The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and the U.S. Department of Justice, COPS Office recently released an important report entitled “Deadly Calls and Fatal Encounters.” The report details a five-year study of line-of-duty deaths in which a total of 684 cases were reviewed.
Researchers examined line-of-duty death cases from 2010 to 2014 contained in the NLEOMF database as well as accompanying case files. They sought to better understand the types of calls for service which present the greatest potential threat to officers, as well as which self-initiated activities resulted in officer fatalities.
Each LODD was categorized for the type of call — domestics, disturbances, officer needs assistance, shots fired, etc. — and further examined for the type of information the officers had from dispatch upon arrival. Similarly, for self-initiated activities, each LODD was categorized by type of call — traffic stop, suspicious persons, etc. — and further investigated for the circumstances of the situation. The following is a collection of several significant takeaways from the 78-page report.
Domestics and disturbances
Unsurprisingly, calls related to domestic disputes and domestic-related incidents represented the highest number of fatal types of calls for service, according to the report.
“The analysis of calls for service that were classified as domestic dispute accounted for 20 of the 91 calls for service, or 22 percent, that resulted in an officer fatality. In all but one of the cases studied, the responding officers were killed with a firearm,” the report concluded.
In several cases, officers entered the scene alone, despite the fact that backup was called for and en route — in only four cases a single officer was dispatched to the scene — and in no case was any exigency present. In other words, officers could have waited until numbers were more in their favor before entering the scene.
Furthermore, in many cases, those officers were aware of a potential for violence, either from knowledge of previous calls to that location, or from information provided by dispatch.
“A further finding from the domestic-related calls was the number of cases in which officers knew the suspect had made threats to kill others, was known to be armed, or the responding officers had knowledge of past violent acts committed by the suspect,” the report said.
The researchers recommend that call takers place greater emphasis on gathering detailed information from callers reporting a domestic, and that dispatchers share this detailed information about the situation with responding officers. They recommend also that officers heed information provided, and that unless there is an exigent circumstance of threat to an innocent at the scene, they wait for backup to arrive before entering.
Disturbance calls — such as disorderly conduct, noise complaints, welfare checks, and other calls that are typically a lower priority — were the second largest category of fatal calls for service. Among these calls, disorderly conduct comprised the majority of calls, and in most cases, responding officers had very little information about the nature of the disturbance or the subject in question. In most of those cases, the complainant shared very little information about circumstances surrounding the disturbance with the call taker. Furthermore, similar to domestics, in many cases there was only one officer dispatched — a large percentage of officers were on scene of a disturbance call alone when killed.
“In many cases the call classification and initial complaint are typically considered nuisance calls which may lull officers into a false sense of security,” the report said. “Often, disorderly calls are dispatched as routine and something that, based on the initial information, would not necessarily result in an arrest.
“The examples of officers who were dispatched to handle what, at first, were complaints about non-violent nuisance violations or minor offenses that resulted in an officer fatality, are evident in each of the 16 cases that were disturbance type calls.”
Researchers also recommend that dispatchers and call takers be vigilant about gathering and sharing information such as call history at the location, as well as the individuals who may be preset.
Officer needs assistance and shots fired
Two types of call for service automatically indicate the potential for a violent encounter upon arrival — calls that an officer needs assistance and calls that shots have already been fired.
When responding to an officer needs assistance call, cops have “an intense desire to get there and help their fellow officer,” the report said. Tragically, this intensity can have deadly consequences, as the researchers found that these calls accounted for 51 percent of the call type in which officers crashed while responding.
“In all of the cases, officers were shot as they manned perimeters when a suspect barricaded themselves, as they assisted in the search for an armed fleeing suspect, or as they attempted to rescue a wounded officer. Suspects were wielding rifles in seven cases, and of those, four were ambush-style attacks. Three of the cases involved multiple officers being shot and killed.”
Among the recommendations made by the researchers is the need to equip officers with body armor with hard armor plates, ballistic helmets, and long guns in order to deal with subjects armed with rifles. They also emphasize that police leaders and trainers need to instill in officers the understanding that in order to help the officer in need of assistance, they need to arrive to the scene safely and avoid getting into a collision en route.
