Police shootings: Avoidance is the goal

Your editorial on Sunday, June 29, addresses attitudes on behalf of some in the community regarding law enforcement officers killing citizens. Undeniably, there have been far too many such events in eastern Washington and North Idaho. A multitude of law enforcement agencies have been involved.

The editorial appropriately notes recent shootings have been judged justified based on the incident as it unfolded applying departmental policies. I won't question those determinations.

I have relatives who work in law enforcement and have spoken with retired cops from New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. I understand and appreciate how these men and women put their lives on the line regularly. Even a seemingly routine traffic stop can turn deadly.

From 1995 through 2011, we lived in New Jersey and received our daily, local news broadcasts from New York TV stations. We received the Newark daily paper regularly. The areas covered by these news outlets covered a population that had to be approaching more than 15,000,000 people. There were not many police-civilian shootings reported during those years.

For years, the New York City Police Department has issued a detailed report on officer shooting incidents. A few statistics from the most recent report (2012):

Population: 8,245,000

Average number of police: 34,920

Radio assignments: 246,620

Weapons arrests: 26,019

Gun arrests: 5,689

Criminal shooting incidents: 1,374

Police who fired their weapon: 60

Incidents where police fired: 45

Subjects killed: 16

Cops shot: 13

Cops killed: 0

There have been some highly publicized erroneous shootings over the years in New York City and these are included in the annual statistics.

What's significant in all this data is, in spite of dealing with far more contacts in areas with much higher crime rates than we have in our area, how rare it is for a cop to kill a citizen (in spite of the impression you might get from the cop shows on TV).

I don't know if the difference is attributable to training given to individual police officers, department training in situation management, or if there is truly no avoiding the taking of these lives in the local cases. Single officer patrols could be a contributor. Most big cities have two officers in patrol cars.

This isn't meant to challenge police actions in any specific shooting incident or to trivialize inappropriate police actions in other circumstances. However, if there is a way to avoid deadly encounters, they should be investigated. The community and the police who deal with these situations would be better served and less traumatized if these deadly encounters can be avoided or controlled for better outcomes.

John McTear is a Coeur d'Alene resident.