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LEO Felony assaults – When do they occur?

Posted by Author on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 · 1 Comment 

Just a reminder that the data used for this analysis is provided by the FBI at their Uniform Crime Reports website.  The link is available on this page.

Other than time of day, what other factors of time have a correlation to felony assaults on LEOs?  There are two actually, day of week, and month of year.  Using data from the last ten years (1998 – 2007) felony assaults against LEOs has a high standard deviation and a low predictability.  What that means is that you can’t use this years data to predict next years results.  However, there are three “bumps” in the data during the months of March, May, and August.  I’m calling them bumps because over the last ten years felony assaults during these three months are slightly higher than the average.  Here’s the breakdown:

  • 549 assaults against LEOs (resulting in LEO death) between 1998 and 2007
  • 45.8 assaults per month (average) over the same period
  • 54 assaults in March over the last ten years
  • 53 assaults in May over the last ten years
  • 61 assaults in August over the last ten years

Again, time of year is not a great predictor of future behavior, but it does show some increase in violence during spring time (March and May), and then the largest increase as summer winds down in August.  Unfortunately the data doesn’t give LEOs any months “off” during the year.

More significant than time of year is day of week.  Over 49% of all felony assaults on LEOs occur on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (with Thursday and Friday being the most deadly by far).  For professional LEOs, this is a blinding flash of the obvious.  People tend to eat, drink, and be merry on weekend nights (and somehow Thursday has become a pre-weekend drinking occasion).  Wednesday is the next highest average, presumably because people are pre-pre-drinking for the weekend.

Combining the first two data sets, I can state with certainty that the most dangerous time for LEOs is between 6pm and 2am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.  Training time and resources need to be directed at officers on shift during these times.  Again, training MUST be conducted during low-light and no-light situations.  The data proves that bad guys are killing LEOs at night.

Please contact info@jedburgh-usa.com to give feedback on the blog, or to discuss training needs.  Also, feel free to post your comments.

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Comments

One Response to “LEO Felony assaults – When do they occur?”
  1. Gerald Barnett Ky says:
    March 25, 2009 at 1:20 pm

    Good informational article,but most law enforcement will take survival training,maybe once per year, and then soon forget,what they learned. I have been doing this for 32 years teaching LE . Nothing will ever substitute the “will to live”. We trained (4) times per year, two day and two night shoots. When training instuctor,must be dedicated
    to the lives of the people they train, anyone can have a (Instructor badge) on their uniform.Instructors must teach so the trainee will go home.

    Very few agencies, train enought at night, and with the cost of training becoming a problem,this will again drop.But as I told a group of administrators,is your training program just to cover you liability, or do you have the welfare of the officers at heart.

    Keep up the good articles,

    Gwb. 06

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