We hear numerous stories about police officers who are gunned down but what we don’t hear much about is this disturbing trend:
Ten times more civilians were killed by cops than cops were killed by civilians in 2008, but you won’t find that information in Tuesday’s New York Times story on the “disturbing trend” of officers killed by perps.
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There’s arguably an even bigger problem with the Times’ story, and that’s the absence of any data about how many civilians the cops have killed, even though that information is widely available, as demonstrated by the Advocacy Center for Equality and Democracy:
- From 2003 to 2009, 4,813 people died in relation to an arrest in “all manners of deaths.” Each year ranged from 627 (2003) to 745 (2007). Source – Andrea M. Burch, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003-2009 – Statistical Tables, November 2011.
- Of those, 2,913 (about 6 in 10) were reported as “homicide by law enforcement.” Each year ranged from 375 (2004) to 497 (2009). See Burch.
- In the only year in which the NYT article and the Bureau of Justice Statistics report overlap, 2008, law enforcement killed roughly 10 times the number of people during arrests (404) than officers killed (41). See Burch.
- Since 2001, at least 500 people have been killed as a result of being tasered by officers in the United States alone.
To serve and protect…