When I was a prosecutor, people often asked me if my life was in danger, given that I publicly targeted murderers, drug cartels, and terrorists. “Sure, I am at some risk,” I typically responded. “But the danger to me is minuscule compared with the danger to any police officer pulling over a car on a lonely road at night.”
This summer and early fall, America has seen a disturbing trend of people targeting and killing cops. If left unabated, the effects could be devastating—to police and to the country.
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It started in Texas. On July 4, ten radicals, variously armed with weapons, body armor, and tactical gear, targeted the ICE detention center in Alvardo. When a local police officer responding to a 911 call arrived at the scene, one attacker shot him in the neck. Unarmed correctional officers who stepped outside to check on the incident were greeted by a hail of gunfire, though luckily not hit. Law enforcement discovered political propaganda declaring a “class war” and calling to “fight oligarchy” when the assailants were apprehended. The officer survived, but this was no peaceful civil rights protest.
Just four days later, a lone gunman opened fire at the U.S. Border Patrol annex in McAllen, Texas. A local police officer, a Border Patrol agent, and a civilian employee were shot. All three were wounded and will bear the scars for the rest of their lives. Law enforcement agents managed to kill the shooter, who had even more weapons and ammunition in his car.
While the officers in Texas survived the assassination attempts, police in Ohio were not so lucky. On July 23, two Lorain County officers in separate patrol cars pulled into a dead-end road to meet for lunch. Suddenly, a hidden shooter started firing in their direction. One officer was killed. The second managed to drive away and return with another officer to confront the shooter. They were met with a fusillade of long-range bullets and were both hit.
Eventually, more cops arrived and killed the gunman. He had fired 193 rounds. A later search of his car yielded multiple firearms, more than 7,000 rounds of ammunition, and explosive materials, reflecting, as officials noted, a “deliberate and evil plan.”
On August 17, police in Tremonton, Utah, responded to a domestic disturbance call. As any experienced cop can tell you, domestic calls can involve anything from two people yelling at each other to wild violence. When the first officer arrived, a man involved in the domestic disturbance shot him dead. The second arriving officer met the same fate. This triggered a massive police response, during which the shooter managed to hit a third cop and a police canine, both of whom survived. The shooter then surrendered and was taken into custody.
A month later, on September 17 in York County, Pennsylvania, police arrived at the house of a suspect’s ex-girlfriend to arrest him on an open warrant. The gunman waited until the cops entered the home, then ambushed them. He shot and killed three of the officers at point-blank range, seriously wounding a fourth. In the ensuing gun battle, the shooter wounded yet another officer before the police managed to kill him.
In the latest attack, a roof-top sniper in Dallas decided to “give ICE agents real terror” by firing high caliber rounds of ammunition indiscriminately into an ICE field office. The shooter missed the law enforcement officers, instead killing one ICE detainee and wounding two others. The shooter then took his own life, leaving behind ammunition with “ANTI-ICE” scrawled on it.
The National Police Association has noted that ambush-style shooting of police officers is on the rise, fueled by anti-police sentiment. The last time America saw such a marked trend in attacks on police was in the 1970s, as described in Bryan Burrough’s book Days of Rage. Back then, a wide array of perpetrators—ranging from the wealthy radicals of the Weather Underground to the militants of the Black Liberation Army—targeted and killed cops, whether for sport or as part of other crimes. Driving home how the past is prologue, just this week the Chicago Teachers Union posted comments honoring the convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur, a BLA member who recently died.
Murdering police officers, the visible symbol of law and order in America, is obviously reprehensible. The surviving family members are devastated. Police departments are shattered. Communities are left feeling vulnerable.
But Americans should also consider the broader implications of these assassinations. For one, these attacks might tempt police to pull back from their duties. Such de-policing—as we saw after the Ferguson riots, the Covid pandemic, and the killing of George Floyd—can devastate neighborhoods, particularly poorer and more dangerous ones.
A second knock-on effect of targeted police killings was documented by criminologist Frank Zimring in his book When Police Kill. Zimring points out that officer-involved shootings of civilians are closely correlated by region with shootings of police officers. In other words, cops are most likely to shoot civilians in the places where civilians have been shooting cops. It makes a certain brutal sense.
Finally, police agencies remain mired in a recruiting crisis. Efforts to beef up police forces on our streets will not be helped a steady drumbeat of headlines about cops getting killed.
With all this bad news, we should be thankful that public officials have become more reluctant to demonize police officers. It marks a welcome end to the recent trend of denouncing cops, which began with the Obama administration and culminated in the disastrous “defund the police” movement. Americans, particularly those in poor communities, seem to have caught on to the reality that fewer police means more crime.
But radicals remain committed to undermining, and even killing, the police. We must devote our attention and resources to ensuring the safety of those who protect our communities.
Photo by Stewart F. House/Getty Images