Over 20 percent of Minneapolis police officers applying for permanent disability mostly related to PTSD Fox reported this morning. Early retirement requests have also spiked, and not only in Minneapolis.
According to Fox, many of these filing, who were also veterans, claimed that dealing with the protests has been more traumatic than fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Normally one might expect Fox to go ape-shit over any claim that a job was more difficult or heroic that serving in the military in a forward position, but that's Fox' situational ethics for you). While the applications have not yet been processed, it looks suspiciously like another more permanent kind of "blue flu".
While that only highlights the disconnect between law enforcement and the rest of society and that the police seem to consider themselves the oppressed rather than the oppressors, it raises a troubling practical question when thinking about police restructuring.
If police forces are down-sized or the "rotten apples" let go to be replaced with more community-minded people or other services created to take over the more touchy-feely parts of the job, there will be unintended consequences. Of particular concern is what those who leave full time employment in the police then do, not in terms of employment but their activities more broadly.
These will likely be individuals whose views align with the alt-right. They will have weapons training, many of them apparently also ex-military. They will be angry and motivated and ripe for recruitment into right wing paramilitary organizations or domestic terrorist groups. That has the potential to turn ugly in very short order. Groups of well armed thugs, with intimate knowledge of police tactics and procedures pose a significant threat to law and order and to society. Not that reform shouldn't be undertaken, but something to take into consideration.
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