2014 Police Fatalities Rise In the US
 

This is significant food for thought. Though the numbers, which work out to an average of exactly one per state, are very much, perhaps obscenely, on the LEO side of the ledger, this increase may go some way to explain the increasing "wartime" mentality of the police here.

Importantly, the article compares 2014 to 2013 which was a year when on-dudy fatalities took a "dramatic dip" to their lowest point in over a century. The article doesn't address how the 2014 numbers compare to a "typical" year or say 2012. This glaring oversight gives permission for law enforcement people to make statements like this... and, of course, worse:

"With the increasing number of ambush-style attacks against our officers, I am deeply concerned that a growing anti-government sentiment in America is influencing weak-minded individuals to launch violent assaults against the men and women working to enforce our laws and keep our nation safe."

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...rs-jump-report

John

Here is a list I found and looks to be from the same memorial fund.
Only has total deaths and not broken down into categories.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-...data/year.html

And there are two sides to every story. IMO the law enforcement in the US is way too militarized and confrontational.

It's a "positive feedback loop". Cop dies and cops get more aggressive so more cops die and cops get even more aggressive, etc. Meanwhile, the body count on the civilian side grows exponentially.

As I said in the OP, the article is ballyhooing an increase from 2013 to 2014, while sort of slipping in the fact that 2013 was the lowest year since sometime in the 19th century. (The population of the United States in 1900, the last year of the 19th century, was 76 million. It's around 320 million now, more than 4 times greater.)

Will this dose of reality have any influence on the LEO's growing siege mentality?

Hell, no.

John

John, I was thinking about this the other day.

With the abundance of surveillance cameras everywhere, just about every public area in this country is watched and recorded. No way to outrun cops anymore since they can remotely shut down your engine. Highway message boards and instantaneous citizen reports also plays a big part.

I believe that these factors play a huge part in reduction of crime and will continue to do so. And the technology has become cheap beyond words.

But if a citizen what to kill someone with a gun and then kill themselves, nothing is going to prevent it.

John Q. out buying coffee gets clipped and it's a bad thing. John Criminal taking a dirt nap due to extension of his lifestyle?

Don't give a shit. :cool:

There's this thing - and we hear Zeke talking around it here all the fucking time - that the majority of crimes are committed by a relatively small number of "career criminals". This high recidivism rate among these "sub-humans" breeds in cops a sense of futility.

The frustration this produces in them leads to a belief that mere apprehension of offenders is, to a large extent, pointless. After all, the theory goes, they'll just get out again, maybe never serve a day since the courts are so screwed up. Once they're on the streets again, they'll go back to their old ways. The only certain way to "rid the streets" of these people is to "rid society" of them.

Just like they did to Eric Garner.

John

See what I mean?

Get help, Zeke.

John

Actually, I would presume that those who require "help" would be the individuals who would infer that John Criminal's life results are anyone's responsibility but his own. :rolleyes:

Jail, prison, violence and death? Occupational hazards accepted by that ilk.

Do you blame the saw if a carpenter loses a finger? Lament his lot on life? Facilitate pity by asking what color he was born, discuss his education level or try to determine where his parents were in error? Attempt to craft a societal argument for his injury in a personally chosen profession?

Somehow, I think not.

Actually, you're misquoting. I said Eric Garner was a "career criminal" who was resisting rightful arrest.

It's not my fault a lawful technique went bad due to his resistance.

Motto? He should have put the cuffs on, peacefully, for the thirty-first time... :rolleyes:

We've seen how often the bad guy gets convicted in this legal system when he didn't do it. Hell, 25% of the convicted bad guys who were later provided DNA exoneration confessed under copper torture and duress. But hey...it's all cool.:rolleyes:

Reckon how often the same happens in Zeke's street justice model, eh? Cool, eh? Well that's how cops work it...anybody who's not a cop is just subhuman enough to get the life choked out of him on a street corner...so when they croak, it's all cool.