The shooting deaths of three police officers Sunday morning (July 17) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, comes just more than a week after a similar crime was perpetrated against police officers in Dallas, Texas .
For many looking for answers, it would be easy to point to the shooting death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge just about two weeks ago. Alton Sterling’s shooting death at the hands of Baton Rouge police officers was caught on tape and led to mass protests not only in Baton Rouge – with more than 100 arrested – but also led the many other marches throughout the nation. One of those marches was a Black Lives Matter march through downtown Dallas, which saw a sniper open fire on the men and women charged with protecting the First Amendment right of those protesting in Dallas and around the country. Five men died, and another nine officers were injured.
While the Baton Rouge police shooting this morning, which resulted in an additional three officers from Baton Rouge Police and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department being injured, was a shock to the country which still has not fully come to terms with what happened in Dallas a week ago, a quick search of the murder of police officers shows these shootings are as rare as we would hope. The Baton Rouge police shooting, and the one in Dallas before it, show a trend in the United States that dates back to at least the 1970s.
Before this morning’s Baton Rouge police shooting and before the Dallas police shooting the week before, the last so-called “ambush” or targeted killing of police officers to grab the world’s attention happened in New York City. According to USA Today , two police officers were assassinated as they sat in their marked NYPD patrol car at the end of 2014. The December 2014 shooting deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu was “execution-style,” according to New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton. The deaths came after New York City police had been videotaped putting Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold during an attempted attest. Garner, as you may remember, was unarmed at the time of his death for selling cigarettes on Staten Island.
Much like the Baton Rouge police shooting Sunday morning, the targeted killings of officers Ramos and Liu in New York City happened in broad daylight near sidewalks and streets where the men and women in Brooklyn were going about their weekend plans.
But the Baton Rouge, Dallas, and New York City police shootings are not the only ones happening in America. They are just the ones getting the most attention. And for good reason. The Dallas police shooting was the largest single loss of life for a police department since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when hundreds of New York City and Port Authority police officers were lost, in addition to hundreds of fire department and EMS personnel on the scene. Baton Rouge is the second largest loss of life while the New York shooting likely ranks in one of the largest since 9/11.
But prior to the Dallas or Baton Rouge police shootings, PBS notes that a police shooting that started on December 31, 1972 , and continued into the next day in New Orleans – just 80 or so miles from Baton Rouge – saw the deaths of five police officers and the injury of 13 others. PBS also notes that before the Dallas or Baton Rouge police shootings are factored in, police deaths this year are actually down 12 percent, though police deaths with firearms are up 17 percent.
With the deaths of eight police officers combined from the Baton Rouge and Dallas police departments in the last week, those numbers are sure to skew up.
[Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images]