I was recently chatting with an ex-cop who got out soon after a classmate of his from the academy took a bullet through the arm-hole of his body armor — from an accidental discharge of his partner’s .45 — and died. The job was mostly hours of mind-numbing boredom, interspersed with a few moments of absolute terror. So, just how dangerous is police work?
Generally, police are about three times as likely to be killed on the job as the average American. It isn’t among the top ten most dangerous professions, falling well behind logging, fishing, driving a cab, trash collecting, farming, and truck driving. Moreover, about half of police killed on the job are killed in traffic accidents, and most of those are not while in pursuit of a criminal or rushing to the scene of a crime.
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So take out traffic accidents and other non-violent deaths, and you’re left with 69 officers killed on the job by criminals last year. That’s out of about 850,000 officers nationwide. That breaks down to about 8 deaths per 100,000 officers, or less than twice the national average of on-the-job fatalities.
(Hat tip to TGGP.)