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Comment by dkl | Hacker News Reader

Underpaid? Really? I don't have a reference, but I saw an article a couple of years ago that with overtime it was common for Oakland officers to make more than $100k.

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Where they really cleanup is overtime. And on the last year on the job, they work ridiculous hours, perhaps sleeping at a desk a lot of the time. Pensions in California are based on the last year of pay.

Yes, they do put their lives at risk and for that I am appreciative. But I'd appreciate it a lot more if they were a lot more responsive to the citizens who pay them.

Police departments in other East Bay cities pay higher wages and are lower-risk. Police departments can be brain-drained too.

Highway patrol, too: http://www.chp.ca.gov/recruiting/osalary.html

Wow. Earning $83,969 per year with just a HS Diploma (and CHP academy training) ain't bad at all.

Actually I think it sucks when you consider that you're much more likely to die on the job as a CHP officer than as a programmer.

Garbage collector death rate: 47/100,000 per year

Roofer death rate: 35/100,000 per year

Lumberjack death rate: 92/100,000 per year

Police death rate: 13/100,000 per year

None of these jobs requires a college degree. The average roofer salary is 36k/year, 42% of the salary of a job with a 63% lower death rate.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/26/pf/jobs_jeopardy/

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_rates_2009hb.pdf

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-roofing

Granted, being a police officer is certainly a more risky profession than programming, but I'm not sure that the chance of getting killed on the job is higher for police officers than for truck or cab drivers.

Keep in mind they may get 100K+ in exchange of putting their lives in danger occasionally.

Not if they don't actually go after the criminals

In the US, police work doesn't even make the top 10 most dangerous professions. You wouldn't know it from listening to them whine, though.

Is it more dangerous than what you do?

Could police work be less dangerous because of adequate training, equipment and protocols? The danger is still there, mitigated.

(Puzzled shrug) Yes, and roofers wear hard hats. Am I missing your point somehow?

Out of a total of how many professions? That's a misleading statistic.

How is that relevant? If it's out of a total of 11 professions, that's even worse than if it were out of every single job out there.

Out of every profession tracked by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110394/americas...

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