NCJ Number
128433
Journal
Police Journal Volume: 64 Issue: 1 Dated: (January/March 1991) Pages: 28-45
Date Published
1991
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Research on violence directed against members of the law enforcement community has been concerned with those factors which contribute to or precipitate the murder of officers. It has been shown that most police murders result from police-initiated contact with the suspect.
Abstract
Bivariate analysis was performed for three separate datasets on police assaults. The first dataset contains all municipal police assaults in the South Central United States for the period 1972 to 1973. The other two datasets, one dealing with ambush-related assault incidents and the other dealing with robbery-related assault incidents, were collected for the entire nation for the period 1972 to 1973. Findings indicate that there are relatively few statistically significant relationships between the types of weapon used or firearm type within a particular crime type. It was found that there is high use of personal weapons in the general municipal assaults and firearms in the robbery/ambush assaults. As in the case of robbery assailants, ambush assailants also tend to be either unemployed or have low status positions. Ambush may be a general lashing out at a society which has blocked legitimate opportunities by the attack on a visible representative of that society. 1 notes, 14 tables, and bibliography