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Anti Federalist
01-27-2011, 10:28 PM
Addressed in the article...

Cops do not even crack the top ten of most dangerous jobs in the US:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/20/business/economy/economix-20workerfatalities/economix-20workerfatalities-custom1.jpg
*Data for 2009 are preliminary. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2010.



About that "War on Cops"....

William N. Grigg

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/01/about-that-war-on-cops.html


Every week — actually, every day — innocent people across the country are harassed, abused, brutalized, tortured, and murdered by armed strangers in government-issued costumes. Most of the assailants are never held accountable. Often, they are placed on paid vacation (commonly called “administrative leave”) while their colleagues devise an official rationalization for their crimes.

According to one very conservative estimate, at least thirty citizens are killed in police shootings every month, many of which occur during paramilitary raids conducted, Soviet-style, at daybreak or nighttime. Innocent people are frequently found among those killed, wounded, or brutalized in those raids; one recent example is 76-year-old New York resident Jose Colon, who was shot in the stomach by a SWAT operator who pulled the trigger trying to operate a flashlight on his tricked-out pistol.

The grim but statistically inescapable fact is that the average American is much more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist.

Those who publicize police abuses are routinely accused by apologists for government enforcement agencies of exaggerating the problem by focusing on a vanishingly small number of “exceptional” cases. When police are on the receiving end of criminal violence, however, those same apologists demand that we allow such exceptions to define the rule.

On the basis of recent trends, we can assume that two dozen or more Americans have been shot by police since January 1, 2011. In the same period, roughly half that many police have been shot, 11 of them either injured or killed during one unusually bloody twenty-four-hour period. This unconnected series of shootings has led many police officers to believe that they are targets in a “war on cops,” and that alarmist impression has been diligently propagated by police union officials who are always eager to exaggerate the very modest dangers of their profession.

“It’s not a fluke,” insists Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. “There’s a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on.” Craig W. Floyd of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund described a "very troubling trend" of "officers ... being put at greater risk than ever before."

"I think it's a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to twenty, thirty years ago," agreed J.B. Smith, Sheriff of Smith, County, Texas, in an interview with Tyler's NBC affiliate KETK. "It has become one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States, undoubtedly -- in the top five."

Actually, where the risk of death on the job is concerned, law enforcement doesn't crack the top ten list of most dangerous occupations, as designated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, none of the jobs on that list involves people employed in the coercive sector. Commercial fishermen, loggers, commercial pilots, farmers, and roofers all face a higher risk of work-related death than that confronted by the State's armed enforcers, for whom "officer safety" is job one.

(I've worked in all three of the top "dangerous" jobs fields, so nothing chaps my ass worse than listening to some cop whine about how "dangerous his job is", especially considering most work related deaths for cops involve traffic and vehicle accidents - AF)

Sheriff Smith, like others retailing the "war on cops" meme, recited the durable canard that police "work" is more dangerous today because they confront a more violent breed of street criminal. Five years ago, Joseph McNamara of Stanford's Hoover Institution, a former NYPD Deputy Inspector (and, unfortunately, an advocate of civilian disarmament), pointed out that police "work" may be safer now than ever before.

In 2005, McNamara noted, fifty-one officers died in the line of duty "out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York’s highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today."

Yes, there is a war on the streets of America, McNamara allowed, but it is one waged by the cops, not on them:

"Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on `officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed."

(And that is from a cop - AF)

Government police agencies were always designed to control the public, rather than to "protect and serve" it. As sociologist David Bayley memorably put it, "The police are to the government as the edge is to the knife." Thanks in no small measure to the proliferation of independent media, the public is coming to understand that fact.

A large and growing segment of the public likewise has become palpably disgusted with the casual elitism of the armed tax-feeders among us, who see themselves as a caste apart from, and superior to, those from whom they extract their livelihood. The police unions and media organs that take dictation from them insist that the purported "war on cops" is being fueled by a growing public "disrespect" for the "authority" of police.

"The palm-sized shield worn on a police officer’s chest should be viewed as a badge of honor, not a bull’s-eye," sobbed the editorial collective of the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader in a lachrymose house editorial that typifies media treatment of the supposed "war" on police. "Sadly, recent deadly shootings around the nation and alleged threats directed at Luzerne County law enforcers reveal a troubling lack of respect for officers’ authority and responsibilities, as well as their lives."

