Law Enforcement Technology and Inherent Dangers

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Dangers Inherent to the Work

Law Enforcement, as a profession, carries a wide variety of obvious and more subtle dangers. The initial observation of any employment postings job description and working condition will invariably include phrases like exposure to stressful situations, dangerous environments, apprehension of dangerous criminals and first response to emergencies that may include dangerous weather or airborne toxins and chemicals. ("City Of St. Cloud, Fl", 2014). It would not come as a surprise to most anyone that being a Police Officer in a dangerous profession; they are charged with a duty to run to danger when everyone else flees. They carry a gun for a very specific reason, because they are required to defend the public from threats armed and otherwise.

But there are more subversive dangers to police work that all too often go unrecognized or unconsidered by the public. The nature of the work and its hours that officers keep can cause undue stress on the human body and mind. Poor diet due to the need for working conditions to be met often result in poor health and an increased inability to deal with the stresses of the work. Ancillary dangers to this stress include a higher risk for emotional distress due to schedules and the graphic and unique nature of the work. Depression is a real risk for many officers and many officers also suffer through difficult relationships and family lives as a result. Job burnout is generally very high within the first 5 years of employment as a law enforcement officer. The divorce rate is higher than the national average for couples that include one of the spouses employed in law enforcement.

Even when not confronting danger directly, long hours spent in a vehicle seat combined with carrying an unbalanced array of gear causes frequent back injury and chronic pain among veteran officers. Training that demands a high level of realism can also result in injury.

As a result, agencies are generally quite generous in regard to accruance and use of sick, vacation and flex time to allow for officers to maintain a work ready emotional, mental and physical state. Some departments even go so far as to offer paid gym memberships for officers of their department if the agency is unable to offer physical fitness facilities themselves.

Though many of the dangers Police Officers face daily are obvious, the overwhelmingly larger numbers of casualties of the work do not suffer from those direct threats. The training offered is of such high quality with a high degree of oversight at each state level that officer injuries and death in the line of duty are, relative to the number of law enforcement officers, quite low. The larger pandemic of injury and burnout are more insidiously embedded within the work and can often be overlooked or forgotten.

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References

Taser International. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.taser.com/research-and-safety/how-a-taser-works

Ashcroft, J., Daniels, D., & Hart, S. (2003, April). The effectiveness and safety of pepper spray. National Institute of Justice research for Practice, (April 03), 1-19.

City of St. Cloud, FL. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.stcloud.org/jobs.aspx