I'm genuinely curious, myself. In the US, how many deaths in the line of duty are there (per thousand) for police officers, firefighters, and TSA agents, to juxtapose?
Only one TSA officer has ever been killed on-duty, and they have a total of 57,000 employees as of 2016 [1]. Not all of them are inspection agents (maybe 1/3? I'll use 20,000), but they've been an agency since 9/11 (I'll use 17 years). That makes 1 death per 340,000 agent-years. Admittedly I don't know how their total employee number has changed over time, and my 1/3 estimate could be wildly off.
Meanwhile the statistic for police in the US in 2013 was 11.1/100,000 [2], about 37 times as dangerous, or 18.3/100,000 for firefighters [3], or about 62 times as dangerous.
That's not the whole picture though, because it doesn't take into account hours worked, or injury (probably also higher for firefighters and police).
It's worth pondering that the overwhelming majority of police deaths are injuries when an inattentive driver runs over an officer during a traffic stop. Only a suicidal maniac would stand for an extended time on the drivers side of a stopped car on the highway. It would be a boon to public health if the police could just photograph a traffic offender and send him the ticket in the mail! The police unions would be disappointed, though, because then they can't use the statistics to argue for their members, because felony homicides of police officers are around 40/year in the US. That includes Greater Methville.
That's the main difference between police officers and highway patrol in my area: police go to the driver side window, highway patrol go to the passenger side.
But yeah, it seems like an unnecessary risk for police to go to the driver's side. I always try to give them space, but quite a few drivers don't.
It's a bit surprising not to see the military on this list. According to [0] the US military has 82 deaths per 100,000 per year, around 55 of which are from "accidents" and "combat" which could reasonably be considered work-related deaths. That would put it in third or fourth place on the most dangerous list.
I suspect that BLS doesn't collect statistics on sex workers or the military (or they're not included on this list). There are probably a few other very dangerous jobs that are similarly omitted.
Not all policing is equal. Beat cop in Chicago or Sheriff of Methville is on a whole different level than TSA. Park Rangers are probably much higher risk than your average TSA employee because the routinely work alone and often are put in a situation where they have to tell a bunch of drunk people to stop partying.
For what is pays and the educational requirements policing is a very safe job.
