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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Majority of Cop Killers Have Been White
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/12/attacks-against-police-officers-are-in-declineAs officials continue to investigate Saturday's tragic killing of two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, details have surfaced about the suspect, 28 year old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who allegedly shot a woman in Baltimore before traveling to New York. Anti-police posts he appears to have published on social media sites prior to the killings have lead many to connect his crime to protests that occurred in previous weeks, and some commenters have cast blame on officials including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama, all of whom have condemned the violence. (Read my colleague Kevin Drum's response to that.)
But, while every killing of an officer is a tragedy, it is worth noting, as my colleague Shane Bauer reported in the context of another story, assaults and felony killings of police officers in the US are down sharply over the past two decades. Attention has also been focused on Brinsley's race, but FBI data shows that, though African Americans are arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites, the majority of assailants who feloniously killed police officers in the past year were white.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)The gun culture industry makes the architects of 9/11 jealous.
malaise
(269,254 posts)there was a deafening silence from them when those two cops were killed in Nevada after Bundy and his militia friends were ready to fire shots at Federal agents. That slaughter was connected.
Vinca
(50,323 posts)Remember the photo of the sniper on the overpass aiming at federal officers? They would have droned that ranch.
They would all be dead
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)Trillo
(9,154 posts)Looks like the police were better at protecting themselves than at protecting the citizens during the approximate years of 1970-1990. Something to ponder. Would the peaks been about the same for only homicides or only violence, but not mixing homicide with violence?
MadDAsHell
(2,067 posts)former9thward
(32,121 posts)Of the 27 cases they looked at 25 of the cops killed were white and 2 black.
okaawhatever
(9,478 posts)kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)hands of black people.
tenderfoot
(8,438 posts)No uppity anti-cop liberals to call out?