The "threats" in question were allegedly made by 45-year-old Scanton resident Ray Mazzarella, who was arrested and charged with several counts of making "terroristic threats" for inflammatory comments he had posted about the local police chief on his Facebook page. Were the rational for Mazzarella's pre-emptive arrest applied consistently, scores or hundreds of police officers would have to be locked up and put on trial for equally inflammatory statements posted on chat boards frequented by LEOs. Of course, by even making that point I'm undermining public "respect" for police "authority" -- thereby, one supposes, abetting violence against our sanctified protectors.

Although Steve Groeninger, spokesman for the D.C.-based National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, admits that “we don’t have any data,” he told MSNBC that “there seems to be a type of criminal out there looking to thwart authority” (by which he means any directive issued by an armed government functionary) and warns that “cuts in police budgets could exacerbate the danger,” according to MSNBC.

This is an interesting variation on a familiar police union theme. As previously noted in this space, as municipal budgets shrink amid the ever-deepening depression, some police unions are literally trying to terrorize the public into supporting their budget demands. Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts announced several months ago that because of budget cuts citizens shouldn’t expect police to respond to calls involving 44 kinds of crime, including burglary, grand theft, and other serious offenses. The hideously corrupt Camden, New Jersey Police Department adopted a similar policy after half the force was laid off. In Sacramento County, the Sheriff’s Office published an ad depicting what appeared to be a sexual assault on a child. “Don’t let them cut deputies and put your family at risk!” screamed the ad copy.

Reduced to its essence, the message here is this: Give us what we want, or people will get hurt. Those of us who oppose the demands of police unions can now expect to be told that we’re morally indistinguishable from cop-killers.

(Sounds like a mob enforcer's speech as he sells "protection"- AF)

Every traffic stop, we are told, is pregnant with potentially lethal danger -- for the one party in that confrontation we know to be armed and invested with the supposed authority to kill another human being. In fact, encounters of this kind are freighted with peril for the member of the productive population who has come under the unwanted scrutiny of an armed emissary of the State. This is true of any interaction between the police and the private citizens on whom they subsist.

One likely product of the ongoing panic over a "war on cops" is the increased likelihood that police will resort to potentially lethal force in such routine encounters. After all, isn't it better to have the taxpayers absorb the cost of settling with the family of a murdered Mundane than to suffer the uniquely poignant anguish of burying one of the State's Anointed Ones?

Most of the potentially dangerous encounters between police and the public grow out of their roles as enforcers of drug prohibition and armed revenue collectors (those roles overlap, of course). Those dangers will grow more acute as the economy continues to sicken and people who have done no harm to others start to lose patience with the demands of the wealth-devouring class.

Rather than abating their demands and ratcheting down the conflict, however, those in charge of the State clearly intend to escalate it, making whatever use they deem necessary of all of the charming instruments of regimentation and mass violence originally developed for use overseas. One particularly unsettling illustration of this principle is the expanding domestic use of unmanned surveillance drones, which were originally developed for battlefield applications but will probably become as commonplace as SWAT teams within the next several years.

If they have it, they will use it; if it's been deployed by the military abroad, it will be employed by the paramilitary police at home; once it's been tested against criminal suspects, it will become part of the standard arsenal of social regimentation. At this point it appears that the only thing that will cause the machinery of repression to grind to a stop would be a fully realized economic collapse. Another grim possibility is that the State's relentless persecution of harmless people will grow so vicious that the "war on cops" being spoken of now becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- thereby creating a personnel shortage of the kind Solzhenitsyn described.

Anybody who takes the life of any human being through aggressive violence is a murderer and should be treated as such. That being said, this should be also: If the wildly exaggerated fear of being killed on the job results in increased attrition from the ranks of the State’s armed enforcers, one happy result will be a net decrease in the amount of criminal violence afflicting our society.

HOLLYWOOD
01-27-2011, 10:38 PM
Glenn Beck had a show on it today. Never mentioned one word of all those innocent Americans Murdered by American cops.

Those numbers are fudged too... like the ones that get killed in regular driving accidents. They use those number to exploit more pay and benefits, very sad. man before all this holding cities/counties/states hostage to Jingoism and money... www.PolicePay.Net used to be open and they bragged about taking communities for a bath in contracts. They have seasoned sector contract negotiating team, lawyers, etc that you can hire to come to a town and win big contracts. You used to be able to view all the contract too. Man I couldn't believe some of the packages these thieves walked out with.
Pretty Ugly stuff all around

If they were to count those on all the other indices, their ranking would drop substantially.

