1y ago

I have played several games in my Steam library for more hours than it takes to become a police officer.

130 comments

To become an American police officer.
Other countries have somewhat higher requirements
Norway - 4500 hours
Finland - 4500 hours
India - 4000 hours
Germany - 4000 hours
Australia - 3500 hours
Spain - 2880 hours
United Kingdom - 2250 hours (plus if they want to carry a gun significant additional hours)
Canada - 2080 hours
New Zealand - 1924 hours
- Australian here. Our police are still shit after 3500hrs just FYI.
  
  Have they shot anyone randomly lately?
- thank you i was looking for this.
  the many hours of training do make a difference in quality of work. i feel like german and american policeforce are barely compareable

i've played over 12,000 hours of Fallout 4.
I'll take my PhD now, thx
- Fallout 4 was released 2,985 days ago.
  12,000/2,985 = an average of 4 hours a day, every day, no days off.
  Probably the best value purchase you'll make in your life.
  
  Probably the best value purchase you’ll make in your life.
  that’s why, after around 10k hours, I finally paid for it, lol.
  
  Can I get that in $/hour ?
  
  Lots of Netflix hours on that one, I'd bet.
- Here is your theoretical Doctorate of Science.
  
  Thank you, Professor, I humbly accept.
- EA Bethesda only counts microtransactions when advancing your degree
  
  Microsoft doesn't own EA... yet.
- Please tell me you accidentally added an extra 0 when you weren’t meant to…
  
  well… not as a typo…
  covid was rough.

It's also not just the amount of training they receive, but the content of the training. When you learn in Police academy that 1) everyone is armed and dangerous and 2) everyone is out to kill you, you tend to be more aggressive. And this is drilled into their skulls with the equivalent of a jackhammer. No wonder you get cops that are completely devoid of empathy, reason and humanity, but rather trigger happy assholes who will use violence for every single issue.
- From what I understand the system is little bit more involved. In the Academy they technically teach you all the rules you need to abide by. But they drill the self and buddy defense imperative into you at every moment. This is so they can point at the training regimen whenever reformers make a stink.
  But that's not the end of training for police officers. There's two more crucial steps. First you have to get through probation where it's really easy to fire you and your training officer basically controls that 100%. So it's a vibe check. Then they send you to continuing training seminars that propagandize police into a Hollywood Western mindset and teach them to not feel guilt or shame at killing people. Basically lowering the psychological barrier to shooting people.
  Which for the record, isn't even a step the military takes. It's not hard to dehumanize someone threatening you. The only reason you'd need a class to do so, is if you're trying to dehumanize people before hand.

Compare that to the federal standard 3-5 years of University-like education with loads of theory and practice parts they need in my country to be a basic police(wo)man. Topics like deescalation techniques, basic communication in several languages, and psychological training are integral parts of the curriculum. And much more important than knowing how to shoot or beat up someone.
- Which country is that?
  
  Germany.
- For anyone wondering that's going to be around 5700 hours of studying/training/lecture.
  
  This indeed produces a different breed of police(wo)men. And that is just the basic policing education.

Not only that, cops fought for... and WON... the right to not hire people who are too smart:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/
- Their justification for it is such an open and obvious lie too. He might get bored and quit? Because he's too smart? Makes zero sense. On the list of jobs one might do I don't think being a cop would rank very high in the boredom rankings.
  
  Are you judging the profession based on television? The majority of cops sit somewhere for a long ass time waiting for something to happen then when it does its mostly something boring like hauling a drunk driver in, writing a speeding ticket, or responding to a domestic violence call to either play therapist or MAYBE haul the guy off for the night knowing that nothing will happen except a tearful reunion.
  On TV cops fire their guns twice in 30 minutes whereas in reality 68% NEVER fire a firearm in their career. There are almost a million officers in the US you have no doubt seen many in passing. Did it seem like on average they are out doing exciting things?
  
  You'd be surprised. Unless you're in very specific parts it's a lot like the military. Boredom for 99 percent of the time and 1 percent "action". Add on to that, the second they find out you're a "smart guy" you're going into an office job where you stare at spreadsheets all day.
- this comes up again and again and it's always only this one case. iq and being a good cop is not even directly related so I wish people would stop bringing this up as some sort of gotcha.
  
  Actually IQ is correlated to problem solving which literally makes you a better everything just not obviously by itself. While this case is an extreme example of scaring off smart people there are lots of less direct ways you can discourage them from joining your ranks. Promoting idiots to positions of power and allowing them to erect dysfunctional systems that people l lower on the totem pole aren't allowed to change, punishing anyone who snitches on their fellow cops misbehavior, and promoting your idiot cronies are all pretty effect and pervasively practiced.
  
  Are you saying that you don't have an issue with stupid/dumb cops?

While I agree that police need more training and psychological evaluations... How much of this is because job training schools lobbied for needless licenses and things to be covered under those licenses? Does someone really need 1600 hours of training to cut hair?
- It differs state to state but being a barber and cutting hair are not the same thing. A barber's license is one of a few different ones used to get a job cutting hair. The thing that barbers generally do that others don't is provide a shave. Use of a straight razor along with health and safety is part of the training.
  For context a full time bachelors student is pulling about 600 hours in one 15 week semester.
  
