By Ellen Nakashima
On April 18, 2013, 27-year-old
Sean Collier, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, was shot
and killed as he sat in his patrol car on campus. His alleged killer: one of
the two brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings three
days earlier.
Collier was one of 27 police
officers fatally wounded in the line of duty last year, according to the FBI,
which released its annual report on the topic Monday. Forty-nine others died in
accidents.
The bureau compiles a wealth of
statistics on law enforcement deaths: The number decreased by 45 percent
compared with the 49 officers killed in 2012. The average age of the officer
killed last year was 39. All but two were white. Two were black. Two were
female.
Six were killed while making
arrests. Five were ambushed. Four were involved in tactical situations. All but
one were killed with a firearm. One was struck and killed by a vehicle.
But there is no reliable data
on the number of civilians who are killed by police officers each year, The
Post’s Wes Lowery reported in September.
The police shooting of an
unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson has shined a spotlight on the issue. And
early Sunday, a Cleveland police officer fatally wounded a 12-year-old boy
brandishing what turned out to be a BB gun. Days earlier, an unarmed man was
accidentally shot and killed by a police officer in a Brooklyn housing project.
All three victims were black.
Police unions insist that shootings by officers are rare
and even more rarely unjustified. Civil rights groups have just as quickly
ascribed racial motives to many of the shootings, declaring that black and brown
men are being “executed” by officers, Lowery reported.
Complicating the debate is the
fact that there is no reliable national data on how many people are shot by
police officers each year. Federal officials allow the nation’s more than
17,000 law enforcement agencies to self-report officer shootings. That figure,
Lowery reported, hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement
each year.
Several independent trackers,
primarily journalists and academics who study criminal justice, insist the accurate
number of people shot and killed by police officers each year is consistently
upwards of 1,000 each year, Lowery reported.
Meanwhile, the FBI has warned
about “a growing domestic threat to law enforcement” coming from people who
believe that state and federal governments operate illegally in the United
States.
Earlier this year, two officers
with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department were shot –one in the back of
the head, the other in the throat and then multiple times after that–in a pizza
joint on the Las Vegas Strip. Their assailants were a couple, Jerad and Amanda
Miller, who placed a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and a swastika on one of
the officer’s bodies. They pinned a note to the other’s body that read “This is
the beginning of the revolution,” The Post’s Mark Berman reported. Jared Miller
was killed by police; his wife committed suicide.
There is a movement that
believes that the federal government has dangerously overstepped its authority,
and within that movement are groups that believe they need to be ready to fight
back against any perceived overreach, Berman reported.
Ellen Nakashima is a national
security reporter for The Washington Post. She focuses on issues relating to
intelligence, technology and civil liberties.
Photo from 1966...think about it
