| Violence against US police influence researcher, practitioner, and popular
notions about the physical hazards of American policing. The most common
official source of such information, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
(FBI's) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program, is used by police to provide
officer safety information to trainees, formulate policies and field
procedures, as well as devise and emphasize various skills training
activities. Perceptions of the relative risk associated with various
assaults-e.g., with regard to assailant use of firearms, cutting instruments,
blunt instruments, or physical weapons-play a role in shaping police and thus
trainers' priorities regarding instructional priorities and scenario-based
experiences. Therefore, the utility of such government information is tied to
the accuracy, completeness, and representativeness of its portrayal of
violent police-citizen interactions. The UCR and its companion LEOKA report
are examined in this paper by way of (1) a variety of trends in assaults and
felonious killings for the period 1960 - 1999, as well as (2) gauging the
type and level of department participation in reporting assaults and assaults
with injuries. Participation stability over this period is a potentially
important factor in interpreting reported descriptive findings of the nature
and extent of violence against police.
|
Updated 05/20/2006