Volume 6
Law enforcement officer salute Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Lorne
Ahrens before his funeral service at Prestonwood Baptist
Church in Plano, Texas, July 13, 2016. (Image: AP)
In Baton Rouge, three officers were killed on July
17 by a gunman who “intentionally targeted and assassinated” cops, according to police. The attack
followed the death of Alton Sterling, a black man
who was shot and killed during an altercation with
Baton Rouge police officers on July 5.
Protesters took to the streets nationwide after video
surfaced of the encounter, which was followed the
next day by a video of the fatal police shooting of
Philando Castile, another black man, in Minnesota.
The Baton Rouge attack was also 10 days after the
killing of five officers in Dallas by a gunman who
reportedly said he was angry at police.
In all of 2015, there were eight deadly ambushes,
said Steve Groeninger, senior director of communications and marketing of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and in all of 2014
there were 15.
“We’re halfway through the year and already at 14,”
Groeninger said, calling the increase of ambushes
“especially troubling.”
And while Groeninger said the mass ambushes in
Dallas and Baton Rouge are “terribly relevant,” he
added, “there have been other officer ambushes
in the first half of the year.” One was 28-year-old
police officer Ashley Guindon, who was shot dead
while on her first shift after being sworn in at the
Prince William County Police Department in Virginia in February.
July-Aug 2016 Edition
Prince William County Police Chief Stephan Hudson speaks
during a news conference next to a picture of Ashley Guindon
at Western District Station, in Manassas, Va., Feb. 28, 2016,
about a fatal shooting Saturday evening. (Image: Jose Luis
Magana/AP)
Despite what Groeninger points out to be an alarming 78 percent firearms-related spike from last year,
he said this isn’t the deadliest time ever for cops —
another dangerous year was in 1973, when at the
midway point of the year, 84 officers had been shot
and killed.
But police throughout the country are certainly on
edge today, and deadly danger for police extends
beyond ambushes. While ambushes made up 14
of the 32 firearms-related deaths, other firearms
deaths were by incidents including handling prisoners and stopping a suspicious person, the report
noted.
Of the non-firearms-related deaths, 24 were traffic
related and 11 were from other causes, the report
said.
Terrence Cunningham, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, told ABC
News that officer safety in the current climate can
very difficult to achieve. He said some departments
are taking “steps to try to keep officers safe in this
current environment,” like dual patrols. He said it’s
also been suggested that officers not write reports
in their cars in the open and not eat in restaurants,
instead returning to their stations.
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