Not even in the top ten. Less dangerous than grounds maintenance worker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/chart...

As far as straight up getting murdered, it's in the top 2, but #1 taxi drivers are murdered at almost 3x the rate.

Statistics are deceiving. No one has it in for grounds maintenance workers and taxi drivers and they typically don't go looking for trouble.

For policeman it's their job to go to dangerous places.

>Statistics are deceiving.

Yes, in this example, I would imagine non-government job injuries are probably under reported.

>No one has it in for ... taxi drivers

Apparently they do. They get murdered almost 3x as often per capita as police officers. Maybe it's their money they're after.

>For policeman it's their job to go to dangerous places.

The same can be said for taxi drivers, delivery drivers, postal service, electric linemen, crab fishermen, loggers, proctologists ...

What about these particular statistics is deceiving? You can't just dismiss hard data without explanation. Why would your subjective impression of danger be more accurate than these numbers?

I would say it's misleading because it makes people think it's "not that dangerous" to be a policeman. While at the same time not presenting the obvious existence of things that "downplay" that statistic. I.e. That policemen are more often than not armed and able to protect themselves. We at least need to have additional data to make any conclusions about it. Not just the plain "deaths per profession" statistic.

If you look at the article I linked, the main statistic is injuries per profession. The actual deaths per profession has police as #2. Injuries per profession, the police is not even in the top 10. It depends on how you define dangerous.

It boils down to, I guess police is a dangerous profession, but certainly not in the extreme as shown by the existence of more dangerous professions. Also, being dangerous profession certainly doesn't excuse other types of workers to blatantly use deadly force because they are scared of their profession, and it shouldn't be an excuse for police to do the same. Yet, here we are, in a thread talking about police misconduct, and someone comes up with "but their jobs are dangerous," as if it should stand as an excuse for misconduct. It does not.

Cuts both ways: Considering how non-US police operate, often without being armed, and trained to deescalate tense situations, and the outcomes they produce, it seems as likely if not more likely that disarming many US police would result is fewer dead cops and fewer dead people in general.