{"id":23613,"date":"2014-01-06T10:32:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T15:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23613"},"modified":"2014-01-06T10:32:57","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T15:32:57","slug":"police-killed-in-line-of-duty-the-good-news-and-the-not-so-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/06\/police-killed-in-line-of-duty-the-good-news-and-the-not-so-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Police killed in line of duty &#8211; the good news and the not-so-good news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The good news is that in the United States, the number of police officers killed in the performance of their duties dropped to a level last seen in 1959. The bad news is that the number of people killed <em>by the police<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20131230\/15411225716\/number-officers-killed-line-duty-drops-to-50-year-low-while-number-citizens-killed-cops-remains-unchanged.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">didn&#8217;t drop<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The go-to phrase deployed by police officers, district attorneys and other law enforcement-related entities to justify the use of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20131219\/08425525630\/fullerton-police-use-force-trainer-says-no-policies-violated-during-beating-death-kelly-thomas.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">excessive force<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20131015\/13010924886\/internal-investigation-into-pursuit-shooting-results-suspension-63-cleveland-police-officers.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">firing dozens of bullets<\/a> into a single suspect is &#8220;the officer(s) feared for his\/her safety.&#8221; There is no doubt being a police officer can be dangerous. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/news\/us\/article\/2013-fewest-police-deaths-by-firearms-since-1887-5101639.php\" target=\"_blank\">is it as dangerous as this oft-deployed justification makes it appear?<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The annual report from the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund also found that deaths in the line of duty generally fell by 8 percent and were the fewest since 1959.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>According to the report, 111 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty nationwide this past year, compared to 121 in 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Forty-six officers were killed in traffic related accidents, and 33 were killed by firearms. The number of firearms deaths fell 33 percent in 2013 and was <strong>the lowest since 1887<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nleomf.org\/facts\/officer-fatalities-data\/\" target=\"_blank\">statistical evidence suggests<\/a> being a cop is safer than its been since the days of Sheriff Andy Griffith. Back in 2007, <a href=\"http:\/\/usatoday30.usatoday.com\/news\/nation\/2008-10-14-justifiable_N.htm\" target=\"_blank\">the FBI put the number of justifiable homicides committed by officers in the line of duty at 391<\/a>. That count <em>only<\/em> includes homicides that occurred during the commission of a felony. This total doesn&#8217;t include justifiable homicides committed by police officers against people <em>not<\/em> committing felonies and also doesn&#8217;t include homicides found to be not justifiable. But still, this severe undercount far outpaces the number of cops killed by civilians.<\/p>\n<p>We should expect the number to always skew in favor of the police. After all, they <em>are<\/em> fighting crime and will run into dangerous criminals who may respond violently. But to continually claim that officers &#8220;fear for their safety&#8221; is to ignore the statistical evidence that says being a cop is the safest it&#8217;s been in years &mdash; and in <em>more than a century<\/em> when it comes to firearms-related deaths. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The good news is that in the United States, the number of police officers killed in the performance of their duties dropped to a level last seen in 1959. The bad news is that the number of people killed by the police didn&#8217;t drop: The go-to phrase deployed by police officers, district attorneys and other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[343,49,98,290],"class_list":["post-23613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-guns","tag-police","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-68R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23614,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23613\/revisions\/23614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}