When one political party declares “open season” on police, its supporters listen. In 2020, while Democrats were cheering on the rioters and looters in America’s big blue cities, and pushing to “defund the police,” officers themselves were paying the price for the political points being scored. Last year saw a record number of assaults on law enforcement officers in America, and a hefty boost from the year before. Over 60,000 officers were harmed. And it looks like 2021 is going to be even worse. Fox News reports:
More than 60,000 police and law enforcement officers were assaulted on the job in 2020 – up by more than 4,000 from the prior year, recent FBI statistics show.
There were 60,105 officers assaulted in the line of duty in 2020, with 30.9% of them – 18,568 – suffering injuries as a result, the FBI said in a press release on Monday. The total number of officers assaulted jumped by 4,071 from 2019, when 56,034 line-of-duty assaults were reported, the FBI said.
Data show the majority of officers – 44,421 – were assaulted by individuals who used “personal weapons,” such as their fists, hands or feet, while 2,744 were assaulted with firearms, 1,180 with knives “or other cutting instruments” and the remainder attacked using “other types of dangerous weapons.”
n the plurality of instances, 29.6%, the officers were responding to calls about disturbances, “such as family quarrels or bar fights,” the FBI said. The second-highest instance in which officers were assaulted was when they were attempting other arrests, authorities said.
Data released so far this year paints a similarly grim picture.
Fifty-four law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the first nine months of the year – a 45.9% increase jump from the 37 officers killed year over year, the agency said. All but three of the nine months in 2021 saw higher felonious law enforcement deaths than the same month in 2020.