  You can absolutely use a safety razor. Best haircut place I ever went to for my military cuts did so. If it's a scissors and buzzers cut, anything over 40 hours is just exploitation.
- Yes - the system is fucked pretty thoroughly.

Louisiana police require training?
- Barely.

I spent more hours playing Skyrim and Warframe.
- I could have become a cop 6 times in Louisiana for the times I played Borderlands 2.

the time i wasted playing TF2 alone could have made me a cop in 5 states.

If you had STUDIED instead you would now legally be able to beat your wife kill minorities and watch kids die because it's too scawy!
- How could you leave shooting dogs off that list?
  
  Because too far. Your words were printed on a screen that's within a square mile of my dog. That's too close man.

Can I just say that this is the most interesting table layout I’ve seen? The column headers (state names) are the center column?!

What is an electric sign specialist?
- It seems to be as straightforward as it sounds. It's a narrowly focused electrician license for working on signs that use electricity.
  The Sign Specialist Contractor License allows you to do the following work:
  • Installation of all types of electric signs
  • Repair and maintenance
  https://www.contractorcampus.com/michigan-sign-specialist-contractor-license.html
  
  It makes sense to have a separate license since those signs ran on stupid high voltage. I had a friend nearly stop his heart messing around with a neon sign transformer (he knew how dangerous it was, he just didn't care)

Am I the terraria police?
- You're the Terraria electric signage specialist.

I won't bring up the /played on my WoW account 😬
- Right, I had more days played than the requirement of hours for some of those states, and I haven't logged in since legion
- Hearts of Iron...
  
  Blood. And thunder.

I never realized Louisiana looks like an obese arm smoking a cigarette
- "Hey you, you wanna buy some deathsticks?"
- "Do you even lift bro?"

Wtf? Why does an interior designer need training?
Isn’t it just like picking colors and furniture?
- Usually, but in Florida you have to follow very specific rules so no one realizes you’re gay.
  
  Place the colours of the rainbow on too many walls? Believe it or not, straight to jail
- Actually you might be surprised how much building code interior designers have to know.
  For example, in California permanently installed kitchen islands are required to have electrical outlets on either side. You gotta know that to design the kitchen in a way that won't get your clients in trouble.
  
  So people don’t trip on cords connected to the walls?
  
  But that actually comes into effect when your contractors start pulling prints and applying for permits.
- Maybe this is a case of interior designer and interior decorators being different things
  
  Right, like the difference between a landscaper and a landscape architect.

Well obviously. You have to live with a bad haircut for at least a few weeks, what could a police officer do that would affect your life as much as that?

Somehow Florida made it highest in this list. Let that sink in...

I can't really comment on how much is a sufficient amount of training for law enforcement, cuz fuck if I know. There's certainly no shortage of problems from cops, but is the root of that problem their training? I suspect it has more to do with the quality of applicant / screening in the hiring process. There are a handful of kinds of people who'd be interested in a career in law enforcement, and most of those are the kind of person who shouldn't be trusted with ANY authority.
You can't train someone out of being a shitty person.
Tbh the column on the left is the one that elicits more of a 'seriously?' from me. Why in the everliving FUCK would I need more than a couple youtube videos worth of insight + a cert showing you understand how and why to clean sharp shit between clients to give hair cutting or nail painting a shot? Result might not be pretty right out the gate; but legally speaking, who cares? Price it low until your skills increase.
- You might not be able to train the shitty out of a turd, but you can raise the cost of entry and weed out some dingleberries. If the required effort is higher and the time commitment greater, it might deter some folks.
  
  And that's the exact reason why barbers and cosmetologists require that much training. Because it works.
- You can't train the shitty out of someone? You can have them supervised for a lot longer and if they have the pattern they fail. That is the exact purpose of pointing out the difference.
- If any cop is as good at their work as I am on Slay the spire they'd do their job properly, shitty person or not!

Dude fuck it I'm just gonna sign up.
- Best of luck on becoming an electrical sign specialist!

I'm somewhere between FL interior designer and MI electrical sign specialist on Destiny 2.

So I agree with a bunch of the sections on one of the columns and guess which one it is.
- The middle one
  
  I'm cool with the standards for barbers, sign technicians, and manicurists.

Had more hours running from cops and doing mayhem in GTA. Never hurt any dog.
- In fact, got Chopper laid a couple of times.

So I could be the dictator of a civilization?

I have more hours in Payday 2 shooting cops than they took to train…nice

TIL Michigan's state outline looks like a floating hand patting a baby T-rex's head
- At long last, the upper peninsula is recognized as the hand!

Damn, I’d be like a ranked officer if I’d transfer all my Cities Skylines hours!

Til barbers have required training

Interior design is a regulated profession?

And you are officially less of a harm and more productive for society. Thank you for your service.

130 comments