Actually, the police don't particularly put their lives on any lines.

[baby_mouse]

Here is a link:

http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/dangerousjobs07.html

And here is the content of the table:

America's Most Dangerous Jobs

Job Title

Fatalities

/100M

$/year

Fishers and related workers


48


118.4


$29,000

Loggers


80


92.9


$31,290

Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers


81


66.9


$135,040

Structural Iron and Steel


35


55.6


$43,540

Refuse and Recyclable Collectors


32


43.8


$30,160

Farmers and Ranchers


341


41.1


$39,720

Electrical Power Line Repairers & Installers


36


32.7


$49,200

Truck Drivers


993


29.1


$35,460

Agricultural


176


23.2


$24,140

Construction


339


22.7


$29,050

[XemaSab]

1. Yeah, but in most of those jobs it's personal safety risks that cost lives

Either the victim or the foreman screwed up somewhere.

With cops, you don't know if the guy you're pulling over to give a fix-it ticket to is going to go apeshit and shoot you. :(

[rug]

22. And when cops screw up, they kill innocent people.

[R_M]

2. True. I will give a kick and a rec'd.

:thumbsup:

[Demit]

3. Tell that to the widows and children of the officers who have been killed. They'll be comforted.

[baby_mouse]

6. No.

YOU go to the widows of the accident victims listed above and comfort THEM.

[R_M]

9. You're good at responding in kind. Democrats could...

learn alot from you.
:thumbsup:

[Demit]

11. I'm not the one who is pooh-poohing the dangers inherent in somebody's line of work.

I see you live in Scotland. Why not come to Philadelphia and see the blissful conditions of police life here firsthand? Better pack heat.

[baby_mouse]

16. No.

Why don't YOU come HERE and learn some common sense?

There's a difference between pooh poohing the dangers inherent in someone's line of work and demonstrating the actual fatality statistics of professions whose danger is culturally almost completely ignored.

Why are you wilfully ignoring my point? Are you a policeman?

[Demit]

23. Your 'cultural danger' is just that. Different according to the culture.

Scotland has a sensible attitude toward guns. US culture is different. Don't bait me. Your point is inoperative in my country.

[Taverner]

4. They do put their lives on the lines, but their job isn't as dangerous as its reputation

It has the possibility to go really dangerous without warning. But much of police work is mundane.

Most CHP officers die from getting hit by a truck than by getting killed by a perp.

[R_M]

5. No suprise to here this. Driving is one of the most dangerous things...

anyone can do.

Do you have any idea how many officers are killed in auto accidents (on duty only) as compared with fatalities by violence?

[Taverner]

8. Yep

I always joke around that the average person has more of a chance of dying in a car accident than getting killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, and that we need a "war on cars"

[Hawkowl]

7. And that is negligent

That is just not paying attention. I would argue that a lot of the cop deaths are from just not paying attention. When you have a dangerous job, you need to maintain a CONSTANT vigilance. Disclosure: I'm an aircraft pilot, and I realize I could die every damn day at my job.

[R_M]

10. Very difficult job to have.

I would not want to be one.

[pop goes the weasel]

12. chart is inaccurate

If you go to the source menstuff used, it shows that the death rate is per 100,000, not M, as the chart has it. So the death rate for the listed occupations is actually higher than what the chart shows.

[Demit]

13. "M" in statistical charts does stand for one thousand.

[pop goes the weasel]

18. in the US?

That's news to me, and probably to 99% of the people who would be reading that chart.

[Demit]

21. Er, everywhere. It's not an abbreviation (for million), it's the Roman numeral for thousand.

The way you understand mm to be millimeters, people who read statistics and charts understand the capital letter M to represent one thousand. If you se the cap M in a dollar figure like $1M, that means one million dollars, but M in a statistic means one thousand.

[pop goes the weasel]

25. I believe you

I just doubt that most people read it that way. Hell, I even took social statistics many years ago, and I don't remember us ever using an uppercase M to indicate 100,000. There's a big difference between what professional statiticians might regard as de riguer, and what the general public is going to understand.

[Demit]

28. M never indicated 100,000, either. But at least I'm getting you to bring it down.

:)

[Basileus Basileon]

33. People, I think, are often confused when they read something like

$100MM for "100 million dollars." They just remember, "hey, M for million."

[Demit]

35. People who are confused by anything they read should look it up, no?

If you read a word that's unfamiliar to you, you don't assume what it means. You look it up. And then you know.

This is not an obscure term! Regardless of what folks, who are here presuming to speak for 'most people', think. If you personally didn't know it before, just absorb it and move on.

(BTW, I have never seen MM anywhere, intended to indicate a million dollars.)

