The New York Post reports that about half of the city’s cops feel bad about “how the public views them” and as a result “feel negatively about the job.” The responses are based on an internal survey conducted by the NYPD.
A whopping 85 percent of officers are worried about taking action on the street because they’re afraid of civilian complaints and over 66 percent say they haven’t “taken lawful activity against criminals because they fear being sued,” according to the Post.
It’s probably pretty tough to be a cop. As former cop Redditt Hudson wrote on Vox last month, “On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.”
I imagine that if you’re among that 15 percent, it’s really, really tough to be a cop, because you’re a decent person but people are wary of your presence after seeing continued abuses on people of color. And if you’re among the rest…well, everyone hates you, rightly so, but you’re probably not happy about that either.
The most disturbing part of the survey is how undertrained these cops felt:
Only 15 percent of cops thought they were trained well in crisis intervention and 18 percent in management.
The highest training rating was given to firearm training — and even that was at only 50 percent. Only a third of cops thought they were trained well in officer safety.
And training in both investigations and domestic violence was also rated badly, at a pitiful 26 percent.
It’s no wonder cops are unhappy. They go out into the field underprepared and then everyone hates them.
(Photo: Dave Hosford)
