Killings of cops on the rise
by USA Today on Oct. 15, 2007, under Nation/WorldOfficers see ‘hunter’ mentality, ‘brutality’ among criminals
The casket of Odessa Police Department Cpl. John "Scott" Gardner is brought to his grave by pallbearers from his department Sept. 12 in Odessa, Texas.
ODESSA, Texas – The bodies of two local police officers, both shot in the head, had just been removed from the backyard. A third officer lay mortally wounded at a hospital with a shotgun blast to the neck when Larry Neil White calmly emerged from his house and offered a chilling explanation for the slaughter.
“You got these guys coming to your door,” White told authorities, who originally went to his home on a domestic disturbance call. “What would you do?”
Never in the 73-year history of the Odessa Police Department had an officer been fatally shot in the line of duty. Nearly as striking, said Texas Ranger Capt. Barry Caver, was the “matter-of-fact” manner of the 59-year-old suspect who, before he was carted to jail, demanded that officers retrieve his glasses.
“I told him he didn’t need any glasses where he was going,” Caver said.
The slayings of Cpls. Arlie Jones, 48; Abel Marquez, 32, and John “Scott” Gardner, 30, on Sept. 8 are part of a rising number of fatal police shootings across the nation that have led police officials and law enforcement analysts to suggest that an increasing number of suspects are adopting a troubling disregard for cops.
Miami Police Chief John Timoney describes the phenomenon as a “hunter” mentality among criminals.
As of Tuesday, 60 officers had been fatally shot this year, up 54 percent from the same period last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C. There already have been more fatal shootings of officers this year than in all of 2006, when there were 52. The rate of police slayings began to accelerate in late 2006, and the trend has continued this year.
Police officials from departments across the country say they are confronting more combative suspects in situations ranging from robberies to routine traffic stops.
“Lately, it seems like there is a brutality and a willingness to cross a line, to take a life, even if it is a police officer,” Caver said.
Jack Levin, director of Northeastern University’s Center on Violence and Conflict, said the police killings are a disturbing outgrowth of rising violence across the nation.
“With crime re-emerging, we are asking police to become more aggressive,” Levin said. “They are confronting gang members and an increasing number of offenders released from prisons.”
Many suspects, he said, have “little regard for the consequences of their actions. … They will shoot to kill.”
Motorcycle officers from around Texas join the procession for Gardner's funeral.
