Who Kills Police Officers?

The recent national tumult about police officers killing suspects got a medical doctor and professor with an interest in murder, thinking about the flip side of the equation--suspects who kill cops. What are the traits and trends of offenders who gun down LEOs, beyond what we already know from the FBI's annual stats?

127 law enforcement officers lost their lives in the line of duty in 2014.  These men and women paid the ultimate sacrifice in the process of protecting and serving others.  The roll call, with specifics, can be found at Officer Down Memorial Page (www.odmp.org).  In overview, 123 of line of duty deaths (LODD) in 2014 were male officers; 4 were female. The average age of the officers who died in the line of duty was 40; the average tour of duty: 12 years, 3 months.  Compared to the 114 LODD in 2013, this represents an 11% increase in of loss of life.  Additionally, there were 20 K9 deaths in the line of duty that year.  

The 3 main causes of law enforcement deaths in 2014 were:

1. Intentional Homicide – 42 deaths (33%)
2. Accidental Vehicle Related (car/motorcycle/pursuit) - 35 deaths (28%)
3. Illness/Medical Conditions – 23 deaths (18%)

The Men Who Kill Law Enforcement Officers

Michael Stone, MD published a new article this year examining the cases in which law enforcement officers were killed intentionally, as opposed to accidentally or from a work-related illness, over the past two years.   Dr. Stone is not only a physician at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, but is also a professor at the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons.  Stone identified 66 cases in which officers were deliberately slain during the years 2013 and 2014.  This article will specifically address the 39 cases in 2014 in which the suspect intentionally killed law enforcement officers, resulting in 42 LODD (three cases resulted in the murder of 2 officers at the same time:  Rich/Johnson, Soldo/Beck, Davis /Oliver). Compared to the 27 cases in 2013, there was a 44% increase in the number of cases in which officers were killed in 2014. Ponder that for a moment…the intentional homicide of officers was 1½ times what it was the previous year; whereas the overall rate of LODD deaths only increased 11%.

*** Either frank psychosis or severe paranoid personality

Additionally, at least seven of K-9 LODD were intentionally killed (35% of all K-9 deaths)

Stone’s Analysis of These Cases

• In almost all the cases, the perpetrators (all of whom were male) used a gun. In a few cases, a policeman was killed by strangulation or by being run over by a car.
• Approximately half the men who had killed one or more policemen were then killed by other officers, or else committed suicide with their own weapons.  
• The majority of those killing officers had criminal records; most commonly the slayings occurred when officers were trying to question their attacker about some suspicious activity or to make an arrest.
• Half the killers were men actively involved in a crime, often of domestic violence, who then killed an officer as he responded to the emergency.
• The remainder of the killers belonged to a dozen small categories: cop-hating “white supremacists,” those who hated police as representatives of government authority, men who grabbed an officer's gun, men of a paranoid personality who were reacting to being fired or evicted, men who were mentally ill or intoxicated, and a few others motivated by other factors.
• As to race, blacks were disproportionately represented in Stone's study; while comprising less than 13% of our population, blacks constituted 26% of cop killers in 2014.
• 75% of the killers were from 18 to 37, the segment of the lifespan that sees the rise, peak, and beginning decline of testosterone concentration in males. The average age of cop killers within this age span was 22 for blacks, 29 for whites.
• 6 of the killers, 15%, "could reasonably be placed within the spectrum of psychiatric disorders"; paranoid tendencies seemed most common.

The names of 273 fallen officers were engraved on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial this spring; this includes 117 officers who were killed in 2014, plus 156 recently discovered officers who died in previous years (as far back as 1840). There are a total of 20,538 officers honored on the Memorial.

In as much that this study demonstrates that most of these incidents were impulsive acts it is essential for officer survival training to lower the risk of fatal attacks.  Even strategies like being polite, “squared away”, and waiting for backup might be more important now than ever before. 

There is no bigger crisis in law enforcement than an officer who has been killed in the line of duty.  That crisis repeated itself 127 times last year.  And yet, with that knowledge, over 900,000 dedicated US law enforcement officers are unhesitatingly willing to sacrifice their lives for the public safety and protection of others.  Each and every in the line of duty death (LODD) impacts every brother and sister of the thin blue line. Be safe out there.

References

Michael H. Stone, MD:  Men who Kill Policemen http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2015.0005

Officer Down Memorial odmp.org

National Police Week:  http://policeweek.org/