Troubling trend seen in assaults on police
IT’S always been difficult and dangerous work, but new statistics indicate that wearing a badge on the job carries more risks than ever. According to statistics compiled by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, firearms were used in 68 assaults on Oklahoma police officers in 2017. As
The Oklahoman’s Matt Dinger reported, that total is an increase of 72 percent from 2016, when there were 40 such incidents. The year before, there were 32 incidents in which shots were fired at law officers.
The OSBI found that there were 946 assaults on law enforcement in 2017, with about one-fourth of those resulting in injury.
Oklahoma’s experience is not unique. Nationwide, 60,211 officers were assaulted while on the job in 2017, according to figures from the U.S. Justice Department. The agency collected data from 12,198 law enforcement agencies, comprising 596,600 officers.
“The rate of officer assaults in 2017 was 10.1 per 100 sworn officers,” the report stated.
Put another way, one in 10 law officers was assaulted while on the job last year. Thirty percent of those assaults occurred as officers responded to disturbance calls, such as bar fights or domestic situations. Just under 16 percent occurred while officers were trying to make other arrests. Another 12.4 percent came while transporting or maintaining custody of prisoners.
What’s going on? In some cases, people are drunk or hopped up on drugs and thus become dangerous. Some are addled by mental illness and thus not in their right mind. Some have broken the law and would rather fight than be hauled to jail.
This is what happened in May when several Oklahoma law officers were fired upon while serving a warrant. Three officers who were creating a distraction on one side of the house suddenly had a bullet whiz through the window and past their heads. “It’s kind of a reality check,” Midwest City police Sgt. Bruce Glover told Dinger. “We’ve done this numerous times and nobody has shot at us.”
Which underscores the point that with police work, nothing is ever routine. Simple traffic stops can turn deadly, as happened last year when a young officer in Tecumseh was killed during an exchange of gunfire with the driver. Working an accident along the road can cost an officer his life, as happened to Highway Patrol Trooper Nicholas Dees on Interstate 40 in Seminole County in 2015.
In Dallas last month, a motorcycle officer was killed while helping with a funeral escort. He had stopped, with lights flashing, to keep traffic from entering a highway, when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver.
As for assaults, we fear that highly publicized fatal shootings by police in recent years have caused respect for law officers to wane, and served to embolden some of those who cross paths with police. If so that’s unfortunate. The large majority of the men and women in blue, in Oklahoma and elsewhere, are professional and trustworthy, and leave for work each day with a simple goal — to return safely to their families when their shift is over.