HOW DANGEROUS IS POLICING?
December 27, 2014
At the December 26 memorial for
the two murdered police officers in New York City, Vice President Biden
highlighted the dangers of policing, citing how families of police officers
must worry every day whether their loved ones will come home safely. The FBI reports that in 2013, 76 police
officers died while on duty, 49 in traffic accidents (not counting one officer
intentionally run down), 27 feloniously killed.
The quadrennial FBI census reports that in 2008, there were 765,000
sworn officers in the US, an increase of 9,500 over 2007. That suggests that there were approximately
800,000 officers in 2013. That suggests
that the occupational death rate for police officers was approximately 9 per
hundred thousand officers, 6/100,000 traffic deaths, 3/100,000 killed by murder
or manslaughter, while the rate of all US inhabitants killed by murder or
non-negligent manslaughter was 4.7/100,000.
Overall, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports that in 2013, the on-the-job death rate for construction
workers was about the same as for police officers, 9.4/100,000, roughly equal
to the risk of dying while policing. For
those working in construction and warehousing, and in mining, quarrying, and
oil and gas extraction was 13.1/100,000, and for those working in agriculture,
forestry, fishing and hunting, the rate was 22.2/100,000.
In sum, family members of those
working in construction have as much reason to fear their loved ones dying on
the job as do family members of police officers, and police officers are less
likely to be criminal homicide victims on the job than to become victims simply
for living in the country. The FBI only
reports “justifiable” homicides by police, 320 in 2013, more than 10 times the
rate at which they were unlawfully slain.
Fortunately, the number of
police officers killed on duty has steadily declined in recent years. Any wrongful homicide or death on the job is
a tragedy, but occupational risk scarcely accounts for patterns of police use
of excessive force in communities of color.
Love and peace, hal
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