BigBlueDodge wrote:Okay, I am mistaken. Here is what confused me.
Officer deaths this year totaled 140, compared with 181 in 2007.
I thought that statistic was for Texas alone, but after reading another article, it is the total for the Nation. So you are correct. It was my misunderstanding.
I can see now why you were alarmed - 140 on duty officer deaths would have made a very bad year indeed for Texas. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
Don't be embarrassed - it's easy to misread reports like this, and news reports on the reports are even worse because some of the information is spun in a way that's designed to mislead.
To help reduce the confusion, I try to make it a point to go back to the source material and read over that document carefully. I also look at who wrote it, who sponsored it, and who funded it when that information is available. That often corrects my initial misimpressions and answers a lot of questions for me.
In this case, the National Police Memorial Fund appears to be trying to do a public service by publishing preliminary figures that may be meaningful to folks who don't want to wait for the FBI's official report on officers killed. You can expect that the figures provided at this point will change some by the time the FBI finishes cleaning up the raw data.
The FBI's reports are the best source for this information, but they run nearly a year behind because of all the fact checking and verification that goes into their compilation. This year's report won't become available until fall 2009.
That's the same point being made by Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms