TexasCHLforum.com

One of the most interesting facts in law enforcement is that the average officer will go his whole career without shooting at any suspects, but that the officers who are involved in shootings are almost all involved in multiple shootings over their career.

So far, there have been a few theories advanced on this. One theory is that the cop who is involved in a shooting is too quick on the trigger and thus gets involved in more. A second theory is that the cop who is involved in a shooting is usually working in an area where there is more crime and more violence, thus being put into more shooting situations than other cops.

A third theory, and it is fairly interesting to me, is that once a person has killed someone else, there are two possible effects. Either he becomes much less willing to get involved in violence and much harder to provoke or he loses some of the inhibition towards killing and becomes more willing to shoot. So far, no one has been able to tell which way anyone will go or explain the direction. My pet modification of this is that the average cop will become more willing to shoot to protect someone else but less willing to shoot to protect himself. I do think that a cop who is already violent will become more violent bu I think that is a small minority overall.