The first number is the total number of on-the-job deaths. The second is the fatality rate, in deaths per 100,000 people employed.
Where do cops rank? 142 police officers died on the job in 2000 for a fatality rate of about 17. Fifty of those deaths were homicides. The most likely cause of on-the-job death for a law officer? A car accident, just like for the rest of us.
The false *perception* of danger (aka paranoia) is a big cause of the police brutality problems we are uncovering.
neilbert said at 2:31 AM 01-10-2003: What about those guys who catch alaskan snow crabs? I have always been told that those guys have the most dangerous job in the world.
amanda [email] said at 2:16 AM 12-08-2003: I totally want to be a "tuna cowboy." It looks completely dangerous, but I'd rather be killed by a shark than suffer at a desk job for the next 40 years.
wolfgang norton [ url ] said at 2:52 AM 01-10-2003: Thanks for posting this! Interestingly enough, I have a theory that the less a police officer is likely to have to use his weapon in the line of duty, the more likely they are to be assholes to the citizens they come in contact with. In Baltimore City the cops are much more respectful, IMO, than the ones in the outer counties.
The paranoia was the big defense used by the NYC cops when they shot the D'Angelo kid.
Moe Sizlack said at 10:37 AM 01-10-2003: Pilots? From plane crashes? Weird, I thought crashes were rare. Or maybe I'm just thinking of passenger flights. This must include military and rescue flyers, etc. That makes more sense.
Anyway, I thought Fast Food Nation said meat cutters had the most dangerous job. Or was that just for injuries?
mary [email] said at 11:57 AM 01-10-2003: Nearly all the pilots are on small craft. Think crop dusters. The guys who take workers to off-shore oil rigs, etc.
This is just fatalities, not injuries. They keep stats on that as well.
dianne [email] said at 5:27 PM 01-12-2003: weird. i just saw bowling for columbine last night. his argument is that we kill each other because we're scared shit by the media every day. why would cops be immune from that? hell, they're not just on the evening news, they got their own show.
of course, we hear a lot about women getting attacked. lots of nice gruesome details, where she was walking, what she was or wasn't wearing. jogging in her own neighborhood, in broad daylight. that scares the shit outta me.
i mean, it's guerrilla warfare. you never know, when a man approaches you, or even a boy, if this one might be a psycho rapist. sure, he might SEEM nice, but it could be any of them. they all sorta look alike, the facial hair, the deep voices, who the hell can tell them apart?
that's it. i'm buying a gun. next asshole who walks up to me on the street better keep his hands in full view. it's my duty to protect myself. better safe than sorry.
Jerry said at 9:25 PM 12-07-2003: I feel you miss a point here. There are many cops working pretty safe gigs in the U.S.--many of whom work comparatively low-risk details, like detective work, for instance, during which they deal with the crime after it's occurred. There is a percentage of police officers, though, who deal with intensely dangerous situations daily. Undercovers, narcotics cops, firearms investigators, warrant officers, deal with some of the most hard core of the hard core. Their numbers would, I'm sure, be much higher (unfortunately) in terms of fatalities and injuries. These are cops that buy illegal guns, who chase down wanted felons--and who, frankly, you hear very little about. They also very often have very little public contact.
kiche [email] said at 9:31 PM 12-07-2003: also, cops do have a good reason to be paranoid. there are people who hate and target police officers for murder. not to mention being in uniform and stumbling on a crime could mean the end of your life or a severe, life altering injury.
MsMary said at 10:08 PM 12-07-2003: But that's the thing, cops aren't all that likely to get murdered at work. Most of their fatalities are related to auto crashes.
Convenience store workers are the ones who have the right to be paranoid.
kiche [email] said at 11:04 PM 12-07-2003: i am looking at this from the perspective of individual police officers. you cannot discount that they are human beings to, and will always act as such.
besides, most cops are just working stiffs with families, you can't blame them for the fucked up policies of politicians or the ruling class anymore than you can say truck drivers like your father or working women like your mother.
myriam said at 11:55 PM 12-07-2003: I wonder where firemen ranked in this?
And teachers? Teachers are getting paranoid these days too.