Anti Federalist
01-27-2011, 10:41 PM
Glenn Beck had a show on it today. Never mentioned one word of all those innocent Americans Murdered by American cops.

Really.

And what was Monsieur Becks' take on this?

susano
01-27-2011, 10:43 PM
AF, I read that Grigg piece last and thought of you!

Beck never mentioned the war on We the People and murder BY cops, of course.

Vessol
01-27-2011, 11:10 PM
It's getting so ridiculous that I'm at the point where I don't even feel bad when a police officer is killed. I don't advocate violence unless it is immediate self-defense, however this charade has gone on so long that it is clear who are the actual victims of the now Gestapo-lite police departments around America.

Anti Federalist
01-27-2011, 11:14 PM
AF, I read that Grigg piece last and thought of you!

Beck never mentioned the war on We the People and murder BY cops, of course.

Cool.;)

So what was his general take on this subject?

Vessol
01-27-2011, 11:19 PM
Cool.;)

So what was his general take on this subject?

Probably something like

"THIS is what happens when our economy is going down! Each and every cop killer can be linked on my blackboard to Barrack Obama his has radical pastor! This, America, is the future. Back in 15."

Anti Federalist
01-27-2011, 11:20 PM
Probably something like

"THIS is what happens when our economy is going down! Each and every cop killer can be linked on my blackboard to Barrack Obama his has radical pastor! This, America, is the future. Back in 15."

It wasn't George Soros' fault?

Vessol
01-27-2011, 11:28 PM
It wasn't George Soros' fault?

Beck talks about Soros now? Didn't know that, I've been kinda out of the Beck-loop for awhile.

Freedom 4 all
01-28-2011, 12:07 AM
Glenn Beck had a show on it today. Never mentioned one word of all those innocent Americans Murdered by American cops.


Lol, does that really surprise anyone?

squarepusher
01-28-2011, 12:09 AM
war on fish!


Lol, does that really surprise anyone?

there are some people who apparently enjoy being continuously let down by Glenn Beck, but still watch him religiously

Anti Federalist
01-28-2011, 12:21 PM
///

Anti Federalist
01-28-2011, 12:36 PM
Stormtroopin’

Posted by William Grigg on January 28, 2011 01:45 AM

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/76513.html#more-76513

“When is our society going to start giving the cops the benefit of the doubt?” whined Glenn Beck in a recent on-air monologue. “There is a war on cops,” Beck insisted, reciting the alarmist and misleading police union soundbite that “the death rate of police officers … is up forty percent” since the beginning of the year. After saying that he didn’t blame recent incidents in which eleven police officers were shot in various places across the country on Marxists and other radicals, Beck did vaguely connect those incidents to “bad guys that are trying to get riots going on,” presumably by publicizing police misconduct, among other things.

A few hours before Beck unbosomed himself of that monologue, more than two dozen LAPD officers, including a tactical squad armed with shotguns and ballistic shields, laid siege to the home of Jeremy Marks, a teenager scheduled to stand trial on a spurious charge of “attempted lynching” — that is, of being a “bad guy” trying to get “a riot going on” by taunting and supposedly threatening an abusive police officer.

Marks was one of several students at Verdugo Hills High School who witnessed and captured on video an incident in which a female LAPD officer named Erin Robles roughed up a 15-year-old boy who was smoking at a bus stop. At one point an unidentified student — who, as video recordings clearly demonstrate, could not have been Marks — supposedly yelled “Kick her ass!” after the officer struck the boy with a baton and pepper-sprayed him.

Marks never touched Robles and certainly never threatened her. Furthermore, on the basis of the available evidence it’s clear that Robles wasn’t in danger. The confrontation was an ugly scene, but hardly an incipient riot, let alone a potential “lynching.”

Despite video evidence, abundant eyewitness testimony, and wild inconsistencies in police accounts of the event and Marks’s subsequent arrest at a nearby McDonald’s, the police and prosecutors focused their attention on him, most likely because he’s the proverbial low-hanging fruit: At the time of the May 10 incident, Marks, who has a history of disciplinary problems.

