The 'war on cops' leads to ... one of the safest years for cops on record

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday May 18, 2016 · 9:07 AM PDT

2016/05/18 · 09:07

NYPD officers stand by as New York airport workers march to the airport during a protest and 'civil disobedience' January 18, 2016 near LaGuardia Airport in New York..Hundreds of union workers gathered on Martin Luther King day to demand higher wages. / A — If there's a war, it's one-sided.

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Last year liberals took a break from attacking veterans, unborn babies, and Christmas to wage war on cops. Like all the other wars that didn’t actually happen, this one was deserving of a full-court press on Fox News and became a centerpiece of the Cruz campaign.

“Cops across this country are feeling the assault,” Cruz said Tuesday after a presidential campaign event in Milford, New Hampshire.

Cruz, of course, blamed Obama. And complained about Obama’s “complete silence” following the shooting of a deputy—a silence in which Obama had already made comments, issued a statement, and called the deputy’s relatives. But faster than you can repeat “Obama won’t say radical Muslim terrorists,” the entire right was singing the chorus of how liberals hate cops, cops were getting massacred, and it was all the left’s fault for backing horrible, life-threatening ideas like not shooting unarmed 12-year-olds, and accountability. In New York City, the police union went so far as to insist that officers shouldn't conduct arrests because of “wartime” conditions.

“The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions and policies and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a wartime police department...”

The narrative continued through the year, but now that all the numbers are in ...

Data released by the FBI on Monday shows that 2015 was one of the safest years for U.S. law enforcement in recorded history, following a sustained trend of low numbers of on-duty deaths in recent decades. …

Every one of the 41 police officers killed on the job is a tragedy, and every effort should be made to bring that number to zero. Oh, and every one of the at least 1,186 people killed by police in the same period is also a tragedy, and every effort should be made to bring that number to zero.

The number of officers killed on the job was down almost 20 percent from 2014. However, even in 2014, being an active duty police officer was number 15 on the list of dangerous jobs.

People working ordinary construction jobs are 21 percent more likely to die on the job than a cop. Taxi drivers take a 33 percent greater risk when they climb in their car every day than an officer faces when he pins on his badge. No one talks about the War on Line Workers, but the folks keeping your lights on face a 50 percent greater risk of dying than does a cop.

But even those jobs are safe as houses when you compare them to the steel workers and farmers who face twice the risk of cops, or the guys working in recycle centers who are three times as likely to die, or the people employed in the very ordinary task of repairing roofs while facing a 3.5x greater chance of dying.

At the top of the chart, loggers are almost 10 times more likely to die out there in the woods than a police officer walking the beat. Which mostly shows that OSHA is doing a piss-poor job with safety regulations for logging. Wonder what's up with that.

When OSHA is allowed to act the record shows that it saves lives. There have been 58 percent fewer deaths in grain handing and 35 percent fewer deaths in trench cave-ins since OSHA cracked down. The number of textile workers suffering from brown lung fell from 20 percent of the industry work force in l978 when OSHA set limits on worker exposure to cotton dust to l percent seven years later.

… The Republicans are retaliating by decimating the agency. OSHA’s enforcement budget will be cut by a third. OSHA will be virtually stopped from developing any new safety standards. Meanwhile Republicans will prohibit OSHA from intervening to protect workers unless it first develops a standard.

Catch 22-R. That’s what’s falling on those loggers.

The 'war on cops' leads to ... one of the safest years for cops on record

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