Or, if I were the Brady Center, that’s what my headline would be:

The numbers are so stark you think they must be a misprint.

You check again, on another page. Same numbers.

Police fired 616 shots last year, an astounding 75 percent more than the 352 in 2004 and the highest number in any year since 1999.

They were also involved in 16 gunfights last year, up from 11 in 2004. No surprise there, as the city had more overall gun violence last year than the year before, with increases both in the number of shooting incidents and shooting victims.

But here’s what is troubling. In those gunfights with suspects, police fired 276 times – they did so just 92 times in 2004’s gunfights – while the bad guys shot back at police just 72 times. The worst cop imaginable has more restraint than the average gunman, so this is clearly a red flag.

Huh? That makes no sense. Seems to just imply that they have more ammo. Seems the cops fired about 17.25 times per gun fight. 17+1, coincidentally, happens to be the magazine capacity of their issue handgun. Not unreasonable to conclude that maybe they empty their guns in gun fights and that is not indicative of restraint.

Posted in uncategorized on July 19th, 2006 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |