"Are you trying to compare the police with our troops? They are one and the same."
I said linemen, as in high voltage transmission linemen. These men die at a higher rate than the police but are never mentioned, no parades, no "stop the city there's a funeral procession". Nothing. When that changes I'll care about the cops.
Your obscure post obscured your obscure beef, but thanks for the clarification. Now go away.
Linemen, cops, our troops: all good men and women-- and there's no point in hating (or refusing to acknowledge) any one of them because you feel that one particular group is underrepresented compared to the others or in the media or in peoples' minds and hearts. Simply put, they're all underappreciated. Yes perhaps, some are appreciated less than others. But I'm not going to let that stop me from recognizing the sacrifices that anybody makes. And on that note: God bless the troops, the linemen, the cops, and everybody who makes sacrifices for good and the welfare of others.
Since 2000, informal counts suggest that yearly fatalities have jumped to 20 from what had been an average of 12. “Since about 1999 or 2000, the record’s not good,” says James Tomaseski, a former lineman who now is director of safety and health for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The reasons are complicated and have provoked new discussions of how and when to do work on hot lines—the predominant practice today.LEO's in 2004:
The number of linemen employed by utilities, rural electrical coops, contractors and state and local government is about 110,000, half by some measures of what it was 20 years ago. At that time, fatal accidents also were more common, with one lineman dying each week from 1972 to 1986.
Just a hunch, but I bet the 'lineman' are alot better paid than the police officers. And you're comparing apples to oranges. A lineman has a job that encompasses known risks that are somewhat routine to a well trained employee. Police officers are dealing with human beings in a huge variety of situations that cannot be routinely predicted. Yes, both are considered high risk jobs, but the risks are vastly different.