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 Their deaths marked the 23rd and 24th fatal shootings of officers
in the United States this year, and come at a time when relations
between the public and police departments have been strained by
cases in which officers used excessive force, sometimes fatally, in
arresting suspects.
It is an atmosphere that some rank-and-file officers say has made
them more fearful for their safety on the job.
Experts caution that the number of police killed on duty this year
is not out of the ordinary, and the reasons behind the deaths are a
complicated mix of factors that go well beyond the current climate.
But, heightened attention given to police deaths, and a perception
amongst police of growing hostility towards them, is taking a
psychological toll on officers, law enforcement leaders and police
advocates say.
“We’re telling our people from the time you put that uniform on to
the time you walk in your house your head needs to be on a swivel
and there is no downtime anymore, no getting lunch and relaxing for
a few minutes," said Richard Beary, chief of the University of
Central Florida Police, who also serves as president of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police.
"What worries me as a law-enforcement executive is that extended
period of hyper vigilance on our employees, that’s going to take a
toll emotionally."
At the current rate, the number of U.S. law enforcement officers
killed in the line of duty this year would fall short of the 51 who
died last year. On average, 64 officers have been killed annually in
the United States since 1980, according to Federal Bureau of
Investigation data.
"We have seen violence strike at all segments of our community. It
is a sad fact now that no one is safe," U.S. Attorney General
Loretta Lynch said at a housing-related conference in Washington on
Wednesday. "This wide violence against all of us, regardless of what
uniform any of us wear, has to end."
FEW PARALLELS
There are few parallels between the deaths of Police Lieutenant
Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, a 30-year-veteran officer who was shot
last week while pursuing three suspects in Fox Lake, Illinois, and
that of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth, who was killed on
Tuesday in an ambush-style attack while at a gas station.
Police in Illinois were engaged in the second day of a massive
manhunt on Wednesday for Gliniewicz's killers, while a suspect in
Goforth's shooting was turned in by his mother hours after the
attack.
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The number of incidents in which police officers are fatally shot is
dwarfed by the number of people killed by police. While no central
U.S. agency tracks the number of people shot and killed by police, a
Washington Post analysis found that some 662 people have been
fatally shot by U.S. police so far this year.
Those shootings, and particularly the high-profile killings of
unarmed black men in Cincinnati, Ohio; North Charleston, South
Carolina, and Ferguson, Missouri, have triggered more than a year of
anti-police-violence protests across the United States.
They also inspired an Atlanta man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, to travel to
New York in December and kill two police officers as they sat in
their patrol car in Brooklyn, in an attack that he indicated on
social media had been intended as an act of retribution for police
killings of unarmed black men. Brinsley went on to fatally shoot
himself.
That atmosphere has added to the stresses on officers, said Jim
Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police,
a labor group representing some 325,000 U.S. law enforcement agents.
"People need to have a hard look at not just the psyche of the
shooters but the psyche of the enablers, and those who would
encourage or celebrate this kind of activity," Pasco said. "There is
an element in the community which encourages violence against police
officers and others who might be inclined to feel that way are
enabled by what they see."
(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Andrew Hay)
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