Thank you for that video! Damned enlightening.
Iâm more impressed than I should be that at least the cops did not kill her.
Actually, yeah. If a cop is going to get killed in the line of duty, itâs from a domestic disturbance or a traffic stop. Problem there is that they never know what theyâll be dealing with, and itâs hard to be prepared.
If someone calls in a bomb threat or a hostage situation, they bring in the SWAT team with body armor and specialized training- Itâs pretty rare for someone to take one of those guys down.
You pull over a car for a busted headlight, you donât know whether itâs neighbor Bob on his way to church, or a meth head with a stolen car and a dozen outstanding warrants. Same thing with a domestic- You never know if the guy is a model citizen having a really bad day, or a paranoid schizophrenic with a hundred pounds of fertilizer bombs.
Domestic calls can be touchy. Everyone involved is emotional and pumped up on adrenaline. Sometimes the warring parties will set aside their differences long enough to gang up on the responding officers.
Well, it makes sense. You donât have to actually live with the police officers you assault. Itâs an opportunity to divert your frustration away from the people you see day in day out - who might take it personally if you hit them.
There are basically two types of cops: those who try to talk to people and defuse situations, and those who escalate every encounter into a major incident.
NYPD and its ilk seem determined to start wars within the communities they âserve.â
If 90% of your interaction with the public is âa domestic disturbance or a traffic stopâ then itâs probably safe to say thatâs when youâll face the most danger.
Still doesnât change the fact that being a cop doesnât even show up in the top 10 dangerous occupations yet we allow them to get away with just about anything, including murder/manslaughter, because the job is âdangerousâ. Using that logic, logging workers (#1 most dangerous job) should be able to rape and plunder at will.
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NYPD is an occupying army.
Actually, if Iâm not mistaken, if a cop is going to get killed in the line of duty, itâs from an ordinary, run of the mill car accident while theyâre on duty.
Or maybe that doesnât count as âin the line of dutyâ to some because itâs not sexy and doesnât reinforce the âcops are at constant risk of being murdered by civiliansâ image they like to put across. But it counts to me, theyâre performing their duty and died doing it.
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Citation, please?
You are not mistaken. In 2012 (the latest year for which complete data was available as of a couple of months ago) fewer than 100 police officers were killed while on duty. Almost exactly half of those deaths were car accidents.
Thatâs kind of a traffic stop.
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Citation, please?
According to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, over 30% of assaults on police officers occur during domestic disturbance calls. Police Chief Magazine has a pretty dense article on the statistics for domestic disturbance related incidents and fatalities. Also, the University of MN has a pretty extensive report here that puts traffic stops as the cause of 13% of police homicides and a bit under 10% of assaults. Throw in the number of cops struck by vehicles, and traffic stops are pretty dangerous.
Thank you for the several interesting links. Youâre right that they are fairly dense reading, but I donât think we (you and I) are drawing the same conclusions from the linked articles.
When I asked for citations, it was in response to your declaration that
But the articles you link donât seem to agree: [quote]it is widely believed that domestic violence calls pose the greatest threat to police officersâ safety and that law enforcement officers are most likely to be injured or killed responding to this category of call. While the fact remains that officers are seriously injured and killed responding to domestic violence calls, the bulk of research does not actually support this perspective. Rather, findings typically indicate that robberies and burglaries are the most dangerous calls for law enforcement officers and that these calls pose a far greater risk for assault and death than do domestic violence calls for service.[/quote] And just a little later in the same article: [quote]Of the officers feloniously killed during this period, 14 percent (n=106) were murdered responding to a domestic violence call for service.[/quote] Both of the above were taken from the second link you shared.
Iâm still looking over the data from the third link you shared, about traffic stops.
Well, to be fair, you also have to consider how many robberies and burglaries your average patrolman encounters, versus the number of domestic disputes and traffic stops.
Talking to a couple friends who are/were cops, the thing that keeps coming up is the unpredictability- If youâre called to a robbery, youâre expecting a weapon, youâre bringing backup, youâre probably stopping to put on a vest. A traffic stop, you have no idea who or what youâre dealing with.
From the third link you shared [quote] an average of 12.9 percent of police homicides and 9.4 percent of police assaults occurred during traffic stops from 1988 to 1997.[/quote] and from a little further in [quote]the chance of a police officer homicide victimization during a routine traffic stop was quite minimal â between one in 6.7 million and 20.1 million motor vehicle stops.[/quote]
89 police officers were murdered while conducting routine traffic stops during the ten year period covered by the cited study for an average of about 9 per year.
Compare that to lightning fatalities, which averaged 51 per year over the past 20 years.
Iâll reiterate what I said above:
I accept that cops believe that domestic disturbances and traffic stops are especially dangerous.
But the data doesnât support their belief.
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