Law Enforcement Discussion (Statistics, ideology)

[kuronosan]

Oh. Good catch!

[Quicklet]

Is it that things are actually getting worse (statistics seem to be in line with the long-term average), or is it just that people are paying more attention to stuff like this now?

[Nephlite]

Is it that things are actually getting worse (statistics seem to be in line with the long-term average), or is it just that people are paying more attention to stuff like this now?

Officer deaths by firearm are up from last year, so it's definitely getting worse.

2014 isn't over yet. Still a few days left and New Years to kill a few more police officers. Especially with people doing this:

http://wgntv.com/2014/12/28/ford-hei...gainst-police/

http://www.infowars.com/ferguson-pro...l-a-pig-night/

[Quicklet]

Year to year is not the long-term average.

In fact, given that 2013 was a historically low year for law enforcement fatalities, the numbers jmc posted are in line or still below the average over the past decade, and 2014 will likely be one of the lowest years for firearms-related officer fatalities in recent memory.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-...ta/causes.html

So basically, people are just paying more attention now because media ratings and politics, more or less.

[Nephlite]

It still shows an increase. If more deaths happen next year than this year, then it's a steady increase. That's how it works...

[Quicklet]

Yes but that's a statistically vacuous statement. It's like if we have the hottest year in recorded history and then the next year is only the 3rd or 4th hottest, and someone says that we must be having global cooling because it's a lot cooler this year. Short-term fluctuations are meaningless for explanation if you don't have a model that is strong enough to separate signal from noise.

[Byrthnoth]

Man, how dumb does the single horse-related accident death guy feel?

Yes but that's a statistically vacuous statement. It's like if we have the hottest year in recorded history and then the next year is only the 3rd or 4th hottest, and someone says that we must be having global cooling because it's a lot cooler this year. Short-term fluctuations are meaningless for explanation if you don't have a model that is strong enough to separate signal from noise.

Barring the fact that we're essentially unable to analyze the data from that link because there's no "Number of people considered Law Enforcement" row for each year, there's nothing statistical about the statement that more people died this year than last. The "steady increase" statement is obviously false in the sense that it's hard to call a trend "steady" with two data points. Considering that 2013 was the statistical outlier (low) of the last decade in essentially every violent crime category, it really shouldn't be taken as a representative year when making sweeping statements about police deaths.

There were actually this many deaths from what I'll call "byproducts of criminality" each year:
(Auto crashes, beaten, bomb-related incident, electrocuted, motorcycle crashes, poisoned, shot, stabbed, strangled, terrorist attack)
2004: 125 deaths
2005: 110 deaths
2006: 114 deaths
2007: 146 deaths
2008: 100 deaths
2009: 93 deaths
2010: 119 deaths
2011: 130 deaths
2012: 91 deaths
2013: 67 deaths

Auto crashes/motorcycle crashes, which make up the majority of the deaths, are correlated pretty well with the total number of police shot to death every year, so I left them in. The death rate for these groups combined don't correlate at all with the others (Aircraft/Bicycle/Boating/Horse accidents, Drowned, Fall, Struck by falling object/vehicle/train).

You're free to plot it yourself, but we have a nice downward trend going even with a 98 value for 2014 (best guess based on their preliminary breakdown).

[Nephlite]

Take out the auto-crashes (automobile accidents) because those aren't homicides of Law Enforcement. The ones that are homicides are: Bomb, Gunfire, Stabbed, Struck by Vehicle, Vehicle Pursuit, Vehicular Assault.

The other categories are largely accidents and negligence cases.

That being said, this is going to be a "big picture" moment, so bear with me.

http://www.odmp.org/search/year/2014

There were 47 firearm related deaths of police in 2014.

http://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2013

There were 30 firearm related deaths of police in 2013

Statistically, the amount of deaths by firearms is up 57% from 2013 to 2014.

In Law Enforcement, and other professions where public safety is big, this shows a disturbing trend in intelligence networks, and deserves a deeper investigation. This is how the FBI is able to get as much intelligence as they do about threats of Law Enforcement to see if specific groups are targeting enforcement. Only extremists, certain violent groups, and the rare psychopathic anti-cop circlejerker target enforcement. Normal people don't do this.

