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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

I posted this earlier, but police work statistically isn't that dangerous.

There are about 421,000 police officers in the US.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf...

If you look past Fox News sensationalist headlines, they said 146 were killed in the line of duty last year. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/11/americas-police-of...

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Those numbers might seem low to you, but that easily puts police officer in the top 25 most dangerous jobs according to this source:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...

From the article:

The most common cause of death on the job were intentional shootings, which claimed the lives of 46 officers last year. Almost as many officers died in car accidents.

Only 46 actually died from intentional shootings.

So some officers are murdered and others die from traffic accidents. I'm not sure why that makes the job less dangerous.

How is a police officer getting killed in a car accident any different than anyone else getting killed on the roads?

Police spend more time driving than the average person, due to the nature of the job. Writing tickets on the side of the road is also hazardous. The job increases their risk of dying in a car accident.

It's not. But local governments don't hire a lot of deep sea fishermen, so they don't get hazard pay that affects local budgets.

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