Even as Violent Crime Falls, Killing of Officers Rises

[ieoeja]

26. "The War on Drugs has killed more police officers than anything else." - retired Chicago Cop

He said pretty much the same thing you said. Early in his career he never gave a second thought to pulling over a car. He sure as hell didn't put his hand on his pistol ready to draw and fire. There were times he would find a suitcase (!) full of drugs, confiscate it and poke fun at the guy he was taking it from who would just laugh (sadly) and go his way.

Later in his career if he found a baggie of pot the gun came out right away. This guy is as Rightist as they come. But he learned from experience that people had become far more violent when faced with extreme punishments.


I almost wonder if that 25% increase in 2011 could be from Chicago alone. In a typical year, Chicago has zero cops killed by a perpetrator. One day last year some guy the cops took in for questioning ran into a cop outside as he was leaving the police station, grabbed his gun and killed him. Over the course of the next few weeks there was an orgy of cop killings. They even started putting up graffiti along the lines of, "we kill cops here," and the like.

The badge and uniform of invincibility disappeared putting cops at the same risk as the rest of us.

I had that argument with cops before, pointing out that *I* risked my life more than they did every time I walked out the door. The cop killings, oddly, brought a couple of them to see my point. When a bunch of them *did* get killed over a few weeks, it sunk in just how unusual that was. Conversely, they think nothing about far more non-police officers being killed in that same time frame because that is normal.