jhenry said it right. police work is a very up close and personal occupation. you can not do your job from outside the house, you can not catch the bad guy from 21 feet away, and citizen really hate it when a cop watches them get the crap kicked out of them while you stand there 21 feet away shouting encouragements like: "hang in there, your doing fine", or "try hitting him back a few times", and the classic "your doing it all wrong, try to AVOID the punches". the simple fact is police work is dangerous. we can try to minimize the dangers, but we also have to be in those situations, thats why chicks dig us
, just kidding.....sorta.