Please re-read - those figures are from deaths from hostile gunfire not traffic accidents. 89 officers died in the line of duty in 2019. Offenders used firearms to kill 44 of the 48 victim officers. Only Four officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons - the traffic accidents.
My apologies, your second statement is fundamentally false in a very deep way. There is no metropolitan city in the US where the police are not overworked.
But perhaps we have disconnect in meaning - what do you define by policing ? My definition is the maintenance of law and order. But I have observed that activists refer to it as simply keeping the peace. These are two fundamentally different things. Tyrants and Crime bosses keep the peace far more effectively than the police.
The "cops work 70-80 hours a week" thing is a policy choice. Nothing more nothing less. I agree that this has negative impact on policing, maybe more then it would be with other jobs. It makes it less effective just like any other person working 80 hours a week becomes exhausted and ineffective.
But, it is still a result of policy and culture, not something inherent to the task itself.
Given that overall cop deaths are not unusually high, no I have trouble to see that as some kind of super high risk occupation. Overall, being cop does not make me more likely to die and most of deaths are actual traffic accidents due to cops being in the traffic a lot.
To increase their take-home pay, firemen call in sick on a coordinated, rotating schedule, and the minimum staff requirements force off-duty firemen to be called in to work and get paid overtime.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
My apologies, your second statement is fundamentally false in a very deep way. There is no metropolitan city in the US where the police are not overworked.
But perhaps we have disconnect in meaning - what do you define by policing ? My definition is the maintenance of law and order. But I have observed that activists refer to it as simply keeping the peace. These are two fundamentally different things. Tyrants and Crime bosses keep the peace far more effectively than the police.