Following his arrest, Marks spent more than six months in the Peter Pitchess Detention Center; bail was set at $155,000. The D.A.’ s office initially offered Marks a “deal” that would have sent him to prison for seven years. After some people who are shamefully indisposed to give the cops the “benefit of the doubt” riled up the local public, the D.A. modified the offer: If Marks were to plead guilty to several spurious charges, including “attempted lynching,” he would spend “only” 32 months behind bars.

After Google engineer Neil Fraser posted $50,000 to pay bail, Marks was released from jail and went back to school. Pre-trial hearings are scheduled for next month. Rather than following standard discovery procedures, the DA and his trained simians in the LAPD staged a Gestapo-style raid at daybreak on January 27.

“Police vehicles filled the streets of the predominantly African-American neighborhood in Lakeview terrace,” relates one account. “Neighbors were prevented from going into or out of their homes. A next door neighbor had a gun pointed at him for trying to retrieve his children from [the Marks family's] front porch.” Jeremy’s bedroom was trashed by the invaders, who seized computers, cell phones, cameras, and legal documents, many of them “privileged attorney-client communications.” A similar raid reportedly took place at the home of another student who “was targeted because he posted videos of the original incident on YouTube. These videos show that Jeremy did nothing illegal.”

Assuming that the account cited above is accurate, what it describes is the behavior of an occupying army seeking to intimidate and subdue an understandably hostile population. The SWAT assault on Jeremy Marks’s neighborhood in search of “anti-police” video recordings was strikingly similar to raids carried out in occupied Iraq in search of people distributing “anti-coalition propaganda” or inciting “insurgent activity.”

Although he sometimes flirts with libertarian themes, Beck is clearly a punitive populist; when given the “Tom Joad Test,” he reflexively sympathizes with the State functionary wielding the club, rather than the citizen on the receiving end of officially sanctioned violence. Interestingly, Beck’s jeremiad about the purported “War on Cops” came immediately after he debuted his new anti-Iran agitprop movie “Rumors of War,” a transparent effort to cultivate support for a war against what he calls “the most dangerous regime in the world” — the distant, relatively powerless one ruling Persians, that is, not the one killing, impoverishing, and terrorizing Americans here at home.

Anti Federalist
01-28-2011, 12:41 PM
So remember the Chicago cop recently sentenced to a paltry 4.5 years in prison for lying about his routine torture of suspects over the years? Remember how he and the other cops couldn’t be charged for the actual torture due to the statute of limitations, and how the statute of limitations expired because local officials, including Chicago’s current mayor, refused for years to hold them accountable? Remember all that? Well guess what?

He’ll also get to keep his pension.

http://www.theagitator.com/

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/ex-top_cop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=ABA+Journal+Daily+News&utm_content=Twitter

__27__
01-28-2011, 12:50 PM
So remember the Chicago cop recently sentenced to a paltry 4.5 years in prison for lying about his routine torture of suspects over the years? Remember how he and the other cops couldn’t be charged for the actual torture due to the statute of limitations, and how the statute of limitations expired because local officials, including Chicago’s current mayor, refused for years to hold them accountable? Remember all that? Well guess what?

He’ll also get to keep his pension.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/ex-top_cop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=ABA+Journal+Daily+News&utm_content=Twitter

Maybe you can take some solace in the fact that for even his short time inside he will live like a little bitch in PC with the chomos to avoid direct and repeated confrontation with the people he and his 'brothers' beat abused and tortured, and this time he won't have a badge to hide behind. I've worked in prison, and 4.5 years (really 3 and I'm sure he'll even get out early on that) is a lot more when you're a cop in prison than just another mundane. He's essentially become an even lower class than the mundanes, his torture will be in his own head.

heavenlyboy34
01-28-2011, 01:10 PM
“It’s not a fluke,” insists Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. Could someone enlighten me as to why cops need an "international union"?

__27__
01-28-2011, 01:12 PM
“It’s not a fluke,” insists Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. Could someone enlighten me as to why cops need an "international union"?

Government jobs unionized: 36.2%

Private jobs unionized: 6.9%

heavenlyboy34
01-28-2011, 01:17 PM
Government jobs unionized: 36.2%

Private jobs unionized: 6.9%

So it's just to organize in such a way as to find new ways to bilk boobus Americanus of more tax dollars? Not surprising at all.

