Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by watwut 38 days ago
> I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

They have also unusually high domestic violence rates. That is where the bit comes from.
1 comments
tptacek 38 days ago
So do firefighters.
link
watwut 38 days ago
This is first time I have seen the claim that firefighters have the same domestic violence rates as police. I have seen multiple studies on police vs regular citizens and police were more violent in all of them. I did not seen comparable numbers about firefighters.

The factors police have and firemen dont are a.) victim not being able to go to police, cause those are his buddies b.) training teaches cops to take and keep charge (escalating aggression until compliance is acquired).

link
s1artibartfast 38 days ago
Nobody said "the same".

The question in my mind is what people are expecting? What do they think this proves? Policing is a conflict focused job that involves violence so I wouldnt expect it to be the same as baseline to begin with.

I would caution against "just so" explainations. There are obviously lots of complex reasons and one can speculate a lot of stories one way or another.

link
tremon 37 days ago
> Policing is a conflict focused job that involves violence

Because of this, police officers should have plenty of experience (and training, but let's limit this to the US) with de-escalation and proportional response. The domestic violence rates should be lower among police wrt the general populace for that reason alone.

link
s1artibartfast 37 days ago
Police arent just trained to de-escalate. They are also trained to kill humans. This too has an influence who becomes a cop. You cant just cherry pick the factors you think would lead to lower DV and ignore the others.

do you mean they should be lower as a normative claim or postive claim? It is clearly flase as a positive claim, if the police domestic violence studies done in the 90's are still accurate.

link
tremon 36 days ago
> They are also trained to kill humans

Police are not soldiers nor executioners. Where does this fantasy come from that they are somehow "trained to kill"? Copaganda shows, I guess?

link
hollerith 37 days ago
True, and also DV rates should be higher for the type of person who chooses a job where one of the requirements is to run towards danger.
link