Police shootings study
Courtesy Criminology & Public Policy

Take this for what it’s worth. The original study cited here by Michael Boomberg’s anti-gun agitprop generation operation relies on the clearly biased and frequently inaccurate Gun Violence Archive.

In a study published in Criminology & Public Policy on July 20, Nix and Sierra-Arévalo analyzed fatal and non-fatal shootings of police officers between 2014 and 2019. The analysis relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings through media and police reports. During the study period, 1,467 local and state law enforcement officers were shot in 1,185 incidents, 249 of which were fatal. That works out to, on average, 245 officers shot per year, 42 of them fatally. The study excludes federal officers, corrections officers, and shootings of officers by colleagues.

Nix and Sierra-Arévalo observed a spike in firearm assaults against officers in 2016, but did not find a sustained increase over the six-year period of their survey.

According to other research, policing has actually become a much safer profession over the last five decades. A study published last year in Criminology & Public Policy found that line-of-duty deaths fell 75 percent between 1970 and 2016, according to an analysis of FBI data.

– The Trace in How Often Are Police Shot in the Line of Duty?

44 COMMENTS

    • Why aren’t we seeing riots, mayhem, and weekly gunshot murders within the (16 or so) states that have Constitutional Carry? I must sit down and pontificate this one…

      • Tough to loot when the shopowner can legally defend. Funny how shooting a few agitators stops everything.

      • Missouri has constitutional carry, and we’ve got riots and looting… …but only in St Louis, because they’re crazy blue over there.

  1. According to the study policing has become safer as more States have enacted concealed carry and gun ownership has expanded. I don’t think that Gun Control, Inc. understands what their study says.

    • Exactly the point. The number of civilian gun has more than doubled since the 70’s. Millions more people carrying guns now, yet fewer officers shot, historically low violent crime. Until recently.

      • Dan…I heard the officer who placed his knee on the neck of G. Floyd was a registered democrat who voted democrat and had numerous excessive force complaints which were whitewashed with the assistance of a known uppity female democrat.
        Seems if the officer was a Republican the world would have known about it. How about letting the forum know if the officer is indeed a democrat and if so note the hypocrisy.

        • Was Chauvin a bad cop or was he just an aggressive cop working in high crime neighborhood where get a lot of fake complaints from perps you arrest who are trying to win ghetto lottery?

        • Have you read the 20 page, detailed, peer reviewed Floyd autopsy report? Seems to pretty well exonerate Chauvin. No sign of asphyxiation. Much sign of prior drug use damage. Knee to the neck was a taught and authorized MN LEO technique. If you can repeatedly say “I can’t breathe”, you obviously can breathe.
          But, when he is found not guilty, hang on to your city as the Burn/Loot/Mayhem terrorists do their thing.

  2. That survey was obviously concocted by racists…

    /S

    Came across a fascinating link that breaks down some of the psychology the Leftists are using against us :

    “One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap.”

    http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122

    It’s worth the read, check it out…

    • There is an obvious exit to the Kafkatrap. Give them the big Foxtrot Uniform and walk away.

        • Got this from another web poster on a different sight.
          The Dichotomy of the troubled Liberal Mind: ~ If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him ~ Somehow it’s un-American and racist for the census to count how many Americans are in America ~ Foreign interference in our elections is bad, but illegal aliens voting in our elections is good. ~ Crowded, violent “protests” are encouraged, but singing in church is a public health violation ~ Sexualizing children is bad, but 11-year-old drag queens are good ~ Illegal aliens aren’t required to show ID, but American citizens can’t buy cough medicine without it. ~ People who have never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves ~ Inflammatory rhetoric is outrageous, but harassing people in restaurants is virtuous. ~ Acknowledging gender is bad, but we have to have a woman for Joe Biden’s V.P. running mate. ~ $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care for illegal aliens is not. ~ Believing that ALL LIVES MATTER is racist, but #BlackLivesMatter is celebrated ~ Checking gov’t ID to buy cigarettes is good, but checking gov’t ID at the voting booth is racist xenophobic ~ Liberals say never hold all of groups responsible for the actions of a few – but it’s OK to smear and generalize all police officers because of one cop BTW – Pointing out any of this hypocrisy is racist and xenophobic

        • That’s exactly what he said, right at the beginning…”got this from another web poster at a different site.”

