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Lakewood police officers listen during a Nov. 30 news conference about the shooting of four of their colleagues in nearby Parkland, Wash.
WASHINGTON – Law enforcement deaths this year dropped to their lowest level since 1959, while the decade of the 2000s was among the safest for officers — despite the deadliest single day for police on Sept. 11, 2001.
The drop in deaths, cited in a police group’s report Monday, was tempered by an increase in firearm deaths. In one horrific November shooting, four officers were executed as they discussed their upcoming shift in a Lakewood, Wash., coffee shop. More.
Anyone else surprised by this finding?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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Sadbuttrue on December 28 at 6:43 p.m.
Not surprised one bit. These statistics are right out there in plain sight. The statistics on death and injuries on the job maintained by the Federal Government indicate the Police have jobs that are rarely in the top Ten most dangerous jobs in any given year, and most of the time they are not even in the top 20. Loggers, commercial fisherman, construction workers …. have jobs that are far FAR more dangerous than being a cop.
There were many magnitudes more bankers killed on 9-11 than cops and firemen combined. Triple the number of secretaries were killed than cops.
Yet after the four cops were brutally executed in Seattle, an editorial writer for this very newspaper argued that the Police should be allowed to use military tactics as a response, and that society should just accept the consequences. The consequences, of course, would be a draconian reduction in civil liberties for all the rest of us, with no discernible impact whatsoever on someone mentally-ill enough and deranged enough to murder four cops.