), and the LEOs look like villains again.

@dalumberjack - Very well stated.

"I really wish we were appreciated like firemen or military but I know we never will be."

Law enforcement will never be appreciated like firemen or military because unlike the latter two, on the whole, officers overall spend a lot of their job targeting the people they're supposed to be protecting.

Firefighters attack fires to save innocent people.

Soldiers attack bad guys for the sake of innocent people (often at the expense of the lives of foreign innocent people, but that's another topic).

Law enforcement officers instead of just protecting innocent people from bad guys also attack innocent people (and rape their wallets).

There are no honest taxpayers who become fearful when a fire truck is on the road, but many get scared whenever there's an officer on the road even though they aren't doing anything wrong.

Part of it is policy (how local governments push to "earn" income by squeezing every cent they can out of taxpayers [because it costs money catching bad guys who often don't pay taxes nor have a wallet to rape]) and the other part is just human nature, which is obvious when you consider generally the type of personality that would seek to wield power over all the sniveling pissants that make up society.

People should feel safe and protected when officers are around.

I think the circumstances are a bit different, remember, this isn't just some carjacker or thief. This individual proved how unpredictable he can be (carjack/robbery/bombs being thrown at pursuing police, fire fights, etc..) He's was a danger to all in the area. Look at the firefight that happened when they did find him. It sounded like a warzone, he just didn't raise his hands and say "oh.. guys.. you got me".

Again, I'm not saying that in any other "normal" situation this would be acceptable, but given the circumstances, the amount of danger the area was in, it was necessary to do a full sweep of every house, yard and street in the area.

Christ, that guy with the gun was an idiot. Can't say I've ever been in a firefight, but basic common sense tells me that if you have a gun and he has a baseball bat, don't try to get *closer* to him!

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

I'm willing to bet that the environmental impacts take a backseat when you're in the middle of a firefight.

Heck, just playing paintball, I use the same doctrine...

I thought suppressive fire is standard military training. As a soldier, you are in combat like maybe 1% of the time during an actual war. Firefights are usually short. Its mostly waiting and patrolling and sleeping and more waiting. even in high-intensity wars like vietnam or WW2. More recent wars are even slower. So during those minutes or hours of actual fighting, suppressive fire is key to victory. It keeps heads down until backup/artillery/airstrikes can be called in. My combat training in the army was like 80% suppressive fire. I was in recon, so we mostly had fire-while-retreating scenarios where alternate halfs of a team fires and retreats.

Your video, Dog Helps Firefighters to Pull Down Tree, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^chicchorea:

Fairchild, love the name, Thunderbolts are subsonic.
A friend's daughter is in the Stan on her third tour flying a Hog.


Just the thought of a woman on the stick of an A-10 makes my dick hard!!

Thank you, you are so right.

>> ^NaMeCaF:

>> :

I think he means the rounds are supersonic which is why you hear them impacting before you hear them being fired. But most ammunition these days is supersonic (bar some pistol rounds like the .45) so it's not that special really, its just that the rounds impacting are usually closer to the camera than the A10s which adds to the effect. That A10 burp is damn awesome though.

>> ^chicchorea:

Fairchild, love the name, Thunderbolts are subsonic.
A friend's daughter is in the Stan on her third tour flying a Hog.


I think he means the rounds are supersonic which is why you hear them impacting before you hear them being fired. But most ammunition these days is supersonic (bar some pistol rounds like the .45) so it's not that special really, its just that the rounds impacting are usually closer to the camera than the A10s which adds to the effect. That A10 *burp* is damn awesome though.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Buck:
Very interesting. I've pondered this question myself many times. I know 2 good cops personally and cannot imagine a firefight with them but really WHEN is enough enough? I think I would go out in a blaze if they tried to f with me but maybe that is my ego talking.
Who is supposed to be policing the police?

They keep stealing your donuts?


lol nope but last speed trap I passed I stopped and yelled to the cop, "why don't you go find some missing children or something, instead of picking on normal citizens doing 10 above the limit!"
I was given a very dirty look and continued on my way.

>> ^Buck:

Very interesting. I've pondered this question myself many times. I know 2 good cops personally and cannot imagine a firefight with them but really WHEN is enough enough? I think I would go out in a blaze if they tried to f with me but maybe that is my ego talking.
Who is supposed to be policing the police?


They keep stealing your donuts?

Very interesting. I've pondered this question myself many times. I know 2 good cops personally and cannot imagine a firefight with them but really WHEN is enough enough? I think I would go out in a blaze if they tried to f with me but maybe that is my ego talking.

Who is supposed to be policing the police?