[Basileus Basileon]

38. Really? It's pretty common.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%24100MM&btnG=Search&hl=en&safe=off
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%2450MM&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2410MM&btnG=Search&hl=en&safe=off
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%241MM&btnG=Search

http://www.answers.com/mm&r=67
1. Abbreviation for 1 million; used after a slash mark to express a price or rate per million units. For example, 500/MM might indicate that 500 responses were received for every million surveys mailed.

Read, absorb, move on.

[Demit]

42. Well, now I have. Thanks.

Learn something new every day. Thanks for the links.

[slowry]

14. That's interesting, but how many truckers are there vs. cops? 155 cops have died in '07.

You also have to take into account that they're trained to handle dangerous situations. We'd need statistics on serious injuries, near-misses, etc.

Not trying to diminish the great risks of being on the road day after day, but your conclusion isn't necessarily justified...

[hfojvt]

27. this site says 740,000 with 23,000 reported assaults on officers

http://home1.gte.net/vzn05sxc/lawfacts.htm

fatality rate is 21.7

If assaults lead to injuries, then the injury rate is 3.1 per hundred. Much lower than those listed here

Beet sugar manufacturing: 16.6 injuries per 100 workers
Truck trailer manufacturing: 15.7 injuries per 100 workers
Iron foundries: 15.2 injuries per 100 workers
Prefabricated wood building manufacturing: 13.9 injuries per 100 workers
Framing contractors: 13.3 injuries per 100 workers

[petronius]

15. That high number for pilots scares me a bit - if air travel is so safe,

why is it so dangerous to be a pilot? We're all in the same plane, after all. Perhaps these are pilots like crop-dusters, bush pilots, line inspectors, and such?

[Forkboy]

17. small planes crashes happen a lot.

Overall, it's still the safest way to travel.

Of course, I love driving and would rather take my chances that way.

[Basileus Basileon]

34. Pretty much dead-on. That's almost entirely small planes,

though some are indeed used for air travel. There you've got a double-whammy: you've got smaller, more dangerous planes, and you've got bottom-o'-the-barrel pilots who couldn't get into an actual airline's regional partner. (see: Wellstone, Paul)

[stray cat]

19. Compared to me they do......

[ourbluenation]

20. and most of them are in unions and most unions vote dem. n/t

[goodgd_yall]

24. Just as the link says

for combat soldiers, everyday is risky. (Of course this was a statement with no statistics to back it up as the other occupations had.)To my thinking there's no difference between the risk of a combat soldier and a cop, assuming the cop is involved in patrol work or undercover work. In both instances you're armed and you're dealing with people who would like to put you out of commission because they know you're armed, or they know you can be taken into custody (lose your freedom).

[DeepModem Mom]

26. And firefighting is a walk in the park, too!

I didn't take from the source the message that because many professions are dangerous, those with less chance than others of dying on the job don't put their lives on the line.

[Richard Steele]

29. Yup. Garbagemen are much more likely to die "in the line of duty". recommended

[Neshanic]

30. In nature fish do not pop out of the water packing heat.

Policemen, Firemen, Paramedics, I think they deserve the "putting it on the line" description.

[AngryAmish]

36. have you ever heard of the triggerfish?

[oscarmitre]

31. Quite true

I hate all that bullshit. And I've been a copper for many years. I know it's more physically dangerous in South Africa than it is in the US or the UK or here in Australia for coppers and I know it's more dangerous doing other jobs (before I joined I worked in construction as a young bloke). The danger in police work (and in many other occupations/professions such as paramedics, doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and a heap of others) is the grinding down of the person behind the occupational label. They are all people. Even cops. All of us need to throw of our prejudices and our mythologies, we're all working people and we need to understand that. Unfortunately this type of discussion doesn't help shift coppers to thinking that way, but it does allow people like me to have a say, so thanks for that.

[ryanus]

32. Most police work is investigation, not protection

They show up after the fact. Not always, but more so.

[Orsino]

37. Police do put their lives on the line...

...going up against, occasionally, the worst dregs of humanity. Higher death rates in other professions do not change this.

[Katherine Brengle]

39. Fishermen aren't putting their lives on the line in order to save the lives of others however.

[chaska]

40. I hate that stupid expression, "put their lives on the line". Nobody...

willingly would choose certain and immediate death to save anyone outside of their immediate families/friends. And anyone that would is stupid.

Oh, and fuck the cops.

...and the military.

[Ino]

41. Save lives...

give the fishermen tazers.

[aikoaiko]

43. What a strange way (i.e., cheap shot at LEO) to emphasize something as important as worker safety.

Why the cheap shot at cops? Not enough die for you?