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by BrokenEnso 4349 days ago
Not really, no. It's just not that dangerous. We imagine it must be dangerous, and so do cops themselves. But you're a lot more likely to be killed as a garbage collector or airline pilot, or a construction worker, or plenty of other jobs.

Adding a bit of objective support to that statement is a report [1] from BLS that lists Mortality Rates by industry, where law enforcement is grouped with Government.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0011.pdf
1 comments
jjoonathan 4349 days ago
Doesn't grouping police into "Government" dilute the danger of policework by grouping it with a bunch of relatively safe office jobs? I suspect I'm looking at the wrong plot because there's no way anyone would intentionally suggest such an approach...
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BrokenEnso 4349 days ago
Very good point. There is an NIH study [1] that drills into Law Enforcement Officers (LOEs). The number in the NIH study can be contrasted with the right side of slide 14. The mortality rate does raise a but from the Government rate, from 2/100k to 5.6 when you are talking homicide and 11.8 when considering all causes of fatalities; still puts it 3rd compared to other industries.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20564516

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jjoonathan 4349 days ago
Thanks for taking the time to dig that up! I haven't been able to conclusively determine the units in the NIH study, but we should be careful about normalization. I don't think these are comparable as they stand:

BLS Government Death Rate: 2/(100k full-time equiv workers over 1 year)

NIH LEO Homicide Rate: 5.6/(100k census LEOS over 11 years)

Instead, we should include all causes of death for LEOs (because the NIH did so for government workers) and then divide by 11 so that both figures represent deaths over the same number of worker-years. This makes law enforcement look even safer. In fact, it makes it look safer than deskwork. This is either due to a methodological difference or due to the fact that LEOs tend to be young and healthy compared to deskworkers. In any case I think the conclusion "law enforcement is not a comparatively dangerous occupation" is correct.

BLS Government Death Rate: 2/(100k full-time-equiv workers over 1 year)

NIH LEO Death Rate: 11.8/11 = 1.07/(100k census workers over 1 year)

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angersock 4349 days ago
Perhaps the way to interpret it is that most policework is as safe as normal office jobs?

Working on an oil rig, or doing light construction, probably has a much higher incidence rate of injury.

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