You aren’t making a lick of sense.
If you retire at 100 percent pay and benefits, continuing to work is not going to benefit you. Unless you retire, then find ANOTHER job. And yes, who wouldn’t do that? when you are only 40 years old and have small children to support, you’d be stupid NOT to do that. Especially if you are on your second or third marriage, which is common for cops.
Well, I think that's worth looking at. I'm very interested in the work of people like Grossman and Christensen and in the psycho/physiological course of stress and the way it doesn't fit with the 24 hour duty cycle, marriage, parenting, and so forth.
Sure, some fraction of the cop pool is emotionally unfit for matrimony -- as is some fraction of the public at large. But whether you like cops or not, it's hard to make the case that the job isn't unusually stressful, and that stress is going to have consequences.
My impression is suicide is higher among cops than among the general population.
If there's something to this, then I think it's hard to determine what just compensation for being an LEO would be.
But whatever it would be, it is the case that people generally don't get what the cop business is about, what it's like, and how much good policing would cost.
I think it's a problem not to be tossed aside with a few glib remarks. Sorry to get all preachy, but since I was an LEO, albeit only a reserve, and a chaplain for LEOs it's a problem I'll take with me to my grave. We have ou, share of jerks, any group does, but around here most of our cops are good folks, and I am proud that they allowed me to minister to them, and their predicament touched my heart.