LTR would like to salute the following advertising sponsors:

If Only

Grim Realities
Although names may yet be added, the long list of peace officers who made the ultimate sacrifice across this country in 2004 has been tallied and posted. It’s not good news: According to The Officer Down Memorial Page, one hundred and fifty-three cops lost their lives in service to their communities last year. Fifty-three were the victims of felonious firearm attacks, four died from accidental gunfire; three were inadvertently shot by fellow officers.

As is typically the case, the majority of law enforcement deaths resulted from accidents and assaults involving motor vehicles. Those who died in vehicle crashes or were accidentally struck - or intentionally run down - by members of the motoring public diminished the ranks of the thin blue line by seventy-two. Twenty-one cops died while driving to calls for service or while responding to requests for backup. And no one involved in any of the situations those officers were rushing to suffered a worse fate than the officers themselves.

California and Texas led the nation in officer deaths; each suffering fourteen loses in ’04. Florida and New York were also in double figures, losing twelve and ten officers respectively.

The deadliest three-month period of the year was July through September, during which forty-nine peace officers died in duty-related incidents. Forty-six peace officers perished during April, May and June. The last quarter of ’04 was a little kinder to the American law enforcement family: Only twenty-four cops lost their lives between October 1st and December 31st, and only seven of them were the victims of felonious gunfire. If only so many other lives hadn’t been stolen in similar fashion:

• The Wisner, Louisiana Police Department lost their beloved Assistant Chief when he was and fatally shot with his own sidearm after responding to a reported burglary in progress on October 10th. “Putt” Linder became the seventh officer to be disarmed and slain in ’04 in the U.S., and the last of five Louisiana peace officers to be murdered last year.

• On October 14th, a Marion County, Ohio deputy was murdered when he made contact with two pedestrians responding to check on a vehicle that was reportedly disabled. Deputy Brady Whitfield was one of nine officers felled by gunfire across the nation last year while conducting vehicle checks or after effecting traffic stops. Three of those deadly attacks, including one occurring in Pendergrass, Georgia on December 29th that claimed the life of Patrolman Chris Ruse, came after high speed pursuits.

• A Special Agent with the Wisconsin Department of Justice was shot and killed during a robbery attempt in the parking lot of a convenience store on November 5th. Agent Jay Balchunas had stopped to get a cup of coffee when he was accosted by two men as he returned to his car.
o A Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety Captain and a DC Metro Police Sergeant met similar fates last year when they were shot after being targeted for armed robberies while off-duty.

• On November 11th, an off-duty Forsythe County, North Carolina Reserve Sergeant responded to a report of shots fired occurring near his home and was fatally shot by a suspect who had just killed a man and a woman with whom he had on ongoing feud. Sgt. James Johnson’s son-on-law, also an off-duty reserve deputy who responded to the scene from his residence nearby, was wounded during a gunbattle with the suspect.

• A Bristol, Tennessee police officer was gunned down November 27th when he entered a residence alone to investigate a domestic dispute. Sadly Officer Mark Vance was not the first or the last policeman to be murdered after arriving at the scene of a reported family disturbance in ’04. Six other cops sustained lethal gunshot injuries during these volatile confrontations between February and September, and two others were slain in December:
o Otero County, New Mexico Deputy Robert Hedman was shot and killed on December 18th by a man who’d already murdered the woman he lived with. The deputy was fired on when he went to the rear of the residence after the suspect refused to allow him and his partner to enter at the front door.
o On December 29th, Officer Peter Lavery of the Newington, Connecticut Police Department was shot and held hostage by a gunman in the suspect’s basement. When a SWAT Team made entry the following day, they found that Officer Lavery had died and his captor, a former state corrections officer, had committed suicide.

Murder by Ambush
Every year an alarming number of officers meet their demise in ambush situations or very soon after their initial encounter with criminal suspects.
Based on publicized accounts concerning the seven policemen murdered by gunfire in the last three months of ’04, it appears that the fatal attacks came quickly and unexpectedly, proving seven times over that it’s the bad guy who owns the tactical advantage. If only this point hadn’t been driven home so many times throughout the year; sixteen cops were greeted with fatal gunfire last year while either still in their police cars or soon after exiting them:

• Two officers were ambushed in Athens, Alabama, on January 2nd when they arrived in separate vehicles at an unknown trouble call.

