Contrary to Racist Propaganda, FBI Releases Data Showing the Deaths of Police Officers Declined in 2017, Most Deaths Were Accidental & Numbers Represent a year-over-year Decrease

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Contrary to racist propaganda there is no war against cops. An FBI press release states a total of 93 officers were killed in the line of duty last year, according to a portion of the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2017 (LEOKA) report released today.

Of these deaths, 46 were felonious and 47 were accidental.

Both numbers have decreased from 2016, during which 66 officers were feloniously killed and 52 were accidentally killed, for a total of 118 line-of-duty deaths.

The FBI collects data on officer assaults and deaths from local, state, tribal, campus, and federal law enforcement agencies from around the country, as well as organizations that track officer deaths. The Bureau publishes the data annually through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, and the national-level statistics can be used to help create data-driven safety training for officers. [MORE]

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From [HERE] There is no more a war on cops in America than there is a war on Christmas. There are only those who benefit, politically and otherwise, from pretending there is one. No citizen is born distrusting or detesting the police. It is not taught in the nation’s schools. It isn’t preached in our houses of worship. It comes into the hearts and minds of people, when it comes into the hearts and minds of people, because of what they see with their own eyes. It comes from generations of abuse and neglect, from decades of misconduct and discrimination.

It comes when a bad cop gets away with kicking a handcuffed man in the head. It comes when prosecutors choose not to indict a cop who shoots an unarmed man. It comes when you watch a video of a woman tackled in a Waffle House or video of a prom date getting strangled. It comes when you read a police union official attack someone seeking to exercise a constitutional right. To blame the victim for any of this, or the media or politicians or the ACLU, is to deny the reality of American life and to cynically evade accountability.

It’s worse than that, actually. To equate criticism of the police with hatred of the police is to hide like a coward behind the hero-worship we’ll see this week in the nation’s towns and cities. We should reject the false dichotomy offered by Trump and Sessions and the police unions. It’s not a with-us-or-against-us proposition. The truth is that we can both love the police and also seek to hold accountable those cops who sully the profession. We can support our local police and reject the hoary defenses they use to justify their misconduct.  

I keep coming back to what David French wrote in the National Review last month: why do we as a nation not demand from our police officers the same discipline and self-sacrifice that our military leaders demand from our soldiers? Why, indeed. Police in America are as safe as they have been in a generation working jobs that are far safer than jobs in many other American industries. Until they stop complaining about how the world is against them, until they start holding each other accountable for the misconduct in their ranks, Police Week will be just another reminder of what divides cops from their communities. [MORE]