For shots fired calls, responding officers are on a heightened alert upon arrival and certainly have in mind that they may encounter one or more armed individual. The trouble is, those officers frequently do not know the precise location of the gunman, as that information is not frequently made available to the call taker.
“The dispatched information on many of these calls was too vague to provide the responding officers a suspect description or precise location of the gunfire,” the report said.
Another conclusion the researchers make about shots fired calls raises the problem of complacency — officers can get lulled into a false sense of “routine” in areas where shots being fired is a nightly occurrence. Consequently, the researchers recommend that responding officers approach any and all shots fired call with extreme caution, and should seek to obtain constant updates from dispatch for any additional information that may become available.
Traffic stops and suspicious persons
Traffic stops for “a routine violation such as speeding or an equipment violation” were the most common self-initiated activity resulting in an officer fatality. This should surprise no one. Traffic stops are among the most common activity of a patrol officer, and one need look no further than the countless number of gunfights caught on dash cam to hammer home the danger of these situations for law enforcers.
“This form of contact represented 63 percent of the overall self-initiated activity examined in the study,” the study said.
Unsurprisingly, the most dangerous period of time for officers is when making contact with the driver, but a full 31 percent of officers were also shot and killed while still in their squad, just exiting the car, or beginning their approach to the offender’s vehicle. Researchers also looked at the number of occupants in the stopped vehicle and found that statistically speaking, a “stop conducted upon a vehicle containing more than just the driver is no more dangerous than the stop of the single occupant vehicle.”
The researchers emphasized in their recommendations that officers conducting traffic stops vigilantly notify dispatch of location vehicle description, license plate number, and number of occupants before making contact with the driver. They also suggest that before approaching the vehicle, officers get — either from MDT in the squad or via radio with dispatch — as much information as possible about the vehicle and driver. They also recommend that officers use ear-piece radio receivers so drivers do not hear what is being reported to the officer about them, and that when possible, a passenger-side approach be employed.
The second largest category of self-initiated activity resulting in an officer fatality during the period studied was making contact with a suspicious person or suspicious vehicle. In each of the 12 cases examined, a single officer approached a parked vehicle or stopped a suspect to determine if he was engaged in criminal activity. Seven of those 12 cases involved a suspicious person.
The report said, “Part of the dangers officers face when approaching a suspicious person or vehicle are the unknowns: Is this person armed? Are they wanted? Is what the officer observed a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the situation? Officers are at a disadvantage in these cases, as they do not know what is in the mind of the suspect, or what criminal activity they may have interrupted. In some cases, it appears that the officer’s mere presence prompted the suspect to react violently, feeling they were in jeopardy.”
As they do for other situations, the researchers recommend that officers call for backup before approaching suspicious persons (or vehicles) whenever possible, as well as the need to keep complacency at bay, even if the subject is known to the officer. They also emphasize the need for officers to communicate to dispatch their location and the nature of the stop. Another recommendation is for agencies to train officers to recognize the presence of a concealed firearm.
Other calls and activities
Not covered in the above summary are a host of types of call for service and self-initiated activities — burglary, alarms, armed robbery, suspicious persons, and others — which resulted in officer fatalities during the period studied.
Consequently, it is strongly suggested that you read the text of the report, which can be found here. Print it out and leave it in the squad room for officers to review before going on tour. Talk about it at roll call.
Remember that any traffic stop can turn deadly in an instant. Remember that calling for — and waiting for — backup can be an important way to prevent tragedy, particularly in the cases of domestics and disturbances. Remind your dispatchers and call takers that they should seek to gather and relay as much information as possible. Remember that in order to be of any good to anybody at a scene, you have to get there safely, so watch your speed.
At the time of this writing (mid-August 2016), gunfire deaths of police officers are up 80 percent over last year. In all, 36 cops have been fatally shot so far this year — two have been killed by assault, and nine have been killed by vehicular assault.
Being a cop has always been a dangerous business, but given the current climate of anti-cop rhetoric and increase in violent attacks on police, the findings and recommendations in the NLEOMF/COPS Office report should be taken to heart.
