Spate of police officers fatally shot is ‘very chilling’

Michelle Dermyer changed her Facebook profile photo March 9 to a picture of a police badge honoring a former colleague of her husband who was gunned down on the job six years ago.

Three weeks later, it’s Virginia state police trooper Chad Dermyer — Michelle’s spouse of 15 years — who is being remembered.

A gunman shot the 37-year-old multiple times Thursday at a busy Richmond Greyhound station. Authorities said Dermyer had been participating in a training exercise at the bus depot when a brief encounter with the suspect quickly turned violent.

Statistics show that the average number of police officers fatally shot in the line of duty has decreased from 127 per year in the 1970s to 57 per year in the 2000s. But 2016 is off to a dreadful start.

Dermyer, a Marine veteran and father of two, is the 16th law enforcement officer to be killed by a gunman this year — a 129 percent increase over the first three months of 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Police nationwide are taking notice.

“The numbers are very chilling,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. “What’s really scary is that these increases happen in spite of the fact that police are better trained and better equipped today. What that points to is a greater predisposition on the part of violent individuals to attack police officers.”

Virginia State Police are still trying to learn what sparked Thursday’s shooting at the Greyhound station. Authorities said Dermyer, who was dressed in a fatigue-style uniform and not wearing a protective vest, spoke to a man briefly before he suddenly pulled out a handgun and opened fire. Fellow troopers returned fire, wounding the gunman, who later died at a nearby hospital. On Friday, police identified Dermyer’s killer as James Brown III, 34, of Aurora, Ill. Brown, who reportedly had convictions for drugs and battery of a pregnant woman, has been to prison twice.

“It’s unfortunate these are the days we’re living in, where folks want to harm law enforcement,” Richmond police chief Alfred Durham said at the bus station Thursday. “We just want our officers to end their shifts and to go home to their families.”

Six of the 16 fatal shootings this year occurred within a matter of days in early February.

“I cannot recall any time in recent years when six law enforcement professionals have been murdered by gunfire in multiple incidents in a single week,” said Craig Floyd, CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Last month, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) — a component within the U.S. Department of Justice — published a research report examining the policies, training and other characteristics of police departments that have been effective in preventing firearms assaults against officers.

The researchers looked at firearms use against officers from 2007 to 2011. In addition to 148 officers being slain by guns, the paper notes that 1,014 firearms assaults resulted in injuries and 10,149 did not.

Among other things, the 60-page report recommends more reality-based training for officers, identifying high-risk calls for service and better data collection of firearms assaults.

Understanding Firearms Assaults Against Police in the US by Jason Sickles, Yahoo News

Constructing an accurate picture of U.S firearms assaults can be difficult.

The FBI publishes an annual report (“Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted”), but critics complain the data is incomplete and slow to publish. The most recent publication contains statistics from 2013. In 2012, more than 3,700 agencies didn’t contribute data.

“The data … is woefully lacking in factual basis because it’s all voluntary participation,” Pasco said. “New York City, for god’s sake, doesn’t participate in it.”

Incomplete data, the COPS’ report states, “makes it difficult to draw inferences about trends and patterns” and impacts funding decisions.

One trend that alarms law enforcement is the number of ambushes — where an officer is suddenly attacked without apparent incitement. Of the 16 officers fatally shot so far in 2016, seven were considered to be ambush assaults.

“The anti-police rhetoric does nothing to help law enforcement prevent crimes,” Floyd said. “Attacks on law enforcement officers have been launched by Islamic extremists or sovereign-citizen types with a hatred of our government; others are being carried out by mentally unstable or cold-blooded criminals who see police as the enemy. In these cases, officers are being targeted simply because of the badge that they wear and the job that they do.”

The March 1 fatally shooting of Dallas-area police officer David Hofer was particularly cold-blooded. Hofer, responding to an afternoon call of possible shots fired in a city park, was telling a man hidden in a creek to show his hands when the man allegedly shot the officer fatally in mid-sentence.

The suspect, who had been released from jail three hours earlier, then engaged backup officers in an intense gun battle before being mortally wounded by police.

Hofer, painted by friends and colleagues as a cop’s cop, loved policing to the point he tricked his longtime girlfriend into joining him on a patrol shift so he could propose to her in uniform. The couple had been in their new home four months, and was preparing to set a wedding date when Hofer, 29, was killed.

“Your genuine spirit, selflessness, unique sense of humor, and pure heart are unmatched,” his finance, Marta Danylyk, said during a memorial service. “You are one of a kind. You are loved. You are missed beyond meaning.”

Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).