27 January 2022

How Dangerous Is It to Be a Cop?

Less dangerous than being a roofer, a lumberjack, a construction worker, a fisherman, or a pizza delivery guy.

Of course, police deaths have been up this years, but that is due to Covid, which is rather evocatively described by Cory Doctorow as, "Suicide by cop union."

Cops, or at least the officials at PBA locals, seem to be the people most likely to object to masking and vaccines.

Police officers do not have a uniquely dangerous job, but they do have a uniquely murderous job, being avatars of the state's monopoly on violence in the civilian sphere.

A recent Tiktok has gained some traction pointing out that being a delivery driver is actually more dangerous than being a police officer. It features a Papa John’s delivery driver getting ready for work, ironically steeling up for the dangers at hand.

The tiktok seems to pull statistics from this reddit post, which further pulls from this USA Today article citing statistics from 2016 Bureau of Labor reports.

These reports say that you’re more likely to die on the job as a delivery driver (24.7 annual deaths per 100k workers) than as a police officer (14.6 annual deaths per 100k workers). On the USA today list of the 25 most dangerous jobs in America, working in law enforcement is only number 14. The most dangerous is logging jobs.

If someone suggests that cops should be given a pass on a requirement that they be judicious in their application of violence because of the danger of their job, perhaps you should ask them about whether or not pizza drivers should be able to behave that way.

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