That was a fanstastic use of statistics. There are indeed other jobs in the USA more dangerous than being a police officer!

Another statistic I heard is that the USA has about 250m interactions a year between police and civilians. Nearly all of them do not result in undue violence--and end up on CNN.

Here's my anecdote while walking downtown Calgary many years ago. A young man ran passed me and jumped a fence. A police officer pulled up behind me on a bicycle, got off, and asked me to watch his bike. He didn't want for my response; he just jumped the fence and ran after the man. On the other side of the fence, a police cruiser cut off the man. Two officers jumped out. Between the three officers, the man had nowhere to go. He resisted being taken down, and things did get a little rough. But after the handcuffs were on, the rough stuff ended. The officer came back to his bicycle and thanked me. I was amazed at the professionalism employed.

But I also know that even with the best of training, sometimes things can go wrong. Emotions can run high, split-second decisions need to be made, and training cannot cover every instance. I think we need to ask ourselves: "Should we be happy if 99% of police takedowns end up in the way I saw?" To say that we should never have a bad takedown is folly.