The "war on cops" that isn't: despite what you may have read, it's safer to be a police officer today than it has been in 35 years.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Columns - Column

BETWEEN JANUARY 20 and January 25, 13 police officers were shot in the U.S., five of them fatally. Two officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, were killed while trying to arrest a suspect accused of aggravated battery. Two more were killed in Miami while trying to arrest a suspected murderer. An officer in Oregon was seriously wounded and another in Indiana was killed after they were shot during routine traffic stops. In another incident, four officers were injured in Detroit when a man about to be charged in a murder investigation walked into a police station and opened fire.

Some police advocates drew unsupported conclusions from this rash of attacks, claiming they were tied to rising anti-police sentiment, anti-government protest, or a lack of adequate gun control laws. Some media outlets were also quick to draw connections between these unrelated shootings. While these incidents were tragic, the ensuing alarmism threatens to stifle some much-needed debate about police tactics, police misconduct, and police accountability.

In a January interview with NPR, Jon Shane, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the shootings "follow some bit of a larger trend in the United States" which he described as an "overriding sense of entitlement and 'don't tread on me'" Craig W. Floyd, chairman of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, told UPI, "It's a very troubling trend where officers are being put at greater risk than ever before." UPI reported that several police leaders thought the shootings "reflected a broader lack of respect for authority"

Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC, "It's not a fluke.... There's a perception among officers in the field that there's a war on cops going on" Smith County, Texas, Sheriff J.B. Smith told Tyler's KLTV-TV,"I think it's a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to 20, 30 years ago. It has become one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States, undoubtedly--in the top five"

During his interview with Shane, NPR host Michael Martin linked the shootings to the availability of guns. And Salon's Amy Steinberg, describing the crimes as "a disturbing trend," wrote that they demonstrated "an increasingly pressing need to revisit the conversation on gun control."

Dig into these articles, and you'll find no real evidence of an increase in anti-police violence, let alone one that can be traced...