Martin Oppenheimer, Franklin
Princeton Police Chief Nick Sutter’s recent comments regarding the killings of police are at once commendable and deplorable. Commendable is his pledge to increase the “positive footprint“ of police in the community, and to engage in “relationship-building.”
Deplorable is his over-the-top claim that “officers are being targeted, ambushed, and slaughtered nationwide,” to which he intends to respond by including two officers in patrol units, presumably cars. That tactic hardly helped officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were shot and killed while on patrol together in New York on Dec. 12, 2014. Beefed up patrols will likely only panic some of our more fearful citizens (and not-yet citizens).
More to the point: there is no “nationwide slaughter” of police. There is an increase in the rate of police deaths from shootings this year, 30 so far. There were 41 deaths in 2014. The recent low point was 73 in 2011. The fact is that felonious killings of police have been fairly stable over the years, with an average, according to F.B.I. figures, of 64 per year from 1980 to 2014. Moreover, police shootings in any given year constitute about one-third of all police deaths in the line of duty, the remainder clustering around vehicle accidents and job-related illnesses. No one claims that such an occupational death rate is acceptable, but it should be kept in mind that policing is not among the top 10 most dangerous jobs. Try logging or farming.
Almost needless to say, the shooting of police any time is tragic. Also tragic is the fact that more police die from suicide annually than gunfire and traffic accidents combined. There were 51 in the last six months of 2015, 126 in 2012.
Let’s not allow ourselves to panic and then enact policy that only increases panic. Let’s go for that “positive footprint” instead.
Martin Oppenheimer
Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Rutgers University
Franklin
