Читать книгу Force Decisions. A Citizen's Guide to Understanding How Police Determine Appropriate Use of Force онлайн

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In most professions, staying alive and uninjured during the workday is more or less expected. Statistically, this is true for officers also. Most days, most go home fine. But some days, they don’t. They are paid to sometimes deal with less-than-fully-socialized people in volatile situations. Officers are expected to walk (or run) into places where people with more common sense are running away.

Rule #1 is a pipe dream. The only safe way to do the job is to NOT do the job. Some officers do use this strategy and get away with it. We’ll talk about Lops in “Experience,” section three. The essence of Rule #1 is not to make the job any riskier than it is. Don’t take stupid chances.

You might die, but you should never die because of your own stupidity or bravado. You should never get your partner killed because you couldn’t keep your ego in check. And you should never, ever, die in such a way that other agencies use it for training films.

A short list of things to remember:

• You are not Superman and bullets do not bounce off you. This is one of the Hollywood Effects. By the time you join a police agency, you have watched thousands of hours of television. In the television world, being the good guy seems to magically protect you from serious injury. This isn’t true. We all know it isn’t true, but seeing it a thousand times can hit the brain at a very deep level and rookies often act like it is true.