Freedom 4 all
01-28-2011, 02:57 PM
Maybe you can take some solace in the fact that for even his short time inside he will live like a little bitch in PC with the chomos to avoid direct and repeated confrontation with the people he and his 'brothers' beat abused and tortured, and this time he won't have a badge to hide behind. I've worked in prison, and 4.5 years (really 3 and I'm sure he'll even get out early on that) is a lot more when you're a cop in prison than just another mundane. He's essentially become an even lower class than the mundanes, his torture will be in his own head.

So he's a cop who systematically tortured suspects, specifically black suspects? Unless the Aryan Nation takes him in and protects his (and I don't think they would) he's a dead man. I'd be surprised if he doesn't get shanked within the first month.

Deborah K
01-28-2011, 03:00 PM
Government jobs unionized: 36.2%

Private jobs unionized: 6.9%

Gotta link for those stats? I could use it.

Anti Federalist
01-28-2011, 03:02 PM
Gotta link for those stats? I could use it.

Highlights from the 2010 data:

--The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was
substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Deborah K
01-28-2011, 03:28 PM
Highlights from the 2010 data:

--The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was
substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

thanks

Anti Federalist
01-29-2011, 12:51 AM
Memphis lawmen say high-profile visit to protest was to keep peace center peaceful

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/25/protest-earns-guarded-reaction/?partner=yahoo_feeds

When a police SWAT team and an FBI anti-terrorism squad showed up Tuesday at a Memphis church where peace activists were staging an event, a scene reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s ensued.

The activists, members of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center who oppose the war in Afghanistan, characterized the encounter as police intimidation and a case of illegal surveillance.

FBI and Memphis Police Department representatives countered it was all a misunderstanding. They said they were there to protect the activists from potential harm by extremists who might oppose their views.

Freedom 4 all
01-29-2011, 09:24 AM
Memphis lawmen say high-profile visit to protest was to keep peace center peaceful

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/25/protest-earns-guarded-reaction/?partner=yahoo_feeds

When a police SWAT team and an FBI anti-terrorism squad showed up Tuesday at a Memphis church where peace activists were staging an event, a scene reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s ensued.

The activists, members of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center who oppose the war in Afghanistan, characterized the encounter as police intimidation and a case of illegal surveillance.

FBI and Memphis Police Department representatives countered it was all a misunderstanding. They said they were there to protect the activists from potential harm by extremists who might oppose their views.

Blatant intimidation tactics, but no one died at least, so I suppose we should be grateful. But the comments make me weep for the future. I sincerely hope this dude is a police paid troll, but somehow I doubt it.


in response to MRTIBBS:

I take it the police are outside your door now just in case....

Looks like somebody got a nice big hot bowl full of stupid for breakfast today.

The going rate for a rookie cop is what? About 30K not counting benefits? Add in a patrol car, radio, uniforms, second rate pistol and third rate OC spray and a slightly tarnished badge, plus gas, and all that's got to come up to about 50-60K a year.

Most law abiding property owners in Memphis would probably be delighted, if not ecstatic, to have high end, well equipped, machine gun carrying security forces guarding their safety at night. Unconvinced?

Look at all the calls Janis Full'o'drugs has made to ensure their presence at her house on a semi-permanent basis. Heck, on one day MPD spent half a shift at her house. How's that work?

Not only that, I'll lay ten to one any day of the week that there are folks in city government who have either asked for or even demanded stepped up rates of patrol at their property, and received it, without so much as an argument from the command staff at MPD.

roho76
01-29-2011, 10:04 AM
Memphis lawmen say high-profile visit to protest was to keep peace center peaceful

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/25/protest-earns-guarded-reaction/?partner=yahoo_feeds

When a police SWAT team and an FBI anti-terrorism squad showed up Tuesday at a Memphis church where peace activists were staging an event, a scene reminiscent of the turbulent 1960s ensued.

The activists, members of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center who oppose the war in Afghanistan, characterized the encounter as police intimidation and a case of illegal surveillance.

FBI and Memphis Police Department representatives countered it was all a misunderstanding. They said they were there to protect the activists from potential harm by extremists who might oppose their views.

Otherwise known as the FBI anti-terrorism squad and the Memphis Police.

Anti Federalist
01-30-2011, 02:46 PM
Remember that story about a Los Angeles neighborhood that was on "lock down" because of suspected cop shooter running around?