It's akin to the CIA suddenly losing agents in the field. Statistically, if you lose a few agents here and there, and it's a few higher or lower than usual, it might not be looked at as a big deal, but you still have to find out why your guys are suddenly getting identified and killed. They're trained for this to not happen, right? What's one thing they are paranoid about the most? Internal spies and moles feeding intel to the enemy. Same thing here, where people are getting more sophisticated in getting information about people, it's a real problem when people like to post information about police officers, as there's sympathizers out there who would love to drive to a Police Officer's home and kill them or their family when they're most vulnerable.

Sure, there's a certain amount of paranoia in that line of thinking, but that's how we are trained. We're trained to be paranoid and to watch over our shoulder, because that's how it was for the police for many decades.

And increases in police deaths by firearm shows a disturbing trend of firearms getting in to the hands of felons, gang activity, might even lead to other undetected crimes that may have no solvability or investigations ran cold because of lack of leads to follow. Some of those firearms recovered this year were registered as destroyed by police agencies and already have bodies on them. Where did they come from? Probes in to how a firearm that was supposed to be destroyed getting in to the hands of a felon is some serious shit. You gotta find out where the problem lies and cut it off before more get in to the hands of the bad guys. Likely, it's a deeper probe in to criminal activity by police forces. You want that to stop, right?

It's a lot of thinking outside the box, but it's not entirely outside the realm of normal investigative procedures the police do when mapping crime stats. Ideally, the number of police related deaths by violence needs to be zero. Advances in technology, better tactics, and better training have brought those numbers down to the lowest they've been in decades, yet homicides are scaling down the same, but remain statistically equal to the number of police related killings for violent offenses. Why is that? More questions that need to be asked and addressed.

[Byrthnoth]

You can't take a simple ratio and append the word "statistically" to it to make it sound important. Just comparing two numbers in the absence of any further information is statistically meaningless.

If you actually give the values statistical context, you can see that the outlier is 2013. 2014 is pretty normal and doesn't even break the downwards trend of the last decade.

PS. "We're paranoid" isn't a logical defense or a rationale, it's an explanation for illogical behavior that does not in any way justify or excuse it.

[Nephlite]

You can't take a simple ratio and append the word "statistically" to it to make it sound important. Just comparing two numbers in the absence of any further information is statistically meaningless.

If you actually give the values statistical context, you can see that the outlier is actually 2013. 2014 is pretty normal and doesn't even break the downwards trend of the last decade.

PS. "We're paranoid" isn't a logical defense or a rationale, it's an explanation for illogical behavior that does not in any way justify or excuse it.

I already broke it down. You can't ignore it. When you have a steady decline, then a sudden jump of any value regardless of the sample, it's still a concern. Might not be to someone who does math or looks at just statistics, but when you're talking about lives, human lives, it's a real concern.

Applying the same logic to police related deaths of suspects in a certain location. When you see a sudden spike in officers shooting and killing suspects, you can't just say "Well, it's only a few, but hasn't really eclipsed 4-5 years ago statistics so it's not a concern.", because there's a lot of other factors that go in to that. Are the police officers getting enough training? Are there a few police officers who are involved in more shootings than other police officers? Are certain demographics targeted? Did a new gang move in to the area that has flooded the streets with drugs? Does our Vice unit notice an uptick in street level pushing that could be a factor?

There's a lot that goes in to these things, and just because someone is able to rationalize it with numbers and statistics doesn't mean it's not a valid concern.

Additionally, the "paranoia" factor of any reasonable person is why more people aren't killed daily. When you approach an ATM, do you keep your body close to the machine and "cover" the pin pad to keep people from seeing your PIN? Statistically, there's a very low chance of anyone actually acquiring your PIN number by just looking at it, but isn't that a reaction of paranoia? Does that make your paranoia illogical, or does that just make you a careful person? Keep in mind: police officers don't run away from perceived danger. They run towards it. A police officer on average is much more likely to encounter violent behavior than the average person. You can't discount that side of the paranoia.

