Why do people think being a cop is a dangerous job?

Question

In fact, being a cop is MUCH less dangerous than driving a truck, working in construction, or being a farmer. Where did this myth begin?


Occupation
Relative Risk*
Leading Fatal Event

Average All Jobs
1.0 Homicide and Accidents

Fishers
21.3 Drowning

Timber Cutters
20.6 Struck by Object

Airplane Pilots
19.9 Airplane Crashes

Structural Metal Workers
13.1 Falls

Taxi Cab Drivers
9.5 Homicide

Construction Workers
8.1 Vehicular, Falls

Roofers
5.9 Falls

Electric Power Installers/Repairers
5.7 Electrocution

Truck Driver
5.3 Highway Crashes

Farm Occupations
5.1 Vehicular

Police, Detectives, Supervisors
3.4 Homicide, Highway Crashes

.

Trooper 3

Interesting. I have read a lot about the Holocaust. It appears your best chance of being rescued was by a non cop. During the Nazi Occupation, the most likely person to turn you in for being Jewish was a local cop. Have to follow the rules, you know.

Copgirl

Honey, I teach across the street from one of the biggest gang infested housing projects in Los Angeles. If you had to spend the day here without your gun, you would wet your pants.

Right Trooper 3

We weren't alive when the Constitution was written, so it has no meaning today. Only things that happened in your lifetime have meaning---because you are the center of the Universe.

crusader and all the other people who think rates of death per thousand don't count:

What you are really saying is deep down, only police lives are important. When anyone else dies, it doesn't really matter. But we knew that already, right?

Eric

Last time I checked, serial murderers most often targeted protitutes, not cops. Do you have different information?

Answer 1

The media

Answer 2

Anything can be dangerous. The average patrol officer adds approximately 100,000 miles to their patrol cars annually. The more time on the road increases any driver's chance of being involved in a car accident. Insurance companies know this and once you hit the 150,000 mark accident free you become a part of the danger zone. They try to jack your rates up. Being a police officer is not a job...it's a career. When a cop serves 20 years he/she can retire with a pension, or sign up for the D.R.O.P.. which is an agreement allowing them to serve five more years. All the pension money the cop would receive if he/she resigned after twenty years is saved up by the department. On the 25th year the cop is officially done and not only do they get the pension, they get a paycheck in the amount of the last five years they served. These checks can be $250,000 or more based on their salary and they are credited with a full pension to go with it. No other career in the world does this.

Answer 3

I worked the Jordan Downs housing projects on a foot beat before I retired.
I am female and white. Since you work near a housing project in South Central, you know what kind of work I had to do. I have been shot at, stabbed twice, and worked through 2 riots. I have endured as much, if not more, physical hardship than any of the occupations you listed above. And as one answerer put it so well, I put myself there deliberately.
However, I am not crying or complaining; in fact, my hat is off to all of the occupations you listed above.
Instead, I would like to tell you about two officers that I knew, who literally GAVE their lives in the line of duty.
Los Angeles Police Department Officers Gary Howe and Charles Champe were killed June 13, 1991, when their police helicopter, "Air 12," crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames. The helicopter's engine failed while the officers were on routine patrol. They had the option of trying for a hard landing in a school yard, but because there was school in session, they made a split second decision to allow the craft to crash land in a parking lot on the other side of the school. They sacrificed their lives for the sake of those children.
Maybe their job doesn't seem dangerous and perhaps you don't think of their sacrifice as heroic; but Gary Howe and Charles Champe are my personal heroes.
All your hatred of the Police will never take away from what they do every day, and will never dim the memory of those like Howe & Champe who literally laid down their lives for the people they served.

Answer 4

Why don't you tell me where you heard it from... I've always known being a police officer is not the most dangerous. It was discussed in the Academy.

My guess is a farmer dying is not anywhere near as newsworthy as a police officer dying. (No offense if you are a farmer).

I believe underwater construction was number one, and taxi driver was number two when I went through the academy in 1991, and police was not in the top 10.

There is one major difference, I've never seen anyone in your top 10 risk injury, or put their life on the line for a stranger.