Anyway, not surprised about the construction workers thing. Construction is totally unsafe. I've heard many illegal immigrants are killed in construction every year and go unreported.
Ms.Mary said at 12:35 AM 12-08-2003: Think the workplace is getting more violently dangerous?
Well, you'd be wrong.
"Workplace homicides were down about 5 percent in 2002, from 643 in 2001 to 609 in 2002. The number of workplace homicides in 2002 was the lowest recorded in the fatality census
and represented a 44 percent decline from the high of 1,080 workplace homicides recorded in
1994. Workplace suicides also were down in 2002.
Myriam, firefighters are about as likely to die on the job as a police officer: Their fatality rate is also about 17 deaths per 100,000 workers. The occupational fatality rate for teachers is less than 1 per 100,000 workers. Nearly all were killed in car accidents. If a teacher is murdered at school, odds are high that it's her busband or boyfriend who did it, not a student.
tim said at 1:26 AM 12-08-2003: i have no doubt that your stats are right mary, but data like this has to be taken into context. its hard for me to say cops have a safe job just because one poll or study says so. i have become very skeptical of polls lately, they always seem to be skewed to simply further someone else's agenda. besides, didn't our perception that cops or fire fighters (or other similar jobs) have dangerous jobs come from the media? anyway, this is just my opinion. maybe there are very few cop deaths, but that's little comfort when you have to deal with the scum of the earth everyday.
Ms.Mary said at 2:10 AM 12-08-2003: The stats I am citing are about as un-skewed as you can get--straight from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are actual counts, not polls.
You are on to something with the media comment, though, I think. If you watch TV cop shows, you'd think cops are in a shoot-out everyday. Most cops, even beat cops, rarely have to reach for their guns.
Most people's risk assessment is very poor. Women are taught to fear strangers, when it's the men they know who will rape and kill them. We're scared of school shootings, when it's the ride home to and from class in mom's car that's far more likely to be fatal. We worry about getting cancer from pesticides, then eat red meat.
Police officers do die on the job a lot, but it's because they are in cars so much, not because they are playing cops and robbers with drug dealers.
josh [email] said at 10:02 AM 12-08-2003: Police do have a hard job, but it's not like MOST policeman are in a daily "Homicide : Life on the Streets" episode (though I believe that Baltimore cops may be).
josh [email] said at 11:39 AM 12-08-2003: From the 2000 FBI Crime Report :
"Supplemental homicide data reveal that males were most often murdered by males in 2000. Both victim and offender were male in 88.5 percent of single-victim/ single-offender incidents. In addition, the data show that 90.8 percent of female victims were murdered by males."
It follows that if the highest risk of being murdered as a teacher is from your spouse, then women are much more at risk than men. Women, or perhaps males in a relationship with men. Men seem to do most of the murdering!
Interestingly, the report also has this tidbit :
"Based on supplemental homicide data, the racial correlation of murder victims to murder offenders is usually intraracial. Figures based on one victim/one offender incidents in 2000 indicate that 93.7 percent of black murder victims were killed by black offenders, and 86.2 percent of white murder victims were slain by white offenders."
People tend to kill people of the same ethicity as them? I guess that makes sense.
Ms.Mary said at 11:45 AM 12-08-2003: Male teachers are slightly more likely to be murdered than female teachers. And it's far less likely to be a domestic dispute spilling into the workplace. I don't have specific breakdowns on what happened to these individual men, but based on other crime patterns, I'd have to guess they were murdered during break-ins at school.
Again, though, murder isn't the leading cause of death for teachers at work. It's auto accidents, which kill more men than women anyway.
I mentioned the spousal thing to dispel the notion that teachers are getting shot up by their students. Which you would think was happening all the damn time if you watched too much TV.
brandon [email] said at 10:18 AM 12-08-2003: What are the counts for natural predators? While I feel silly and paranoid worrying about it, since I've been here, three of my co-workers have been dragged away by wolves to the seldom used men's bathroom. The last one, a svelte Northwestern grad, her bones are still being gnawed beside the copier. She was a slow typer, though. I think to myself, if I keep my wpm over 60 they'll leave me alone. They're interested in the easy kills, the weak and infirm.
