One of my frustrations in writing about the craziness of the last year has been a lack of research data to show — objectively — what all cops know intuitively: that it’s dangerous out there. Major media outlets — along with police critics — are minimizing today’s anti-police fervor by reporting that police deaths are still relatively low compared to years past. That’s no comfort to the loved ones of the cops murdered in the last year — nor does it reflect the reality of the current crisis.
It is hard to blame the media for using the limited amount of data that’s out there. We have no national clearinghouse for reporting assaults on officers unless the officer dies, and certainly no way to begin to count the anecdotal reports of increased resistance to police contacts. Reporters have nowhere to go but to the FBI for official numbers, or to others claiming to be compiling their own numbers without scientifically acceptable research methodology.
The FBI does a fine job getting answers to the questions they ask, but they don’t ask very many questions within the UCR and LEOKA formats. Other sources typically have a biased agenda, starting with a premise and then seeking numbers to justify their assumptions.
The Goal of the PRIDE Act
FBI Director James Comey is encouraging law enforcement agencies to comply with the Police Reporting Information, Data, and Evidence Act of 2015, also known as the PRIDE Act (since no good law was ever passed without a cool acronym). The law is designed to find out more about violence leading to death and injury where a law enforcement officer is involved.
Right now the only data competently gathered by the feds is about justifiable homicides of offenders killed by police, and murders of police officers by offenders.
Not measured accurately are injuries to officers, non-lethal shootings of suspects, and violent encounters where no UCR categories apply, such as shootouts where no bullets enter a bad guy or a good guy.
The PRIDE Act will collect data on:
• Any incident where a civilian is shot by a police officer
• Any incident in which a police officer is shot by a civilian
• Any police use of force involving serious bodily injury to a civilian
• Any incident in which a civilian causes serious bodily injury to a police officer
Note that the federal definition of SBI is: “A substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, extreme physical pain, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty, or death.”
Especially if law enforcement agency’s reporters include “risk of” events (shot at and missed), this will reflect actual assaults on officers to such a shocking degree that critics will likely claim the numbers to be unbelievable.
A Survey of Police Officers
I’ve long criticized the touted “50,000 officers assaulted yearly” as not reflective of the reality — that there are a large number of unreported attacks on cops.
My survey on violence against law enforcement officers — reported on in detail here — showed that:
• 21% of officers responding to the survey indicated that within the previous 12 months they “have had to seek medical care…resulting from an assault or resistance from a suspect.”
• 63% reported they had been “…physically assaulted in a way that caused physical discomfort or pain” but they did not seek medical attention.
• 24% reported being threatened with a deadly weapon, and 80% reported being threatened with assault if caught off-duty by an offender.
If this poll is correct, we have a tremendous deficit of information on the real risk that police officers face daily. Taking a conservative estimate of half a million police officers working the streets (another number we’re not sure of) and we now have closer to 100,000 cops annually who sought medical treatment for injuries, 300,000 cops hurt that “walked it off”, and another 100,000 or directly threatened with deadly assault.
When “experts” are quoted by CNN disclaiming that the current climate is killing cops we need to be ready to help our communities understand the truth that the numbers are skewed by both lack of information and reporting bias.
The real numbers will be huge if agencies comply with Director Comey’s plea for accurate reporting.
The PRIDE Act has the potential to be widely ignored by police critics because it will provide a glimpse into police officer victimization that those critics have no interest in knowing. For law enforcement leaders who must struggle for support, the data will be another link to the segments of their communities who want to believe in and trust their thin blue line.
