bluesneakers
not today satan
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From: The Marshall Project as referenced in and linked to in The Dallas News opinion piece linked to above:
Are Cop-Killings on the Rise?
Only if you look at very limited data.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/07/27/are-cop-killings-on-the-rise#.KR79ib6KT
“It will not be clear for several years whether the higher numbers for the first half of 2016 represent a trend. The number of law enforcement officers killed while on duty has fluctuated significantly by year, and percentages can look outsized because the total numbers are so small when set against the total number of sworn officers in the U.S. — 900,000, according to the memorial fund.
The numbers compiled by the memorial fund, as well as by a similar website, the Officer Down Memorial Page, are the most recent available. They are from private groups rather than the federal government. The FBI does track how many law enforcement officers are killed “feloniously” each year, but does not release figures in real time; the official government numbers for 2015 have not come out yet (preliminary statistics were published in May), and the counts for this year won't come out until 2017.”
I was thinking about this and how it might be confusing in some ways - like mass killings in Norway. There are very few deaths from them, but because of Breivik's shooting it looks like they happen often. This year we have several killings of more than one officer. Is it the incidents that are up, or is it the number of actual officers who have been shot that's going up? IMO five officers shot in Dallas at once is not the same as five officers shot in Dallas over the course of a year. (I am not suggesting one is better or worse, only that they are different and show different trends and occurrences.)
It will be interesting to see what the 2016 numbers look like once they're released.