As everyone else is running away from a hazardous situation, it is the obligation of the police officers not only to run towards the danger but also seek to defuse it while contemporaneously trying to protect other people. More often than not, it is the same people that the police are trying to protect that are the cause of dangers. Further, unlike in most other professions, danger in police work is not only extremely common but also a part of the job description. It is important to note that almost all professions involve a certain element of dangers but it most cases, hazards only materialize in the case of accident or negligence. However, for police officers, the danger is a part of their professional affiliation even when they do everything right. As technology and ways of doing things continue to advance, most other professions are becoming gradually safer but based on available statistics, police work keeps getting less safe over the years. The constant presence of active danger mainly emanating from the community, which the police seeks to protect has an adverse psychological impact on policemen. Finally, police also face the risk of being blamed when things go wrong but never appreciated when things go right. Police officers perform an important duty in the society but the risks pertaining to police work has ensured that sporadic enmity ensues between the police and the communities they so diligently serve.
It is the obligation of the police officer to always seek to interact with the worst within the community at the worst possible moment. People only call the police into their homes when they believe they are being attacked. Police are normally invited into functions just in case there is trouble. Police officers patrol the streets so as to root out trouble or be near enough in the case there is trouble within the community. Good people avoid the police unless and until there is something bad that they need the police to do for them. At the same time, police will avoid people unless they believe they have either wronged someone or be wronged by someone. Therefore, the bad people that the police are supposed to combat are usually a part of the community that the police are meant to serve. Whereas there are some exceptions to the scenario outlined above, it reflects the general outline of the work of police officers . Dealing with bad situations, therefore, will always put police officers in danger, mainly because bad situations normally involve violence. The situation is exacerbated by the high availability of guns in the USA, including assault weapons. The quote in Goldstein (2017) that: Weiss added, "The goal is to get deaths per year under 100" is reflective of how dangerous police work is. The quoted statement seeks to reflect an effort to ensure that there is only one police fatality every three days. The police officer is thus expected to consistently apprehend bad people, at the worst possible time when these bad people may be either as armed and sometimes more armed than the police officer. The situation constantly places the police officer in danger and also makes it hard for police officers to interact amicably with the communities they serve.
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Police work still poses grave dangers to police officers even when they follow their training, rules, and regulation to the later. It might even be said that operating exactly as a police officer is supposed to makes police work more dangerous thus placing police officers at a greater risk. For example, among the cardinal rules of police work is the provision about always protecting the public. According to Brucia (2011) “ One of an officer’s main priorities when responding “code 3”, or pursuing a fleeing suspect is to ensure the safety of the public ”. The criminals that a police officer is combating are not bound to operate under the same rules. In a shootout, the police officer will try to apprehend the criminal in a manner that ensures that third parties remain safe while the criminal will shoot at anyone hence placing the officer at a material handicap. In an effort to keep the citizens safe, the police officers place themselves in more danger. At the same time, police work is encumbered with many standard procedure rules such as probable cause rules, due process rules, and reasonable force rules. At the point when police work is actively a matter of life and death which happens often, the rules above still apply thus augmenting the danger that police officers face. Seeking to do the right thing sends the police officer to dangerous situations regularly and seeking to work in the right ways makes the normally dangerous situations to become gravely dangerous for police officers.
While most of the other erstwhile dangerous professions keep on getting safer with time, police work is among the few professions that are getting increasingly more dangerous in America. According to Goldstein, (2017 ), the number of police officers getting attacked leading to serious injuries and in some cases fatalities continues to increase every year. According to Goldstein, (2017), 2016 had among the most deadly years in the history of US police service yet by July 2017, there was already an 18% increase over the 2016 death rate. In 2017, 67 police officers had been killed between January and July as compared with 57 over the same period in 2016. The two numbers compare very poorly with the 1993 statistic for the same period where 33 fatalities had been reported. Worse than the fatality statistics is the non-fatal assault statistics as per Goldstein (2017): “ Last year approximately 50,000 law enforcement officers were assaulted, that ran the gamut from pushing them to shooting them and causing disabling injuries. ” The gradual advancement in technology, technics, training, approaches, and procedures ought to have gradually improved safety among police officers. Instead, as days are going by and measures being developed to keep police officers safer, the inverse seems to be happening as more police officers are harmed and even killed making police work not only dangerous but also increasingly getting worse. The presence of active and exacerbating danger is a threat to cordial relationships between police officers and the communities they are supposed to serve.
The presence of active, constant, and worsening physical danger posed by the same members of the community that the police are supposed to protect results in adverse psychological consequences for police officers. According to an article by University of Buffalo (2008), the psychological impact of the dangers that police officers face is exacerbated by the very nature of police work. Police officers work in shifts where in some cases they alternate between day shifts and night shifts. The quote in Buffalo (2008): “ There also is the problem of physiological disruption of circadian rhythms ” shows that these alternations have both a physiological and psychological impact on the police officers thus, adversely affecting their health. Work-family balance is also adversely affected by the kind of shifts that police operate under. With police work involving constant exposure to danger, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also another common problem among police officers. Normally a PTSD patient is supposed to avoid danger for a duration of time and in extreme cases indefinitely. The option for avoidance of danger is not available for police officers since the nature of their work exposes them to danger thus suffer in silence (Moore, 2012). Almost on a constant basis, a police officer who is a survivor of a violent encounter has to face the cause of danger that resulted in trauma thus exacerbating the psychological problem. From a practical perspective, it is like an accident survivor having to pass by the accident scene regularly while being reminded that it could happen again at any time. Because of the aforementioned psychological vagaries of police work, mental problems including suicide ideation and even attempts are common among police officers (Buffalo, 2008). The fact that police officers are enduring all these issues purely based on their interaction with the public jeopardizes the prospects of a cordial working relationship between the police and members of the public.
Based on the above factors, police work is not only flaunted with risks but also exacerbating from the perspective of risk exposure thus, adversely affecting cordial relations between the police and the public. The very nature of police work is dangerous as it is the obligation of the police to interact with the community at its worst and seek to confront, not avoid the worst in the society. The danger is aggravated by the fact that even when police officers do the right thing and in the right way exactly as trained, the risks are still present and in some cases exacerbated. Further, as time goes by, the risks keep on increasing with more police officers getting assaulted and even killed every year. The risks of police work are not just physical as the job also comes with grave psychological ramifications. Police officers face a high risk of mental problems including PTSD and suicide ideation. Most of the dangers that police officers face come from the same community that they are trying to protect. It is for these reasons that the expected cordial relationship between the community and police officers is often strained.
References
Brucia, S. (2011). Behind the Badge: The real dangers of police work are not what you think. Retrieved from http://www.lodinews.com/opinion/columnists/behind_the_badge/article_4acd2fc3-329a-5389-ae9d-418e8f76de09.html
Goldstein, L. (2017, July 5). Police officer deaths on duty have jumped nearly 20 percent in 2017. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/05/police-officer-deaths-on-duty-have-jumped-nearly-25-percent-in-2017.html
Moore, A. (2012, July 11). Police officers face grave health risk while suffering silently. Retrieved from https://www.medicaldaily.com/police-officers-face-grave-health-risk-while-suffering-silently-241261
University of Buffalo (2008, September 29). Impact of stress on police officers physical and mental health. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926105029.htm