          Slow down and pay attention, man.

        • Not seeing where he gave credit to the source.

          Read it a third time. Still not seeing it.

    • That is a great article. I’m going to read it a couple more times and keep it for future reference.

      I’ve been comparing white privilege and systemic racism to the old Catholic doctrine of original sin. Western culture is the forbidden fruit, and because someone ate that apple back in the mists of time, *everyone* is born with that sin — which is ridiculous, because nobody has any control over what they’re born into, and that’s how you get the idea that infants go straight to hell the second they draw breath. But the progressives believe it’s virtuous to kill unborn babies, and everything they do exudes a barely suppressed hatred of children, plus they hate religion too, so that probably wouldn’t register on them.

      Taking a page from Kafka is much better, because they might actually be willing to think about the writing of one of their postmodern gods.

      Also, I learned a new word: panchreston. Noice!

      • The “old Catholic doctrine of original sin” isn’t just old, it’s also current. And it’s not just Catholic, it’s a doctrine held by many churches.

        The comparison is also apples and oranges.

        • I haven’t been keeping up with religion for the past 30 years or so; I should’ve known an idea as pernicious and indefensible as Original Sin would never die.

          Also, it’s not apples to oranges at all. It’s the exact same kind of thinking, just in a secular context. In fact, SJWs are a lot more like a religious cult than you (or they) might think.

        • The doctrine of original sin seems to explain human nature more accurately than its Rouseaian alternative that we are all just sweetness and light corrupted by the existance of civil society

  3. Sure, makes me wanna go out and sign on! I mean, they wouldn’t lie about a thing like THAT, would they?

    • Like the Chinese Communist Party. Lies go up the chain to the senior leaders because no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. And then lies go back down the chain to implement bad policy.

      3500 deaths from the Wuhan flu? That was the propaganda number. What about the closing of millions of government issue phone accounts? Or the Wuhan crematorium that used to operate for 4 hours a day a few times a week then running 24×7 for about 2 months.

      Doctors probably received an order “no more deaths from coronavirus!”. So deaths were recorded for other reasons: pneumonia, emphysema, stomach flu, or anything the doctor could fill in the form. Anything but coronavirus.

    • In those other jobs death occurs because of accidents and weather. The fisherman, oil worker, etc. rarely worries about being murdered doing his job.

      I have known people that died of natural causes. Accidents. And I’ve worked with a person that was murdered. It is never good to lose a person you care about. But murder is a whole other level of body blow to the survivors.

      I have seen war. But that is a whole other animal and not for this discussion.

      • I think the point is that until recently the danger to police was greatly exaggerated to benefit police financially and socially. They and their advocates were lying for extra pay and benefits. Very very few cops didn’t ‘make it home to there families at night’. I don’t see how losing a father to a falling tree is less hard on a family than losing one to what was most often lauded as a noble sacrifice to public service with quite frequently a large death benefit. Admittedly, I am a tad autistic though so there could be a psychological impact difference that I just don’t recognize.

        • There is. When was the last time john q. public asked a crab fisherman or a lumberjack to respond to a bank robbery? Car jacking? Domestic disturbance? Name me another profession in the US where people will actively seek to murder you for doing your job.

          As for benefits. I knew a young woman with very young kids that killed herself. Her kids got social security every month until adulthood. Do you think they would have rather had a mother or those checks?

        • Please understand that this is not an ill spirited retort at all, but…The nature of the risk is different but is every bit as real and devastating.Tradesman are indeed intentionally risking their lives (and their risk over the decades has been greater) for what amounts to the greater good and they are doing it for the pay just like the police. The civilization could no more function without those tradesmen than it could without cops. How is being dead from murder worse than being dead from accident? You lose everything have and everything you ever will have either way.

