Reason.com
July 24, 2012
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN’s Piers Morgan last night that he doesn’t “understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike, we’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”
We’ve been hearing a lot of that recently. Earlier this year, The New York Times reprinted a Department of Justice press release and slapped this lede on top of it: “As violent crime has decreased across the country, a disturbing trend has emerged: Rising numbers of police officers are being killed.”
Bloomberg and The New York Times are both wrong:
*In 2008, ten times more civilians regular people were killed by cops than cops were killed by perps.
*In 2011, 72 cops were shot and killed in the entire U.S.; in L.A. County alone, cops shot and killed 54 suspects the same year–22 percent of those people were unarmed.
*As Scott Reeder reported at Reason this morning, “Farmers, ranchers, commercial fishermen, loggers, garbage collectors, truck drivers, construction workers, pilots, steel workers, roofers, and others are far more likely to face death on the jobs than police or firefighters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
*And as Choire Sicha wrote earlier this year, “2008 was the ten-year low for police officers being killed, and 2012 is, so far, year-to-date, down 49% from last year.”
[Editor's note: In response to Mayor Bloomberg's and Jason Alexander's calls for gun control, the rebuttal is pretty simple: Even if you disarm normal citizens, the criminals will still find ways to get guns. Guns aren't even illegal now and look at the lengths some of Bloomberg's own NYPD are going to smuggling them.]
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