Terrible month for our Nation’s police. Four ambushes of police officers in one month.
The FBI needs to determine if these are completely random or being coordinated.
I’ve wondered if police officers get life insurance payouts for deaths on the job? Like combat soldiers?
The families of these 57 officers will need a lot of help. The upcoming holidays will be a difficult time.
Terrible as these murders are individually, I’d rather believe they were random events. It would be very disturbing is these turn out to be a coordinated events. That would indicate there’s some unknown terrorist group that’s capable of carrying out simultaneous attacks in three different states.
And oddly enough 23 British police officers have been killed on duty since 2001. Wikipedia.
At an average of 64 American deaths a year, Wikipedia, even allowing for the vaster population and for the fact I am fully in favour of all Americans having guns unregulated, I bet US cops sometimes would prefer greater gun regulation.
To answer your question about deaths on the job, I have a friend whose husband was killed in the line of duty. She was very well-taken care of by the county. They paid off her house for her, she didn’t have to pay any taxes for five years, and she got a nice payout. Additionally, the county has a death watch, where for a period of a week or two police officers come to the widow’s house in shifts and help with whatever needs to be done around the house (cooking, running errands, cleaning, etc.). I don’t know how much this differs from county to county, though.
Another likely possibility is copycat activity. Call it a mad murder meme.
It really depends on the location. Some places take very good care of the families. With others you better hope you paid for extra life insurance. There are private organizations who help too. For instance in the early 80s George Steinbrenner set up the Yankees Silver Shield Foundation. Any NYPD, FDNY or Port Authority employee who dies in the line of duty will have their children’s college education paid for 100% by the Steinbrenners.
There was a federal program started in 1976 called Public Safety Officers Benefit Program (PSOB), that pays out a one time death benefit to the family of any officer or firefighter who dies in the line of duty. It has been amended over the years and now includes education benefits. In 2003, the “Hometown Heroes Act” began that states that the PSOB benefits will be paid to any officer/firefighter that dies of a heart attack or stroke within 24 hours of a call. (The call has to be related to the heart attack…so writing a parking ticket doesn’t usually cause a heart attack, but writing a parking ticket and being attacked by the owner and having to fight them off would definitely cause enough stress to cause a heart attack/stroke).
The above are just the federal benefits. While each state is different, most of them have some sort of similar system in place to pay out something. None of them are as large as the federal payout. As other posts have stated, there are many private organizations that also help out. I live near St Louis Missouri. Backstoppers is the largest private organization in our area that help the fallen firefighters and police officers.
I can’t speak for all of the different organizations, but Backstoppers will usually pay off the home they are living in at the time, provide tuition assistance to all of the children as well as tuition assistance or job training for the spouse if needed.
I am a volunteer firefighter and run a 911 call center full time. I also volunteer for our Local Assistance State Team which is part of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. When a line of duty death happens, we are activated to assist the department with everything from funeral arrangements to helping with the paperwork to apply for the PSOB. (Being a federal program, you can imagine the amount of paperwork in this application).
While all of the benefits are out there, many departments have no idea on where to turn to get them. It has been my honor to be a part of helping them get these benefits. It is also an honor to see the local communities step up and help, not only the person who died, but their family as well as their department. While its always impressive to see hundreds if not thousands of firefighters or police officers turn out for the funeral, the most common comment I hear from the families is how many citizens lined the procession route. They seem to understand that firefighters will take the time to come out, but when the citizens turn out, it is truly awe inspiring for everyone involved.
Thank you for the information. It’s good to know there is some help available for the families of police and fireman.
Of the 80 or so officers I have asked out on the road or in cafes, all are for Concealed carry. Many say that their Chief is against it but in every case the Chief was an elected person, more a politician than a cop.
YMMV
Statically being an American police officer isn’t particularly dangerous on the job; being a construction worker or farmer for example is more dangerous. Suicide from stress is more likely than being shot by somebody else (their suicide rate is well above the national average).
Only if you measure danger by death rate. “Not dead” does not equal “safe.”
That’s a virtual certainty IMO, and along with greater publicity of the criticism of police for cases where they shoot and kill members of the public. The latter didn’t suddenly arise, but it’s given much more attention lately, mainly when the victims are African American. This is not to say such media attention, to the general issue of police conduct, is wrong. And it’s a judgment call whether that coverage has been fair. But I don’t see any reasonable doubt that it’s related to the rise in random shootings of police, which has definitely occurred. These aren’t police deaths in traffic accidents (always a significant % of police line of duty deaths), shootouts with suspects, walking in on armed robberies when off duty etc. so it’s really just obfuscating to look at trends in overall police deaths and say nothing much has changed.
The frequency of incidents where gunmen come after the police in ambushes obviously has changed, and that doesn’t have to cause significant % losses of police to have a big impact, as by the same token unjustified police killings of suspects don’t have to noticeably impact the overall death rate to be a significant issue.
That would be true of the other professions, where they are injured at a greater rate than cops are as well.
I would hope that any police officer or firefighter would have bought the appropriate amount of life insurance, just as anyone else would have.
Have died while on duty, the actual number shot in the last 30 years is about 1 every 2 years. 15 in total
Another officer shot in the head last night. This time in Detroit. He’s out of surgery and in grave condition.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/detroit-police-wayne-state-university-officer-shot-43727895