It's the mean season for cops: Fatal shootings of police officers are
surging from Florida to California.
Thursday's deadly shooting of a Miami-Dade police officer and the
wounding of three colleagues in a traffic stop add to a troubling trend.
Just the day before, the last of three Odessa, Texas, police officers
died following a weekend gun battle during a response to a domestic
disturbance.
Nationwide, police fatalities stemming from shootings, traffic
accidents and other factors soared by 44 percent in the first half of the year
compared with the same period last year, according to the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. That rate is on track for the
second half of the year, the Washington-based group said.
WORRYING TREND
So far this year, there have been 59 percent more fatal police
shootings compared with the same period in 2006, the group said.
Craig W. Floyd, chairman of the nonprofit group, called the trend
alarming: ``We've never seen numbers like this from one year to the next --
nothing like this since 1978.''
Experts cite several causes: a violent crime uptick, easy access to
firearms and increasingly deranged criminals. ''There are a lot of
disturbed people out there,'' said Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York police
officer and district attorney who lectures at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice. ``They're extremely violent, and it's all too easy for
them to get pretty sophisticated weapons to shoot not only one officer but
multiple officers.''
Another factor: the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban three
years ago. It applied to 19 semiautomatic weapons, which fire one
round and automatically load each time the trigger is pulled.
LITTLE DEFENSE
What are police doing to defend themselves? Working in pairs and
wearing bulletproof vests. But even vests are vulnerable to assault weapons
and ammunition.
The fatal shooting in Miami-Dade follows others across the state, which
has seen 10 mostly gun-related police deaths through mid-September,
one more than in all of 2006.
Last month, a Broward Sheriff's Office sergeant was killed by gunfire
as he looked for stolen cars behind a store. Four days earlier, a BSO
deputy was shot in the head during a traffic stop of a motorcyclist who
ran several red lights. He survived.
''The bad guys have the element of surprise, they have the firepower
and often times they get the benefit of lenience in the courts,'' said
John Rivera, president of the Miami-Dade and Florida Police Benevolent
Associations.
``How many cops does it take to get killed until we start paying
attention?''
