[samcheng]

Actually, gun violence has been on a downward trend since the early nineties across the entire population. You'd expect police firearm fatalities to trend downward accordingly, regardless of the use of body armor.

Police wearing body armor, armored cars, AR-15s, and the like are part of a different trend: the militarization of US police using surplus equipment from the Department of Defense, in a DOD program 1033.

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-best-reporting-on-the-...