They have braved gunfire, dog bites and threats from people with baseball bats.
US Census takers are just not always welcome, and have been assaulted more than 400 times on their current count, a US Census Bureau spokeswoman said on Monday.
In this round of the once-every-10-years tally, more than 635,000 census takers have been going door-to-door since May 1 to try to count the 48 million US residents who did not answer a census form they were asked to fill out and return by mail.
And let’s just say open-arms hospitality is not always the watchword when intrepid census takers come knocking.
In under two months, the Census Bureau has reported a staggering 409 incidents, including about a dozen in which gunshots were fired, bureau spokeswoman Shelly Lowe said.
Among the foot-draggers not keen to be counted, 132 pulled a weapon or threatened the census taker with one; 88 physically assaulted the census taker, and about a dozen decided to hold tally-takers against their will.
And that isn’t counting some 24 attacks involving animals.
“In every census there are incidents where enumerators are threatened by respondents in various ways, and this census is no different; we are seeing a moderate increase in the number of reported incidents against census takers,” Lowe said.
“Employees learn that safety is of the utmost importance from their first day on the job, when they receive intensive training on steps they can take to protect themselves in a variety of settings,” she said, while maintaining that “violence against Census Bureau employees is extremely rare.”
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