POLICE FATALITY RATES...THE SKY IS FALLING....

...And Guess To Whom They Want It To Land Upon...*

The big law enforcement related news piece dominating the media today comes courtesy of a press release from the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (LEOMF) insisting that an apparent increase in law enforcement officer deaths in 2010 in comparison to 2009′s record low number of officer deaths should be alarming and attributes the rise to a number of factors including reduced funding for law enforcement officers and increasingly violent criminals.

While we definitely do find it alarming when any law enforcement officer loses his or her life in an act of violence, we do feel it necessary to examine these numbers in order to put them into perspective, especially since the LEOMF and a professor from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice cited police accountability projects such as ours here at the NPMSRP as the reason for the rise in police officer deaths they claim they were seeing around mid-year.

Interestingly, in response to those wild allegations, we examined the alarming trend cited by the LEOMF in July and did some statistical analysis to determine what the actual homicide rate was for law enforcement officers and, surprisingly, our projected rate of officers who died in acts of homicidal violence ended up being pretty accurate.

Back then we determined that:

…in 2009 there were 127 line of duty deaths, of which, 57 of those fatalities could be attributed to an act of violence that specifically targeted a police officer whether by firearms, intentional vehicular assault, or assault.

So far in 2010, there have been 98 line of duty deaths, of which, 28 are attributed to an intentional act of violence against a police officer.

So, in 2009 the homicidal fatality rate for law enforcement officers was an estimated 8.14 deaths per 100,000 law enforcement officers. Currently the homicidal fatality rate is at 4.16 per 100,000 and, if projected to the end of year at the current rate, that homicidal fatality rate for 2010 would potentially be 8.31 per 100,000 law enforcement officers… a 0.17 per 100,000 increase or, roughly, a 2.1% increase.

The actual numbers cited by the LEOMF for 2010 are that 160 officers died in 2010 and that 59 of those law enforcement officers died in apparent homicidal causes for 2010. This would translate to a homicide rate of 8.35 officers per 100,000 based on an estimated employment rate of 706,886 sworn law enforcement officers in the US per the latest FBI-DOJ UCR numbers released earlier this year."

 (*Yep. Us. Its always our fault. Never the criminals.) 

Let's stop for a moment to clear our heads from number-implosion.

Fact: The death of one honest cop at the hands of one dishonest scumbag is intolerable. And an average of one cop per state killed in the line of duty would suggest that "intolerable" is going on far too often. Better judges are needed, the kind who throw away the key rather than listen to the bleeding heart tree huggers who want Danny The Cop Killer paroled because he's turned his life around. Violent offenders shouldn't be hunting our police officers, end of story. The cops need more and better training, more and better ballistic vests, and more and better people wanting to become cops.

But, dear friends justice must needs be a two-edged sword:

"While we do not track total officer-related fatalities but we do track fatalities associated with allegations of police misconduct or use of excessive force.

Per our latest projected 2010 statistical data we determined that, in comparison with the stated law enforcement homicidal death rate of 8.35 per 100,000, that the fatal use of excessive force rate for law enforcement in 2010 was 18.3 per 100,000 and the rate of officers officially charged with murder was 5.3 per 100,000 (compared to an estimated 4.9 per 100,000 murder rate by officers in 2009) as opposed to the murder rate for the general public which was 5.0 per 100,000 in 2009 per the latest UCR data available from the FBI DOJ."

Yes, you're reading that correctly.

Police officers are likely to kill more innocent people than criminals are to kill innocent people. The single MOST alarming fact coming from 2010 is that crimes committed by cops are on a meteoric rise. Name the crime and cops are doing it at record numbers. 

The bottom line to you and me?

We aren't criminals so the cops shouldn't be worrying about us. We on the other hand have more to fear from a cop than from Maury the Mugger, and THAT is what needs looking into.

The Yellowstream Media isn't going to do it, folks, so read it here and there and everywhere patriots meet to greet; in particular Injustice Everywhere from whence this story came.