Law enforcement deaths rising: Attorney General Eric Holder seeking new gun control laws

[aGameOfThrones]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20110322&t=2&i=369103518&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=2011-03-22T182254Z_01_BTRE72L1F2D00_RTROPTP_0_USA


(Reuters) - Law enforcement officers are being killed at an alarming rate, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday, adding that options are being explored to address the violence including seeking new gun control laws.

Before meeting with state and local police chiefs and representatives of federal law enforcement agencies, Holder said 48 officers have died during the first three months of 2011, a 17 percent increase over 2010. Of those, 23 were killed by gunfire, a 53 percent jump.

Last year "really marked the deadliest year for law enforcement in nearly two decades," Holder said, noting there were 162 officers killed in 2010. "That's obviously very worrisome. This year we're unfortunately on track to exceed the numbers we saw last year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/22/us-usa-guns-idUSTRE72L5QI20110322

[aGameOfThrones]

You know, they should put the number of people killed by LEOs, too.

[Pericles]

Keep that crap up, and the rate will go higher. The country is not having any of that.

[squarepusher]

and apparently they are killing themselves

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/13-fatal-minutes-leading-to-cop-s-death-1.2772777

[Pericles]

and apparently they are killing themselves

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/13-fatal-minutes-leading-to-cop-s-death-1.2772777

Nothing like that blue on blue fire.

[aGameOfThrones]

and apparently they are killing themselves

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/13-fatal-minutes-leading-to-cop-s-death-1.2772777

Bad Karma: Cops kill undercover cop (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?275288-Bad-Karma-Cops-kill-undercover-cop&highlight=baltimore+cop)

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0429-02.htm

When the Police Shoot, Who's Counting? (2001)

WE like to think we live in the information age, when daily or even second-by-second statistics on such fare as stock prices and the annual number of homicides are at our fingertips. For all the careful accounting, however, there are two figures Americans don't have: the precise number of people killed by the police, and the number of times police use excessive force.

Despite widespread public interest and a provision in the 1994 Crime Control Act requiring the Attorney General to collect the data and publish an annual report on them, statistics on police shootings and use of nondeadly force continue to be piecemeal products of spotty collection, and are dependent on the cooperation of local police departments. No comprehensive accounting for all of the nation's 17,000 police department exists.

...

The major reasons for the vacuum, the experts agree, are twofold. The lack of information on police shootings is attributable to the failure of police departments in many cities to keep and report accurate figures that distinguish between what the police see as "justifiable" shootings � those in which the suspect posed a serious threat � and incidents where an officer may have unlawfully fired at an unarmed civilian.

The International Chiefs of Police, a police organization, tried in the 1980's to collect such information, but "the figures were very embarrassing to a lot of police departments," said James Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University who is a former New York City police lieutenant. The results, he said, varied wildly. New Orleans had 10 times as many shootings per 100 officers as Newark. Long Beach had twice as many as neighboring Los Angeles, which in turn had three times more than New York.

...

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical arm of the Justice Department, has tried to fill in some of the blanks on police behavior, issuing a number of surveys and reports on the topic. Most recently, the bureau quietly released a report, "Policing and Homicide, 1976- 1998." But the report itself underscores the continued problems in knowing what is really happening.

On its cover, for example, the report refers to all the victims of police shootings as "felons justifiably killed by police," a categorization that Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, termed "deeply offensive and legally incorrect." In fact, a Justice Department official said the bureau was so embarrassed by the term, and the lack of distinction between justifiable police shootings and murders, that it did not send out its usual promotional material announcing the report.

BUT, the official said, the bureau was trapped because it depends on local police departments to report their figures on police shootings to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and "felons" is the term that police departments insist on using when they do so.

Making matters worse, some police departments fail to report their shootings at all, and for some years, figures from entire states are missing. Although the 1994 crime act ordered the Justice Department to collect such data, there is no law requiring local police departments to provide it, Janet Reno, the former attorney general, acknowledged in a 1999 speech.

...

But the report also acknowledges its own limitations. "One statistic that is impossible to obtain" from the Justice Department's database, it said, "or from any other currently existing database, is the number of murders by police," because in reporting their shooting figures, the police don't distinguish between justified and unjustified killings. The report also fails to break down the number of police shootings by city, unlike other Justice Department reports on crime, making it impossible to compare police performance.

...

[GuerrillaXXI]

Maybe suspects would be more likely to give up peacefully rather than have a shootout to the death if they didn't think they had a good chance of being humiliated and/or brutalized even after surrendering. I sense some karma at work here. Pardon me if my heart doesn't bleed for these armed enforcers any more than their hearts bleed for the victims of their brutality, perjury, and the Blue Wall of Silence.

As for new gun control, I'm tired of hearing all this crap about an increase in violent crime since the expiration of the "Assault Weapons Ban." Weapons such as AKs were every bit as available during that ban as they are now. I bought a brand new AK during that ban with plenty of 30-round mags, and it was all perfectly legal. The only thing I couldn't legally have on the AK was a flash suppressor, and most AKs don't have that feature anyway. The mags were also brand new, but they'd been manufactured prior to 1994. There were millions in circulation during the ban.

Not that it would make any difference even if gun crime did decrease during the AWB. The right to bear arms is the basis for government by consent of the governed. As such, it's non-negotiable. People who don't like it don't belong in this country, since the US was founded on this principle.

[coastie]

They end up passing any bullshit laws-it's only gonna get much worse, which begets more laws, which then begets more officer deaths, ad nauseum...:(:mad:

[Icymudpuppy]

I just don't get how any LEOs support this. All the LEOs I know are big supporters of the private ownership of guns. They know that if homeowners solve their own problems, all they have to do is document the results. Why fight more than you have to.

[mrsat_98]

To bad this officer from Diamondhead Police Department is not a statistic.