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Comment by nemomarx | Hacker News Reader

They still die less often than pizza delivery drivers even with that. I think they could eat the extra risk in traffic stops.

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I would prefer less people die, actually.

If it comes down to it, I would prefer an officer die compared to an innocent civilian mistakenly die because a cop was scared or already had their finger on the trigger. Their job is to serve the public, accepting some level of risks is part of this.

"About as risky as low paid delivery work" doesn't seem unreasonably high to me basically. Most cops die in car crashes, not being shot by potential suspects as it stands.

More police are shot and killed every year than people who were accidentally shot by police. Imagine if they didn't approach every high-risk situation with guns drawn. There would be orders of magnitude more officers killed.

This is not correct. to the best of my memory, no year since the 90s has had more than 100 or 200 total officer fatalities in the line of duty. Police routinely kill 3 people a day.

it's a pretty high bar to say that all three people the police kill every day were warranted.

most line of duty deaths involve not wearing a seatbelt.

This is where I think you're wrong. The vast, vast majority of people killed by police are warranted. People routinely threaten officers' lives with guns, and get killed for it. It's unfortunate, but it happens. People aren't just getting shot by police for no reason regularly.

It’s 60-70 felonious deaths a year.

can you show me those numbers please

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