Blue Lives Matter

Blue Lives Matter

When a police officer is killed in the line of duty surviving police officers do not riot.  They do not burn down buildings, break windows, overturn and burn cars, loot businesses, and march in angry protest.  Instead, they wear black bands over their badges, mourn their loss, and support surviving family members.  Seldom will you see a national leader even mention the loss of life of a police officer let alone attend the funeral or stir the mass of police officers into a feeding frenzy.  Media coverage is almost always restricted to state and local audiences.  We bury our dead and then move on.

The Attorney General doesn’t come running to any community to investigate the wrongful death of a police officer.  The ACLU certainly doesn’t care.  I don’t know what the current President does for families of sworn police officers.  I know what his predecessor did.

The first recorded police officer line of duty death occurred in 1791.  Since that time, over 20,000 police officers have been killed in the line of duty. That would be 223 years for those still doing the math.  That is an average of just under 90 police officers killed a year.  At present, 108 police officers have been killed in the line of duty in 2014.  We are already ahead of the 105 police officers killed in the line of duty in 2013.  But, that’s O.K.  We are well below the 203 officers killed in the line of duty in 2007.  We can expect another eight officers to be killed in the line of duty before the end of the year.  Given the season, that won’t be hard to reach.  There has been an average of 152 police officers killed in the line of duty each year over the last 10 years.  That is well above the yearly average number (90) of officers killed over the past 200 years. 

Additionally, police suicide rates are between 125 and 150 a year which amounts to about 17 per 100,000 police population.  The general population suicide rate is 11 per 100,000.  It is not unusual for police suicides to be mislabeled as “accidental”, so the number of police suicides could be much higher.  One in five retired disabled police officers commits suicide.

The life expectancy of a retired police officer is 10 years.  Depending upon whose statistics you view, the expected age at death for a retired police officer is 55 or 66, either of which is well below the average male death age at 76 in the United States.

A police officer was killed in the line of duty once every 57.5 hours during the past 10 years.

Yes, we have more civilians dying at the hands of police officers than we have police officers dying at the hands of civilians.  There is a reason for that.  This isn’t a contest.

About one-third of police officers in large police departments and two-thirds of officers in smaller police departments resign their commissions within five years of employment.  About half of those leaving small departments and one-quarter of those leaving larger departments seek employment in other police agencies.  Most police departments have vacancies but cannot fill them due to a lack of qualified applicants or because of fiscal constraints.  Because of training and certification requirements most police officers are not “productive” for the first six to twelve months of their employment.  Many police academies last six or more months and then their departments require the rookie officer to work with a field training officer for one to two years.  Because of the high attrition rate in police work, most police departments are constantly in a new officer training phase.  Consequently, there is not a lot of police experience on the streets.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are a fair number of experienced police officers who make it to retirement, but many of them are tied to a desk trying to figure out how to keep their agencies afloat.

So, you want to figure out what is wrong with police departments?  Start here.  When you are done with this, I have more.

Oh, and Blue Lives Matter.