From: John Marlow (johnmarlow@gmx.net)
Date: Wed Feb 14 2001 - 21:57:29 MST
Hi. Will have to reply in pieces. See below. **
On 14 Feb 2001, at 12:59, Al Villalobos wrote:
> John Marlow, responding to Mike Lorrey said:
>
> "True enough. However--I said "shot," he said "killed." The vast
> majority of cops shot are, fortunately, not killed."
> ;)
>
> jm
>
> Granted, the 1998 FBI UCR does not specifically track officers shot but not
> killed.
> However, if you refer to page 31 of the reference document (URL below) "Law
> enforcement Officers Feloniously Killed and Assaulted" I think we can safely
> infer that being shot and living counts as a felonious assault, yes?
**Sorry; no. During many years in New York, for example, more police
officers were shot (and killed, I believe) by fellow officers than by
criminals. This occurs largely for reasons of mistaken identity--
you've got multiple overlapping agency jurisdictions, plainclothes
responders, etc. Call comes in "man with a gun." cop sees man with a
gun and shoots him--and he turns out to be a brother officer. These
cases are statistically significant.
**Less statistically significant are a few cases wherein a bozo cop
shoots himself or another cop by accident (AD, etc.) and reports it
as an attack to avoid embarrassment/rubber gun squad.
(Can
> any legal type comment or rebut that?)
> You will see that of the 623,887 assaults on law enforcement
> officers(remember that includes federal agents as well) only 9.4% ocurred at
> a traffic stop.
**Ooh. Looks bad. but uhmm--how many occurred SUBSEQUENT to traffic
stops? Ex.--Cop stops bozo, bozo runs or speeds away and later shoots
cop. Technically that will not go down as a traffic stop shoot--but
that's where it started.
The highest category for assaults, but not killings, is
> disturbance calls at 31.8%
**Oh yeah. Arrest hubby and guess who plants a knife in your back?
>
> [Question for a lawyer: Is shooting someone (not accidentally) automatically
> attempted murder?]
**Absolutely not. Even shooting a cop, intentionally, is not
automatically a felony--though rest assured it will be prosecuted as
one. Cops are just like anyone else--they have their share of
rapists/murderers/etc. Once in a while they get shot in the process.
Another situation--cops break into the wrong house on a no-knock;
homeowner opens fire in the dark, or on masked men coming at him with
guns. He has a legitimate self-defense argument, if he survives
(which is unlikely). Some jurisdictions also specifically permit
resistance to unlawful arrest with lethal force. (The majority,
however, hold that citizens must submit to unlawful arrests--not good
if the arresting officer turns out to be a nutjob.)
>
> So we can conclude, based on this publically available data, that MOST cops
> are NOT shot at traffic stops nor are MOST cops killed at traffic stops.
> About 1/3rd of cops killed are killed attempting to arrest someone. The
> single greatest source of Officer Assaults (on them) is while responding to
> a disturbance call. (admittedly a very broad category and there is a good
> case to argue that many "disturbace calls" turn into an "arrest situation")
> I would therefore submit that Mr. Marlow is incorrect in his original
> assertions, but may have a point that #1, the way the numbers are broken
> down does not tell the whole story and #2, that certain subsets of "Law
> Enforcement Officers" (the California Highway Patrol comes to mind) may
> indeed have dramatically different numbers than the aggregate totals shown
> in the cited reference.
**Could "I" be WRONG?
Hmmm. Let me mull that one over.
;)
**UCR #s are screwy. Example: deaths 'caused' by handguns. Been a few
years since I kept up on those stats--but used to be, these were not
broken down. HUGE number of those are suicides. Many more are
civilians lawfully killing criminal attackers. But it's all lumped
together, or used to be. HCI adores stats like that.
jm
>
> discuss.....
>
> AL Villalobos
John Marlow
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