Most often, Stone found, police killings occurred when officers attempted to question or arrest the eventual killers. Springfield Police Division/Handout/REUTERS Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had a criminal record, killed two police officers in December 2014 before taking his own life. 'Certainly the shooting of the two policemen in Brooklyn by Brinsley I think was directly related to the tremendous conflict and acrimony that was produced by the Ferguson case.' 'National events of great significance have an influence on some of these things,' he says. Stone says the uptick last year is likely related to the anti-police sentiment that has gripped the country, though the 2014 number was still well below the 121 killings in 2012 and 72 in 2011. According to the study, people intentionally killed 43 on-duty police officers in the continental United States in 2014, a number about 1.5 times higher than the figure for 2013, which was 31. Stone includes anyone who guards the public sector, such as prison guards, in his definition of police officers. He adds, 'There's a lot of unfairness and I thought that the article would help maybe set things a little straighter so that people would not have knee-jerk reactions when some of these things occur,' referring to instances when police officers kill individuals.

I wanted to see what there is on the other side.' 'I wanted to look at it from, let's see what we can learn about the people who really do kill policemen, rather than only focus on the policemen who are sometimes killing people. Michael Stone, a professor at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and former host of a Discovery Channel show about murderers, Most Evil. 'We know that sometimes bad things happen and sometimes the police are guilty of unnecessary violence,' says study author Dr. A week before Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot and killed two police officers who were sitting in their squad car in Brooklyn, New York last December and then killed himself, someone posted a video online of protesters in New York City chanting, 'What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!'Īlthough much of the current national conversation about police tactics focuses on police-involved killings of unarmed individuals, especially people of color-leading to protests such as the one in New York-there was an increase last year in intentional killings of on-duty law enforcement officers, and new research sheds light on who is responsible.Ī study made available this week through the journal Violence and Gender explores the 74 police officers killed in 20 and identifies trends among the 70 killers.

Do we want dead cops