The number of police officers who have been killed while on the job is up 28% compared to this time last year.
There have been 32 felonious officer deaths as of July 14, which is up from 25 killings at the same time last year, according to data from the FBI. Seven of the officers were killed in ambushes. The data does not include officers who were accidentally killed while on the job in traffic accidents or other such tragedies.
A report from ABC News found that the uptick in killings of police officers could be connected to the nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died while in Minneapolis police custody. The report found that more officers have been killed during times of civil unrest.
"Going out on the street and directing violence to somebody who represents the government, because police are an arm of the government, is the easiest thing to do. There is a constant search for the scapegoat for whatever is happening in the society, and the scapegoat ends up being law enforcement regardless of what it is that people have grievances about," said Maria "Maki" Haberfeld, a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“Any time the anti-police rhetoric heats up, it sends a message that it’s open season on law enforcement. We saw it in 2016, and we're seeing it now," Haberfeld added.
The number of officer killings spiked during several recent periods of unrest, including the 2012 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, and the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests following the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.
