Police save more people than they kill

Last night I was watching some talking head on the news saying that police have stopped protecting as in the old adage of Protect and Serve. So I decided to run some numbers. Now I can’t speak for the full USA but here in my community we saved people, with out killing anyone!

The message this so called “expert” was expressing was that police are oppressive. She made a quote along the lines of “protect equals saving life, but all cops seem to do now is shoot people. When did protect become kill?”

So it looks like I will have to dig out some facts… Yeah… I know who wants fact when rhetoric seems to be the in-vogue anti police stance.

After digging around in our database I found a few numbers I would like to share from 2014.

8 calls for officers responding to “minor” crashes but upon arrival the officer recognized an injury and called for EMS resulting in someone going to the ER

23 calls for fights/domestic disturbances where officers provided emergency medical aid to injury victims until the scene was secure enough and EMS felt safe to enter (one call had four men stabbed in one bar fight)

3 calls for pulseless non-breathers where PD was closer than EMS was posted and started CPR. With 2 calls even having PD officers providing shocks via the AED.

1 call for a child choking and an officer was first on scene to provide the Heimlich Maneuver

38 calls for attempted suicide where officers provided direct pressure on bleeding knife cuts, O2 on people with CO2 poisoning from running cars in garages, and other medical aid to pill takers.

112 calls for people thinking about suicide and officers responded to talk to them. Yes they were taken into custody for Chapter 51 holds, but they got into the system and got real help from real mental heath workers.

So by my math at 185 calls my officers saved a life if not multiple lives. That looks like protecting to me. Yeah I know some anti-police people are going to say the 185 is not many people saved, but I bet each of those people and their families see it as a bit deal.

Also how many lives did we save that we can’t count?

We made hundreds of Drunk Driving arrests. How many of those drivers might have killed someone in a crash if they had not been arrested?

We responded to hundreds of “verbal domestics” where no arrest was made but the people were separated for the night. Had they not been separated would a violent act, even murder, taken place?

Every night our officers on foot patrol do bar checks. Often times they see guys in disagreements. Again we separate folks before the fight. How many bar fight stabbings did we prevent?

Don’t forget Detox. I did not count in the hundreds of cases of officers finding people passed out in public who also got a chapter 51 hold for detoxification. How many drunks might have frozen to death in the Wisconsin winter? Or how many might have other complications of alcohol and died if not for being in a medical clinic?

Oh and one final fact, we did NOT kill anyone. Yes an officer at this department did shoot an armed robbery suspect, but that suspect survived and is in prison today for his crime.

So in the end I question where this political expert got her data. We did lots and lots of protecting here and ZERO killing. Now I can’t speak for every Police Department in the USA but I have a feeling the numbers are not all that different, statistically speaking.