Turns out, the cop shot himself and faked the whole story. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/28/local/la-me-school-shooting-20110128)

Now, if you, as a mundane, cause injury or harm to someone during the commission of a crime you will be held accountable for that as well.

If a trigger happy cop, hut hutting around during this "lockdown" had shot a mundane, do you suppose the cop who had originally filed the false report that caused it all, would be charged with murder?

Anti Federalist
01-31-2011, 12:48 PM
Balko doesn't have the "edge" Grigg does, in the end, he still has to back pedal enough to praise our brave protectors.

Still, a good article with relevant facts.


The Anti-Cop Trend That Isn't
Despite breathless media reports, there is little evidence that violence against police officers is on the rise.

Radley Balko | January 31, 2011

http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/31/the-anti-cop-trend-that-isnt

Between January 20 and January 25, 13 police officers were shot in the U.S., five of them fatally. Two officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, were killed while trying to arrest a suspect accused of aggravated battery. Two more were killed in Miami while trying to arrest a suspected murderer. An officer in Oregon was seriously wounded and another in Indiana was killed after they were shot during routine traffic stops. The Indiana assailant had a long and violent criminal record. The suspect in Oregon is still at large. In another incident, four officers were injured in Detroit when a man about to be charged in a murder investigation walked into a police station and opened fire.

Some police advocates have drawn unsupported conclusions from this rash of attacks, claiming that they are tied to rising anti-police sentiment, anti-government protest, or a lack of adequate gun control laws. Media outlets also have been quick to draw connections between these unrelated shootings. While these incidents are tragic, the ensuing alarmism threatens to stifle much-needed debate about police tactics, police misconduct, and police accountability.

Jon Shane, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told NPR the January shootings "follow some bit of a larger trend in the United States," which he described as an "overriding sense of entitlement and 'don't tread on me.'" Craig W. Floyd, chairman of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, told UPI, "It's a very troubling trend where officers are being put at greater risk than ever before." The same article summarized the opinions of other police leaders who think the shootings "reflected a broader lack of respect for authority."

Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC, "It's not a fluke….There's a perception among officers in the field that there's a war on cops going on." Police critic William Grigg notes that Smith County, Texas, Sheriff J.B. Smith told the NBC station in Tyler, "I think it's a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to twenty, thirty years ago. It has become one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States, undoubtedly—in the top five."

During his interview with Shane, NPR host Michael Martin linked the shootings to the availability of guns. Salon's Amy Steinberg concluded "there is a disturbing trend and an increasingly pressing need to revisit the conversation on gun control."

Dig into most of these articles, however, and you will find there is no real evidence of an increase in anti-police violence, let alone one that can be traced to anti-police rhetoric, gun sales, disrespect for authority, or "don't tread on me" sentiment. (CNN is one of the few media outlets that have covered the purported anti-police trend with appropriate skepticism.) Amid all the quotes from concerned law enforcement officials in MSNBC's "War on Cops" article, for example, is a casual mention that police fatality statistics for this month are about the same as they were in January 2010. Right after suggesting to NPR that the recent attacks were related to anti-government rhetoric, Shane acknowledged there has been little research into the underlying causes of police shootings.

In truth, on-the-job police fatalities have dropped nearly 50 percent during the last 20 years, even as the total number of cops has doubled. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 279 cops were killed on the job in 1974, the worst year on record. That number steadily decreased to just 116 in 2009. The leading cause of death for cops on duty is car accidents, not violence. For the last several years, the number of officers intentionally killed on the job each year has ranged from 45 to 60, out of about 850,000 cops on the beat. That makes police officers about 50 percent more likely to be intentionally killed than the average American. But contrary to Sheriff Smith's claim, the job isn't among the 10 most dangerous in the country, let alone the "the top five," even if you include officers unintentionally killed in traffic accidents.

As for guns, Salon's Steinberg strangely came to her conclusion about "the pressing need to revisit the conversation on gun control" just a few paragraphs after she noted that gun sales have risen dramatically during the same 20-year period when police officer fatalities have plummeted. Last year there was an increase in officers intentionally killed on the job, from 41 to 58, which Steinberg characterizes this way: "In 2010 policemen killed on the job rose by nearly 40 percent, the greatest increase since 1974." That's true. But isn't it more significant that these numbers have dropped to the point where 17 additional deaths now represents an increase of 40 percent? In any event, 2010 also saw the smallest increase in gun sales in six years.

