MORE ANTI-POLICE CRAP ON GRITS FOR BREAKFAST

Scott Henson, who blogs as Grits for Breakfast says that more sanitation workers get killed than cops and compares the danger cops face to that of construction workers, cab drivers and bartenders

The blog Grits For Breakfast has a propensity to attract readers who hate cops and that is because subconsciously so does Scott Henson, publisher of GFB. Here is a good example:

Honoring those who put their lives on the line every day

By Scott Henson

Grits for Breakfast
February 11, 2018

We've all heard the statement dozens of times or more: "Police officers put their lives on the line every day." And it's true, in the same sense that construction workers or taxi drivers or bartenders put their lives on the line every day, all of whom perish on the job at roughly similar rates as police officers.

But when it comes to local government employees at seriously high risk, the New York Times has a feature this weekend which highlights a larger source of municipal employee deaths: Sanitation workers, who tend to die on the job at more than double the rate of police officers.

Grits mentions the story to offer a mea culpa: Several years ago I'd made the observation that, "The people picking up your trash put their lives on the line every day and are more likely not to make it home at night than their brethren in blue. But one suspects we won't any time soon see a New York Times headline memorializing their sacrifice."

It took nearly six years, but eventually the Times did publish that article.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Henson admits that police work is dangerous, but then he goes ahead and says that being a sanitation worker is more dangerous and that construction workers, taxi drivers or bartenders put their lives on the line just like cops.

So far this year 15 police officers have been killed. Some have died by gunfire in a deliberate ambush. Some have died answering calls or making traffic stops And some have died when their cars crashed. Six officers were killed just in the past week.

I do not put down sanitation workers, construction workers, cab drivers or bartenders, but to compare the danger they face to that of cops is a gross insult to police officers. Those guys picking up the garbage are not protecting the public from criminals.

Henson mentioned The New York Times article on the number of sanitation workers killed. He either failed to see the February 10 correction or deliberately failed to mention it:

“A previous version of this article misstated the number of sanitation workers killed on the job annually. It was 31 in 2016, not approximately 365, or one a day. However, 431 people in the broader waste and remediation field were killed on the job in 2016. The article also misstated the type of people killed by sanitation in trucks each year. The seven people killed by trucks include civilians, not just workers.”

But none of the people mentioned above lost their lives protecting the public from criminals.

And while I don’t want to put down the sanitation workers and the other occupations Henson included, the title “Honoring those who put their lives on the line every day” is a slap in the face of police officers.