• A sheriff’s detective was felled by a shotgun blast on February 12th in North Carolina when he contacted a man that had been shooting the weapon in a field.

• Two of Detroit’s finest were fired upon while sitting in their cruiser after making a vehicle stop on February 16th. Both died from their wounds.

• On March 12th, a deputy in North Carolina was shot repeatedly as he arrived at the scene of a family disturbance.

• Two deputies in Pennsylvania were left to die on the driveway of a residence where they’d gone to serve an arrest warrant on March 31st.

• When deputies in Buncombe County, North Carolina attempted to serve a mental health commitment order on a man on April 4th , the suspect fired a shotgun blast from his place of hiding in the bushes outside his home. A sergeant was fatally struck.

• A San Francisco cop was murdered by a pedestrian who wheeled and opened fire with a rifle when the officer called to him from his police vehicle on April 10th.

• In Sterling Heights, Michigan, an officer was shot and killed as he sat in his marked patrol car writing a report on June 5th .

• A Baltimore City, Maryland Police Officer chased two men on foot after responding to a disturbance. The suspects ran into a liquor store and as the cop approached the business, he was fatally shot.

• A suspected drunk driver being pursued by a Babylon Bay, New York Constable on July 16th drove to his home and after arming himself with a shotgun, ambushed the officer from an upstairs window.

• On July 17th two patrol officers in Puerto Rico heard gunfire at a market. When they went to investigate they were fired upon by robbery suspects caught in the act. One of the officers was killed.

• A Bossier City, Louisiana patrolman was ambushed as he stood at the front door of a home where a woman had reported a domestic dispute on August 9th. The woman’s 65-year-old husband, said to be unstable and suicidal, killed the officer with two shotgun blasts before killing himself.

• On August 18th, four Indianapolis Police Officers were shot as they arrived in a neighborhood where a deranged man was blasting away with an assault rifle. One of them was mortally wounded by rounds fired through the windshield of his patrol car from a distance of more than a hundred yards.

Danger Beyond the Doorway
The situations just described prove that those willing to maim and murder peace officers oftentimes act as soon as the opportunity to do so presents itself. Officers may be targeted in the street, on the driveway, at the doorway or any place in between. And the danger certainly doesn’t diminish beyond the threshold. Peace officers entering dwellings and other structures in search of suspects always face peril. As proof:

• The team leader of a Philadelphia court’s warrant team was slain on March 19th and two of his teammates were wounded by gunfire when they entered a residence in search of a man who failed to appear to face rape charges.

• June 17th is a date that’ll forever be remembered by the men and women of the Birmingham, Alabama Police Department. On that day three ‘Magic City’ officers were murdered while trying to serve a warrant at a row house.

• A New Orleans Police Officer was shot repeatedly after she forcibly entered the bedroom of a man named in a mental health commitment order that she and he partner were trying to serve.

• A Broward County, Florida Detective was mortally wounded by rifle fire on August 19th as he and other members of a task force served a search warrant at the home of a man involved in child pornography.

• Two Phoenix, Arizona Officers were murdered by an emotionally unstable man as they forced entry into his apartment on August 28th. The suspect had shot another tenant and the officers believed that he might be holding another hostage. After killing the two officers and wounding a third in a hail of gunfire, the suspect committed suicide.

• In El Paso, Texas, an officer who’d graduated from the academy in late August died on September 25th after being shot by an intoxicated man that confronted him and his training officer in the garage of the suspect’s home.

Give Thanks…. and Thought
If you and those with whom you serve survived 2004 without becoming the victim of violence, give thanks…but also give thought to all those encounters that could’ve ended much differently. Give thought to what you did, things you might’ve done, and what you’ll do when you again face those situations that steal so many law enforcement lives year after year.

Perhaps more cops would survive if only they acknowledged that every call, every citizen contact, and every task often viewed as mundane - like driving to the location where help is needed and approaching the door to make contact - harbored such danger. If only…

Doyle “D.T.” Wright
is a Senior Instructor for the Public Agency Training Council. He retired from the Riverside County, California, Sheriff’s Department, and since 1998 has traveled throughout the country to provide law enforcement training related to officer survival, high risk warrant planning and execution, police action shootings and tactical response to dynamic events.

If you have an immediate need for information, please contact us by phone at: 317-733-1971 or we can be reached by email at: doyle@livetoretire.com