None of this is meant to denigrate the heroism of police officers who confront and apprehend dangerous people, and we certainly should honor and remember those who are injured or killed while doing so. But seizing on an anomalous series of terrible shootings as evidence of a nonexistent anti-police trend skews the debate on issues such as aggressive police tactics, police militarization, the use of Tasers, searches and pat-downs, and police transparency and accountability. Officer safety is important, but it should not come at the expense of the safety and civil liberties of the people they are sworn to protect.

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

Anti Federalist
02-04-2011, 03:33 AM
What happens when this ^^^ article gets dropped into a nest of cops and cop lovers:

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1312278

BamaAla
02-04-2011, 04:48 AM
What happens when this article gets dropped into a nest of cops and cop lovers:

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1312278

Are you the OP on GT? For the love of all that is holy, do not get into a political discussion on glock talk. That place is great for information about glocks and all other manner of firearms, but it is the death pit for political discourse. They are a bomb 'em out, hang 'em high bunch if there's ever been one.

Anti Federalist
02-04-2011, 07:46 PM
Are you the OP on GT? For the love of all that is holy, do not get into a political discussion on glock talk. That place is great for information about glocks and all other manner of firearms, but it is the death pit for political discourse. They are a bomb 'em out, hang 'em high bunch if there's ever been one.

I got that sense of things. Ugh...that is good cross section of the "law and order" mob within the GOP.

No, I'm not the OP, I would have gotten banned at some of my responses that I would have posted.

That's why Oathkeepers is so important.

God help the Egyptians if they had US neocons like that mob on GT manning their army.

ETA - It's also funny to read some of these self professed "small government conservatives" ranting at Chris Christie for cutting state funding of cop shops across NJ.

Anti Federalist
02-04-2011, 10:39 PM
////

Brooklyn Red Leg
02-05-2011, 06:33 AM
What happens when this ^^^ article gets dropped into a nest of cops and cop lovers

Goddamn that was a fucking awful read. So many 'Its not us, we didn't do it' deflecting of the Cop Culture/Thin Blue Line. As one poster put it, when Rome fell, it was the enforcement class (Praetorian's and their Buscelarii successors) that bore the brunt of the public's wrath (namely Goths who had been routinely oppressed). The same will happen here unless things get turned around.

Kylie
02-05-2011, 09:18 AM
Goddamn that was a fucking awful read. So many 'Its not us, we didn't do it' deflecting of the Cop Culture/Thin Blue Line. As one poster put it, when Rome fell, it was the enforcement class (Praetorian's and their Buscelarii successors) that bore the brunt of the public's wrath (namely Goths who had been routinely oppressed). The same will happen here unless things get turned around.

I'm afraid of that.

The cops better figure out that they are on the wrong side, and quick. Because they surely don't want to go the way of the Egyptian Security forces. Our people still have arms, and I would think the better part of them would use one on a criminal whether that criminal is carrying a badge or not.

ivflight
02-05-2011, 09:30 AM
Anyone know where cops stand percentile-wise? I'd like to be able to complete this sentence: "A police officer performs a job less dangerous than __% of all other working Americans."

Freedom 4 all
02-05-2011, 01:12 PM
What happens when this ^^^ article gets dropped into a nest of cops and cop lovers:

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1312278


Yikes, that site is uber fucked up. Where's the puke smiley when you need it?

Pericles
02-05-2011, 01:16 PM
I'm afraid of that.

The cops better figure out that they are on the wrong side, and quick. Because they surely don't want to go the way of the Egyptian Security forces. Our people still have arms, and I would think the better part of them would use one on a criminal whether that criminal is carrying a badge or not.
You may depend upon it.

Anti Federalist
02-05-2011, 01:48 PM
Police critic William Grigg notes that Smith County, Texas, Sheriff J.B. Smith told the NBC station in Tyler, "I think it's a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to twenty, thirty years ago. It has become one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States, undoubtedly—in the top five."

Not only are killings down, but so are assaults:

http://reason.com/assets/mc/rbalko/2011_02/officersassaultedbyyear.png

Matt Collins
04-22-2011, 03:50 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bFl4H-toyU&feature=player_embedded