        • There’s a big difference between a random or mostly unavoidable and certainly unintentional accident, and someone doing it on purpose.

  4. Since it’s “the trace” of course they only care about guns. But when police talk about the ‘war on police’ it’s not a literal case of being shot more or less than usual. It’s the media, politicians and particularly the “protests” that are happening right now.

    More importantly, I am not all that surprised that police are not being shot that much more than usual. If you look at the stats, especially in big cities, police are also shooting many less people than usual. Meanwhile, homicide rates are spiking in one big city after another.

    It isn’t a question of how dangerous the job is- it’s a question of what job the police are doing. Increasingly, they are not policing in the same way they were. In Chicago, for example, the motto is “stay fetal” because you’re a lot more protected in that position. Respond to your calls (making sure not to drive fast lest you hit someone who ignores your siren), take a report and then find somewhere to sit where someone can’t come up behind you.

    When the police stop patrolling they will get shot less. They will shoot less. And maybe that’s better. But let’s not pretend that those are the only things happening. When a little girl gets blown away because the warlords controlling a city didn’t like when her parents drove into their ‘territory’ it doesn’t appear as a death caused by police. But it’s a death that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened if police were there.

    • There are two strains of anti-police rhetoric here. The first is a naive believe that somewhere in the distant past we had “peace officers” who played by the rules. Maybe the Old West where the Marshal would do a no knock at 3 in the morning without a warrant, shoot troublemakers in the back and require cowboys coming into town on Saturday night to leave their piece in the Marshal’s office.

      Then there the keyboard gangstas who wish they the cojones to knock off the neighborhood bodega and be badass.

  5. The fallen officer memorial website lists all LEO deaths each year in near real time. LEO deaths due to gunfire have been on a downward trend for years. That site lists all deaths from gunfire to bee sting to death by cow.

  6. I wonder why the lamestream media isn’t reporting this? Perhaps because fanning the flames of a race war makes them more money than reporting people are actually safer than just about any time in history.

  7. “policing has actually become a much safer profession over the last five decades.”

    I don’t know about fifty years ago, maybe policing was dangerous. But, policing today is NOT DANGEROUS. Anyone can do an internet search. Find out how many accidents, and how many fatalities, in your own profession. Then, do the same for police. Truck drivers, construction workers, logging industry, electricians, military, and more have much higher fatality rates than police.

    It always irritates me when the police are held up as some especially brave group of people. Yeah, you have to have some minimal fortitude to become a cop. But, the average cop would crap his pants if he found himself in some of the situations I’ve been in.

    This particular survey ranks police at #16 among the 25 most dangerous professions:
    https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/2020/01/24/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/41041127/

    • I’ve also had somewhat dangerous jobs. The difference is that police (and firefighters, and military) are signing up to run towards danger. When the shit hits the fan they have to head straight towards it. A police officer might go a decade without dealing with a life threatening situation, but when and if it comes, they don’t have the option to not respond. If a cop does wimp out like that Resource Officer in Florida, they’ll be heaped with scorn for the remainder of their life.

      On top of that — again, I’ve worked dangerous jobs, long hours, weekends — but I’ve never had to interact with and touch drug-addicted individuals and homeless people and crazy people, week in week out. I’ve never had a target on my back. I’ve never had to go into someone’s house in the middle of a raging domestic argument and defuse it. I’ve never had to clean shit from a drunkard out of the seat of my car.

      I don’t why it would irritate that normal people in society are especially thankful to those who volunteer to be the firewall between whatever comes and the rest of us.

      You have the same mindset as people who say the flag is “just a piece of cloth.”

  8. I’d like to see actual numbers…and who did the shooting…male/female…age range…ethnicity…etc .
    Also…number of people shot/killed by cops. Again…broken down…armed/unarmed…resisting/not resisting…running away…etc etc etc.
    Maybe where this is happening as well…urban…rural…suburban…etc .

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