With our gunfight-soaked entertainment media and scary assault rifle propaganda, the average citizen thinks “weapon” equals “firearm”. And among many misinformed critics even when a police officer is confronted with a firearm the officer is expected to “de-escalate”. There are some facts relevant to that perception that officers know about the potential lethality of things other than guns.
First, let’s review the lethality of firearms in the de-escalation discussion. There usually just isn’t time. The brain chemistry that is washing over an agitated person, even one who otherwise has no diagnosable mental illness, takes time on the clock to return the brain to a normal state. Research shows that even an unskilled person can draw a firearm from a concealed position and pull the trigger multiple times before an officer can even unholster their duty weapon. No time for conversation.
Murder by gunfire is the main culprit in violent officer deaths. Reflecting national murder victimization, most of those deaths are by handguns, Research shows that in killings of unarmed suspects by police, the context of the encounter shows that the officer was “facing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to themselves or a third person in nearly 90% of the situations” according to a study published on the Force Science Institute website. “Unarmed subjects shot by intent included those who were attempting to disarm an officer…drown an officer…throw an officer from a bridge or rooftop…strangle an officer…gesturing as if armed with a real weapon…keeping hands concealed despite commands…and charging toward an officer with apparent intent to assault” according to the research findings.
In the ten-year research period from 2010 to 2019, FBI statistics show that of officers who were injured by either guns or knives, 75% were from firearms. Only 44% of those injuries occurred in incidents where officers had knowledge before arriving on the scene that there was a weapon involved. As every officer is reminded in training, every call is a “person with a gun” call because the officer brings all of their weapons systems with them on their equipment belt. If a suspect gets control of the officer or any item they are carrying, the suspect may end up with a gun, a knife, a chemical spray, an impact weapon, or handcuffs which were used in a number of the assaults documented in the FBI report.
Guns and knives are not the only fatal threats facing officers. Deputy Sheriff John Durm of Marion County Sheriff’s Office, Indiana was murdered in July of this year when an inmate used his handcuffs to strangle the veteran officer to attempt an escape. Corporal Bryant Searcy of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, Michigan also suffered death at the hands of an unarmed inmate in 2020, as did Lieutenant Jon David “JD” Anderson of the Spokane, Washington Police Department, and Officer Gene Wade Lee of the Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff’s Office, and Correctional Officer Pedro Joel Rodríguez-Mateo Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Puerto Rico who was disarmed of his baton and murdered with it by an inmate. All of those attacks were in 2019, but many more such fatal assaults are noted on the Officer Down Memorial Page website from past years.
Assaults on officers are very poorly reported nationwide for a variety of reasons. In a 2014 survey, 83% of officers reported that in their career they have been hurt in an assault but they did not seek medical care, over 52% have been to the hospital for injuries from an assault. Nearly 10% had been injured by a deadly weapon and over 20% lost time from work due to an assault-related injury. When asked about the previous year, 63% had been hurt without medical attention, and 21% had gotten medical attention.
Police work is dangerous. Injured officers often do not get the care that they need, or the justice they deserve. When they do have to defend themselves or others using some level of force, the narrative in most media stories does not reflect the fullness of facts and context even though research shows that most witnesses agree with the officers’ actions even when confronting an “unarmed” adversary.
