Source for that data (on the leading causes of death for police officers)? Most things I could find show that more officers are shot than get into car crashes (tho it’s a close second). The exception being COVID-19 for the past year.
I think you are right that they are not high up on the most dangerous jobs though I’d argue it still makes sense to fear deadly encounters the same way loggers should very much fear being crushed by a tree.
I do however agree that this fear is taken far past what is rational though which does result in a lot of bad behavior.
In general (pre-covid), it seems like of the officers who die in the line of duty, a little less than half had accidental deaths and a little more than half had felonious deaths.
I recall reading about the heart attack stat too, but I can't remember where it was from. It could account for the number of officers who died from heart attacks while off duty too.
Regardless, the amount of time, effort, and attention paid to the possibility of a felonious death seems out of proportion to the amount time, effort, and attention paid to accidental deaths, even though accidental deaths are almost as likely to occur.
Yes, the figures can show you that the observed death rate is low. But that doesn't 100% capture the intuition of what it means for a job to be safe.
Remember, a big reason it's so safe (in this sense) is that officers go through a lot of training that protects them from the occasional nutjob. If they slip up on those protocols, they can easily become another officer killed in the line of duty.
You'll notice that, by the same token, firebreathers and sword jugglers and trapeze artists don't make the top ten either. Does that mean they're safe jobs?
In a sense, yes, like policing.
But in another sense, no. It means the only people who do them are people who are super deft about doing them safely and can religiously follow the safety protocols. And the job can quickly become unsafe if the average person, like you and me, tried to do them and slipped up in following those protocols.
Either way, it absolutely doesn't follow that if they just "trained the cops not to prepare for any encounter being a nutjob with a gun", that the job would (directly from that) become safer.
I didn't intend to imply that officers shouldn't go through lots of training to protect themselves from people who are trying to harm and/or kill them.
What I was stating was that officers should go through more safety training to reduce the number of accidental deaths.
The scale is important too. For all police interactions in 2019, there were 48 “felonious” deaths which isn’t very many compared to the wild rhetoric coming out of police unions.
I think it depends on the year and how they account for the deaths. Most of the gun death stats seem to include suicides and accidental shootings by other officers.
I actually don’t think the should be trained to fear deadly encounters, I believe they should be trained to assess risk and deescalate.
I think you are right that they are not high up on the most dangerous jobs though I’d argue it still makes sense to fear deadly encounters the same way loggers should very much fear being crushed by a tree.
I do however agree that this fear is taken far past what is rational though which does result in a lot of bad behavior.