Hacker News Reader

some interesting numbers...

> This year 46 policemen were shot dead and

> the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year

10% or so of death involving police is a policemen. Not that it justify the police force level, but an interesting statistic.

View on HN

That figure does not even place law enforcement in the top ten most dangerous professions.

Automobile accidents, are by far the most lethal part of US life outside of disease. This is no different for police officers.

I'm always saying that the best thing the police can do is get out of their cars. If it makes them safer, even better.

Nor it should? I wouldn't want policemen to have the same death on the job as say loggers, if only because you don't want policemen to be reckless/desperate by nature. Anyway, my observation was that ratio it isn't usually expose in pieces I read from other sources :)

Sure. Any statement like that has to be read based on the averages, though. 4.7 per 100k Americans are intentionally murdered every year, and there's about 780k police officers, so you'd expect just from that background number ~37 homicides of cops every year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com