Let's look at this:According to this source https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-officers-2014.htm, non fatal injuries caused by people and animals make up roughly 27 percent. Of course, risking your life extends to other things so let's just say it's about 40 percent of the time they're injured they're risking their lives. This would be 11064 injuries that occurred from risking their lives. 11064 plus 1260 deaths equals 12,324 incidents in which officers risked their lives. There was about one million officers in 2008 for context. So more dangerous than usual. Happily though,the rate of assaults and injuries is going down so it's getting safer.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u..../topic-pages/persons-arrested/tables/table-18
In 2016, 11,788 people were arrested for murder or non negligent manslaugter, and another 156,777 were arrested for weapons carrying, possessing. I think that there's no doubt that every officer within gunshot range of those arrests was risking his or her life. In every arrest, they were going after someone who had killed someone or had a weapon.
That's 168,565 arrests. All, by definition life risking.
So now let's look at all the other incidents where an officer might have had to risk death by driving at high speed to catch persons fleeing that they are trying to arrest, or to break into premises, or to take someone down in public. That would likely include rape, robbery, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, arson (violent crime), drug violations and sex offenses, or another 2.6 million arrests.
Even if only 10% of those arrests required high speed chases, breaking into buildings or take downs, there's another ~260,000 dangerous life risking arrests.
Total ~429,000 arrests. Recall, this could involve and usually would involve multiple officers, each of which is at risk. When officers are going after a murder suspect or someone armed and dangerous, they don't send 1 or 2 people. Assuming just 5 officers on average per arrest, that's 2,145,000 officers.
Of course, some officers might be involved be more that others. Some might do that 10 timers per year, while others don't do it at all. But, I think that pretty clearly, an estimate that 12,324 officers risked their lives is far too low.
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