Additional: The Holocaust in an unfair comparison. Neither you nor I was alive then. Not to mention the police today are not commanded by a dictator, knowing the penalty for not following orders is death.

Answer 5

I don't think it has ever been claimed that being a police officer is the most dangerous job, but it IS a dangerous job.

The work is inherently dangerous. I think the fact that there aren't more police officers killed in the line of duty speaks to their training and attentiveness not to the lack of danger.

So far this year, there have been 173 police line of duty deaths. That figure does not take into account the hordes of officers who are injured in the line of duty, sometimes so seriously they can no longer return to work.

Honestly, a police officer being killed iS kind of rare. I have only known a personally who were killed, and I continue to think fondly of them. I can think of several that have had people try to seriously injure or kill them, myself included.

You can't throw a pebble in a police station without hitting a cop who has some permanent disability from a line of duty incident. I haven't been doing the job that long and I don't work at anything close to a bad area and I have permanent damage in my shoulder and my knee from police work.

You can get hurt anywhere, never said cops were Alaskan crab fishermen. But the police ARE the guys running into the crap when everyone else is running out of it.

Answer 6

The actual death rate still isn't a total view. Other factors can be involved that can't be measured. Police officers probably deal with danger more often, and because of the training level and numbers of backup, they may escape death but not necessarily injury.

But, of course there are many other dangerous jobs as well. Being a police officer may not be #1, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous to the guy out there risking his life everyday. Dead is dead. List the odds all U want...

Answer 7

Let me say that I do not mean to be offensive to anyone, but I would not want to spend the majority of my time worrying about whether my husband was going to be shot at, blown up in a meth lab raid gone wrong, or run over by some idiot accidentally. Being a police officer doesn't necessarily have to statistically be listed in the top 10 dangerous professions for people to realize that police officers inherently have a dangerous job, especially if they are on patrol or in vice. I also would not want to be married to someone who worked for the FBI, although I actually loved it when I worked as a legal assistant for lawyers. I never would work for criminal lawyers because I thought there was some inherent danger in that. Anytime you get behind the wheel of your car and you are driving, you are potentially in danger and you aren't even necessarily on a job. People die in tons of car accidents due to other peoples' negligence every single day. So, as for my opinion, lots of jobs are considered quite dangerous, but I don't necessarily believe all of the statistics I read are true.

Answer 8

Most the other job deaths are due to not following safety procedures.
You didnt put the number for highway patrolmen , and how many cops were shot last yr.either.
On most jobs like fishermen, electric power installers construction workers, you dont have people shooting at you usually.You never know if the person you pull over will have a gun or the couple who is fighting will be shooting.

Answer 9

Just because some other jobs are more dangerous than we assume does not mean being a cop is not dangerous.

First where do these statics come from? Is it an overall number or is a percentage. Is it internationally, nationally or locally.

I don't care what you say. My cousin is a cop, his partner was murder in an undercover op gone bad, I would have a hard time saying to him during Christmas dinner "You know it's just a myth that being a cop is dangerous."

Answer 10

You make an interesting point. You however miss out on some important issues, in thatyou appear to only belief the number of deaths is a measure of danger.

Over 50,000 police officers each year are seriously assaulted (per DoJ figures). We don't die in these assaults for a variety of reasons, including our equipment, the fine folks at the ER, our training, attitude and the fact we are in it to win it. Can you please provide figures for how many fisherman and metal workers were either shot at, shot, knifed, had knock-down fights with multiple offenders, exposed to HIV, AIDs etc ?...

PS-Your figures are from 1995, got anything from the last decade?

Answer 11

Those other career people die by the hand of God (if you believe.) Accidents, you know? There is no intent to take their lives. These people are aware of the risks and take precautions in safety wary situations.

Police officers are assaulted and murdered because of their job. This is not an accident but a calculated attack made by humans. Officers are wary of the risks and take precautions all the time. The human can be a very unpredictable animal.

Just let it sink in for a minute.....Wait....Wait.....

How many professions have their members murdered solely because of their profession?