Role of Prisons Put in Focus After LODDs
The end of January has been a deadly time for police officers around the country. The shootings and killings - which felled 12 officers and a U.S. marshal's deputy over five days - began with two Miami police officers being shot and killed on Jan. 20 while trying to serve an arrest warrant on a fugitive wanted for murder. Four days later, an Indianapolis officer was shot in the head during a traffic stop and died in the hospital.
The same day, four officers were shot in Detroit, two deputies in Port Orchard, Wash., and another officer in Lincoln City, Ore. Then, Monday morning in St. Petersburg, two police officers and a U.S. marshal's deputy were shot while attempting to serve an arrest warrant at a home.
The two officers died.
Which raises the question: Even as overall violent crime is declining across the nation, is this sudden rash of police shootings the beginning of an era marked by an escalation of brazen, cold-blooded cop killers?
"It appears it is. More and more criminals are out there to pop a cop," said Steve Groeninger, spokesman for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C. He points to 78 officers feloniously killed in 2010, a dramatic upswing from the 2009 number of 48, and headlines like this one in the Indianapolis Star: "Cop Killing is Part of Disturbing U.S. Trend."
But criminologists around the country disagree. They say the 2010 number will be closer to 50 when the FBI releases it, and they point to long-term FBI statistics that show a decrease in felonious killings of police officers between 1973 and 2010 - despite a few upticks. It's too soon to tell if this trend has shifted, they say. Furthermore, they agree it's extremely rare for someone to pull a trigger because the sole purpose is to "pop a cop."
"Some people are asking if there are more sociopaths out there set on killing police, when the question should be: Are there more people out there who will do anything not to be taken into custody?" said University of South Florida criminology associate professor Lori Fridell.
"The answer is yes and the question becomes: Why?"
FBI statistics between 2000 and 2009 show that 62 percent of cop killers were previously convicted of crimes, many having done time. Does prison experience make some released convicts more likely to do anything to avoid being returned?
Ron McAndrew, a former warden at Florida State Prison, a death row facility known for being the harshest prison in the state, has strong opinions about the role prisons play in released inmates' desperation when facing return.
"In Florida, most inmates come out of prison 10 times worse than when they went in. We have a grand opportunity to make them participate in school, learn a trade and do all sorts of things to become worthwhile. But, instead, we throw them into an environment where they have to fight to stay alive, then complain when they get out and commit more crimes."
In the case of the late St. Petersburg cop killer and former convict Hydra Lacy Jr., corrections records show he worked sporadically as a food server, a grounds man and a clinic aid in prison but was frequently put in solitary confinement between late 1992 and 2000 for fighting, "disrespecting officials" and "disobeying an order." He spent close to three years in solitary.
McAndrew says he's "very pro law enforcement," but knows enough about the prison environment to understand why a former convict - especially one who spent so much time in solitary - could "go off the deep end" if threatened with return to prison.
Beth Huebner, criminal justice associate professor at the University of Missouri, agrees with McAndrew: "Prisons are more crowded than ever, and there's less money and fewer programs to rehabilitate inmates," she says. Another problem she sees is that many prisoners aren't followed with community services once they're released and return to the same environment that got them in trouble in the first place - often an environment rife with illegal guns.
FBI statistics from 2000 through 2009 show that of the 536 officers feloniously killed, 490 were killed with firearms - most with illegally obtained 9-millimeter handguns. The majority of these killings occurred when officers were trying to make an arrest. In 2009, 48 officers were feloniously killed - eight while serving arrest warrants.
Gary Kleck, professor of criminology at Florida State University, predicts that despite the spate of police killings this month, the numbers will go down as the year continues and will be close to the average of 50 police deaths a year by the end of 2011.
"You mark my word," he says. "The number of recent shootings are a fluke, not a trend."
Police officers have become increasingly invulnerable with better training, tactics, weapons and body armor, Kleck says, and if it weren't for the "huge proliferation of illegal guns" the numbers would be lower.
He concedes that gun laws are easy to circumvent because criminals simply buy them from private individuals or steal them, but he thinks it would help if police made more arrests for illegal gun carrying.
"When someone is stopped for reasonable suspicion, police should do pat downs and search cars," he says. "We have to find ways to lessen the number of illegal guns out there."
Dave Klinger, associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, also worries about the number of illegal guns, but he doesn't see them as a main contributor to police killings.
"Guns are guns. Bad people do bad things with guns. Period," he says.
Instead, he says, when police are killed, we need to look at "tactical decision making."
As an example, he points to Hydra Lacy hiding in the attic of the St. Petersburg house and shooting officers Jeffrey Yaslowitz and Thomas Baitinger, who were there to arrest him.
"Why go into that attic in the first place?" asks Klinger. "Where was command and control?"
Criminologists readily acknowledge that every situation when police are killed is different and must be looked at individually. But they also say they see the same things over and over: Former convicts about to be arrested who are desperate not to return to prison. Easy access to illegal guns. Police doing what they do every day and letting their guard down. Slips in tactical decisions and command and control.
And, very infrequently, a criminal dead set on popping a cop.
"The one thing we can say is that if someone is out to do harm - for whatever reason - you can take all precautions," says Elizabeth Watts, spokesman for the Clearwater Police Department. "But it won't matter if they're determined."
http://www.officer.com/online/articl...ion=1&id=56543
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