Police unions across the country believe cops are being “hunted in the streets,” and at least 10 officers of the law were shot or killed in the past 10 days in incidents that spanned the nation. But do those shootings point to a larger trend of focused violence against law enforcement?
The shootings came in bunches, starting with two officers shot and killed in New York City on January 21. Two more were shot near St. Louis on January 26, then three injured one day later in Houston. Two police officers were shot on separate days in Milwaukee, and a Kentucky state trooper was injured by gunfire on Friday, January 28.
USA TODAY spoke with criminal justice experts to determine if police are truly being targeted, and while those they spoke with do not believe that to be the case per se, they did acknowledge a disturbing rise in violent crime throughout the U.S.
“The rise in police being shot by community members is coinciding with the overall rise in violent crime,” said Howard Henderson of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University. “Police happen to be some of the victims" in an ongoing “crime wave.”
FBI numbers revealed a big jump in homicides in 2020, and the reasons for that spike became a political football in the most recent election cycle.
Justin Nix, criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, also noted that the rise in violence against police has gone hand-in-hand with a rise in overall violent crime, and he was dismissive of the idea that a “war on police” is taking root, referring to that idea as “propaganda.”
However, while he agrees that an increase in violent crime will mean an increase in the hazards of the job of policing, Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes believes there’s more to it than that, pointing to political movements looking to defund police and, in his opinion, dehumanize police officers.
“The trend that’s happening in this country is making their job less safe,” Yoes told USA TODAY.
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