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by rabanne 2180 days ago
I'm seriously wondering whether this is a form of sarcasm or a bait. 10.8% of sworn officers faced assult in 2018[1], while armed. Cops threatened by people with or without firearm is not that rare. In 2018, 2,116 sworn officers were not only threatened but actually got shot(!) by a firearm.[1]

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018
3 comments
sacred_numbers 2180 days ago
2,116 officers were assaulted with a firearm, but only 6.1% of those 2,116 were injured in the assault. That's approximately 129 firearm injuries. That means the rate of non-fatal firearm injuries is approximately 16.1 per 100,000. In 2012 the rate of non-fatal firearm injuries from assault was approximately 15.67 per 100,000 for the general population. When adjusted for the sex demographics of the police (88% male) the rate is 24.93 per 100,000.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700838/#!po=19...

Edit: It looks like the non-fatal firearm injury rate for officers is actually 23.6 per 100k. I had the wrong number in the denominator because not all police stations responded to the FBI survey.

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rabanne 2180 days ago
You know you're comparing people fully armed and cautious people versus the general population, right? Also it's a biased comparison because the 2,116 could have been shot where the rate of "could have been shot" is much lower in the general public because obvious reasons.
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rrss 2180 days ago
You know that you failed to understand your own source and therefore claimed a number of officer shootings ~16x higher than reality, right? And 'sacred_numbers was kind enough to correct you?
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nrclark 2180 days ago
In most states, the legal definition of assault doesn't even require physical contact.

Trying to shove a police officer and miss? Assault. Stepping on their shoe while being arrested? Battery, and also probably assault. Spitting on a police officer? Battery, and probably aggravated assault.

It's very misleading to claim that 10% of police officers were assaulted in 2018. That might be true in a strict legal sense, but most of them probably walked away from their "assault" without so much as a bruise.

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x86_64Ubuntu 2180 days ago
An assault? An assault is anything, and they slap charges such as Resisting Arrest on every one of their victims to help prosecutors stack charges.
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