[Byrthnoth]

I already broke it down. You can't ignore it. When you have a steady decline, then a sudden jump of any value regardless of the sample, it's still a concern. Might not be to someone who does math or looks at just statistics, but when you're talking about lives, human lives, it's a real concern.

I don't care. This is not because your feelings or police lives don't matter, but because we aren't talking about feelings. We're talking about whether 50 deaths in 2014 is statistically important. You're working under an assumption like this, as far as I can see:
1) Police in general got a bad reputation after this Ferguson thing started
2) People are now shooting the cops because they don't like them
3) This is causing there to be higher gun deaths this year than last.

Well, Ferguson happened August 9th. You could compare the first 7 months of the year to the last 5 months of the year, and then compare that historically to different years. If your hypothesis is correct, you'd expect a statistically higher august+/august- death rate for 2014 than other years.

Additionally, the "paranoia" factor of any reasonable person is why more people aren't killed daily. When you approach an ATM, do you keep your body close to the machine and "cover" the pin pad to keep people from seeing your PIN? Statistically, there's a very low chance of anyone actually acquiring your PIN number by just looking at it, but isn't that a reaction of paranoia? Does that make your paranoia illogical, or does that just make you a careful person? Keep in mind: police officers don't run away from perceived danger. They run towards it. A police officer on average is much more likely to encounter violent behavior than the average person. You can't discount that side of the paranoia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia
I would consider a 0.01% death rate to be pretty god damned low to get paranoid about. That's 10 times less than the death rate for fishermen (0.12%) and the profession pays more (median annual fisherman salary is $25000). The people that pick up your trash have 3 times the mortality rate of policemen and a median salary of $35,000.

[Nephlite]

I don't care. This is not because your feelings or police lives don't matter, but because we aren't talking about feelings. We're talking about whether 50 deaths in 2014 is statistically important. You're working under an assumption like this, as far as I can see:
1) Police in general got a bad reputation after this Ferguson thing started
2) People are now shooting the cops because they don't like them
3) This is causing there to be higher gun deaths this year than last.

Well, Ferguson happened August 9th. You could compare the first 7 months of the year to the last 5 months of the year, and then compare that historically to different years. If your hypothesis is correct, you'd expect a statistically higher august+/august- death rate for 2014 than other years.

You're looking too far in to this. I didn't allude to feelings or to anything that you're talking about. We're talking about human lives. People. I even gave you examples of what questions Law Enforcement and criminal analysts ask when compiling crime stats for civilian homicides. Forget the fact that the police are targeted or anything. Any time there's a homicide or a spike in the number of killings of anything, even just plain deaths by negligence or accidents, you have to look at the cause and the effect of those deaths to determine what needs to be done to improve safety. Without it, you're never going to improve quality of life for anyone. Isn't this why there's such an uprising about police accountability? Because the numbers show something?

I would consider a 0.01% death rate to be pretty god damned low to get paranoid about. That's 10 times less than the death rate for fishermen (0.12%) and the profession pays more (median annual fisherman salary is $25000). The people that pick up your trash have 3 times the mortality rate of policemen and a median salary of $35,000.

Irrelevant to what I said. Death does not equal violence. I said police officers encounter violence more than the average person, because police officers respond to it more than the average person. Death is not the only perception of danger police officers deal with. Don't discount the thousands of instances police officers are fired upon, assaulted, threatened, stabbed, or even just the mere scuffle that happens daily as a non-contributor to violence or danger. Those are very real perceptions and threats that makes the profession paranoid.

[Byrthnoth]

You haven't given any reasons why deaths should be treated as being statistically different from anything else. There are gangs moving in to some city every year. There are obviously individual specific reasons for every death. Analyzing common factors could lead to conclusions about how the death rate could be lowered, which doing gross statistics on number of deaths per year could not. I'm not doubting that at all, but you keep insisting on taking two points from national-level statistics, the lower of which is a clear statistical outlier, and drawing a line between them.

If you're not going to understand that, please at least stop using the word paranoid. The word you're going for is "nervous." Paranoid means nervous with irrational connotations, as is pointed out in the wikipedia page that I've linked for you several times.

