2013 Likely To Be The Safest Year For Cops In Decades

[Logical]

With only a couple weeks to go, 2013 is shaping up to be the safest year for police officers since the 1950s.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 97 police officers have died on the job so far this year. That's down 15 percent from this time last year. And last year, 120 cops died, the lowest raw number since 1959. If you look at the rate of fatalities -- cops who died as a percentage of cops on duty -- we're looking at the safest era for cops in over a century.

Even these figures include non-homicide deaths like heart attacks or car accidents. Actual violence against police officers is dropping even more dramatically. This year, for example, firearms-related officer fatalities are down 38 percent from last year, and last year was already among the lowest in decades.

The overall police fatality rate has been falling pretty consistently for quite a while. But even good news can be framed to look bad. In 2010 and 2011, for example, there was slight uptick in the raw number of officer fatalities. It's increasingly looking like this was little more than statistical blip -- again, it came after 15 years of decline. But that slight increase in 2011 still led to a wave of panicky stories in which reporters and police groups speculated about what ominous trends could be responsible for this "surge" in violence. Among the suggestions: citizens recording cops with their cell phones, brazen criminals, anti-government rhetoric from Tea Party types, increased gun ownership, budget cuts, and the proliferation of "cop watch" sites on the Internet. Well, now it's nearly 2014. The cell phone videos continue. The Tea Party is still around. Gun ownership is about the same. Budgets are still tight. And cop watch sites are spreading. Curiously (or perhaps not), there were no stories last year -- and there have been none that I can find so far this year -- exonerating those trends now that police fatalities are dropping again.

ore at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/2013-was-the-safest-year-_n_4455064.html

[tazkcmo]

1. lol

That's because they shoot first and ask for ID second.

[Logical]

2. That is true. Cops do not want to take any risks. But expect to be paid like they are. n-t

[SoCalMusicLover]

3. The Good Guys

The Converse is true for those who get shot, beaten or hurt because of the reckless ones. And there are lots of those.

Having a gun, and being able to use it, without repercussions when wrong, is helpful.

[villager]

4. Just not so safe for those who the cops encounter....

...regardless of whether one is a civilian, young, old, actually committing a crime, or simply "driving while a citizen," etc...

[K lib]

5. now how many people have been accidentally killed by the cops?

probably more than the number of cops killed