[Nephlite]

You haven't given any reasons why deaths should be treated as being statistically different from anything else. There are gangs moving in to some city every year. There are obviously individual specific reasons for every death. Analyzing common factors could lead to conclusions about how the death rate could be lowered, which doing gross statistics on number of deaths per year could not. I'm not doubting that at all, but you keep insisting on taking two points from national-level statistics, the lower of which is a clear statistical outlier, and drawing a line between them.

It's relevant when the deaths are part of a trend for a profession, especially Law Enforcement. Someone killing Police Officers in New York, and the same premise for a police killing in Los Angeles is identified as a targeting of Law Enforcement, then it's relevance is key when networking and sharing information among agencies. A truck driver encountering faulty brake lines in his model truck that was sold in California may also hold relevance to the same model that's sold in another state. America is a big place, but the sharing of information and the way people communicate across the world makes it much smaller. If a Blood or a Crip in D.C. shares with their chapters out in LA or Sacramento that January 1st is open-season on police officers, that holds relevance.

If you're not going to understand that, please at least stop using the word paranoid. The word you're going for is "nervous." Paranoid means nervous with irrational connotations, as is pointed out in the wikipedia page that I've linked for you several times.

Okay... I stand corrected. Thank you. Nervous.

[Byrthnoth]

IIRC in 2013 someone in the northeast called 911, lit his house on fire, and killed the first two responders (I forget if they were police or not).

Dorner killed 3 LEOs in 2013 and was acting out of revenge for perceived or real discrimination by the police on the basis of race.

That wacky survival-buff cop killer was running around PA earlier this year.

Perhaps violence that specifically targets the police is on the rise, and perhaps perceived "revenge killings" against the police are on the rise, but neither is a problem that didn't exist in 2013.

[Boyiee]

IIRC in 2013 someone in the northeast called 911, lit his house on fire, and killed the first two responders (I forget if they were police or not).

Dorner killed 3 LEOs in 2013 and was acting out of revenge for perceived or real discrimination by the police on the basis of race.

That wacky survival-buff cop killer was running around PA earlier this year.

Perhaps violence that specifically targets the police is on the rise, and perhaps perceived "revenge killings" against the police are on the rise, but neither is a problem that didn't exist in 2013.

They were firefighters.

[Nephlite]

IIRC in 2013 someone in the northeast called 911, lit his house on fire, and killed the first two responders (I forget if they were police or not).

Dorner killed 3 LEOs in 2013 and was acting out of revenge for perceived or real discrimination by the police on the basis of race.

That wacky survival-buff cop killer was running around PA earlier this year.

Perhaps violence that specifically targets the police is on the rise, and perhaps perceived "revenge killings" against the police are on the rise, but neither is a problem that didn't exist in 2013.

Two cops were murdered in New York city.

Three vehicles were shot at, and one person was killed. The connection between the three is the vehicles had FOP tags.

A police officer in LA was approached by two individuals, one who opened fire on him. He returned fire and both escaped.

A police officer in Durham North Carolina was shot at by armed individuals.

A police officer in Berkeley Missouri had a gun pulled on him and he shot and killed the suspect.

A police officer in Arizona was shot and killed spontaneously by an armed assailant. There's an unconfirmed report this was a baited call and not a DV incident as previously reported.

Numerous agents for the FBI have arrested multiple individuals across the country for making specific threats against law enforcement. Nine were arrested in New York City.

The New Black Panther Party has already stated they were actively hunting police officers. Chapters across the country have been raided and multiple subjects have been arrested, two who were planning to blow up bridges in Ferguson and New York city.

A firefighter was attacked by multiple subjects in Atlanta, GA for wearing a "tactical uniform".

A police officer in DC killed an armed assailant in a robbery attempt. He was hit with rocks and bottles by people who gathered near the scene. He now receives death threats to his personal cell phone and home phone.

There's more if you want. I can go all day. Most of this has been within the past week.

Nothing to worry about, though. Been happening a lot the past few decades. No steady increases or decreases.

[Nephlite]

[Acevalefor]

Is there more on this?

[Nephlite]

Is there more on this?

http://www.abqjournal.com/521828/new...d-officer.html

They got him. Officer is going to be okay it looks like.