Terrorist Attacks Targeting Police, 1998–2010: Exploring Heavily Hit Countries

• Author: Jennifer C. Gibbs
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718765278
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
International Criminal Justice Review
2020, Vol. 30(3) 261-278
Terrorist Attacks Targeting
ª 2018 Georgia State University
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Police, 1998–2010: Exploring
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DOI: 10.1177/1057567718765278
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Heavily Hit Countries
Jennifer C. Gibbs1
Abstract
With over 14% of all terrorist attacks since 1970 targeting law enforcement, terrorist attacks on
police is a problem in need of scholarly attention. Police serve as symbolic targets of the government
and strategic targets of terrorist attacks, yet we know little about such attacks. This article explores
terrorist attacks targeting police in heavily hit countries, drawing from the Global Terrorism
Database. While Iraq and India have the most terrorist attacks targeting police, these countries also
have a high number of terrorist attacks against all targets. To account for the total number of
terrorist attacks, proportions are explored, finding Macedonia, Russia, and Georgia have the highest
proportions of terrorist attacks targeting police between 1998 and 2010. A common thread among
these heavily hit countries is a rapidly changing governing regime coupled with societal schism—in
other words, these countries seem to share low governmental legitimacy. Implications for future
research are discussed.
Keywords
terrorism, terrorist attacks targeting police, violence against police, Global Terrorism Database
A problem in need of scholastic attention is terrorist attacks against police. According to the
Global Terrorism Database (GTD), police have been targets of approximately 24,000 terrorist
incidents since 1970 (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
[START], 2017a). Of the 22 target types of terrorist attacks, police represent more than 14% of
terrorism targets (National Consortium, 2017a). Targeting police can be an effective strategy for
terrorist groups who may attack police to take out the first responders or as a symbolic attack on an
enemy government (Alexander, 2007; Freilich & Chermak, 2009; Gibbs, 2013). Indeed, some
extremists in the United States have “hit lists” on police for this reason (Freilich & Chermak,
2009; Miller, 2010). Further, police can be targets of opportunity through their daily routine activ-
ities, whereby police may come into contact with extremists who wish them harm, take advantage of
1 Criminal Justice Program, School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer C. Gibbs, Criminal Justice Program, School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike,
Middletown, PA 17057, USA.
Email: jengibbs@psu.edu

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International Criminal Justice Review 30(3)
the opportunity, use them to escape, or something else (see Canetti-Nisim, Mesch, & Pedahzur,
2006; Hamm, 2006; Klein, Gruenewald, & Smith, 2017; Parkin & Freilich, 2015).
While this is an important issue, we know little about terrorist attacks targeting police because
research on policing and terrorism centers on other topics, such as those related to counterterrorism
(Borum & Tilby, 2005; Brodeur, 2007; Carter & Carter, 2009; Chermak, Freilich, & Shemtob, 2009;
Clarke & Newman, 2007; Deflem, 2006; Freilich, Chermak, & Simone, 2009; Innes, 2006;
Jonathan, 2010; Loader, 2006; Lum, Kennedy, & Sherley, 2006; McGarrell, Freilich, & Chermak,
2007; Pelfrey, 2007; Weisburd, Feucht, Hakimi, Mock, & Perry, 2009; Weisburd, Hasisi, Jonathan,
& Aviv, 2010; Weisburd, Jonathan, & Perry, 2009). Studies of police as victims of terrorism are
scant in comparison (Deflem, 2011; Deflem & Sutphin, 2006; Gibbs, 2017; Gruenewald, Dooley,
Suttmoeller, Chermak, & Freilich, 2016), which “is surprising considering the large threat that
terrorism poses, especially to law enforcement”(Freilich & Chermak, 2009, p. 145).
This article attempts to partially fill this gap in the literature by asking what commonalities exist
among states with high terrorist attacks targeting the police. To demonstrate the high volume of
terrorist attacks on police, attacks in heavily hit countries are explored in the next section. Proportions
of terrorist attacks targeting police are presented as an alternative view of this problem. This article
concludes with a discussion of research avenues to explain these attacks. By studying terrorist attacks,
targeting police, scholars, and policy makers may be better able to understand terrorism, generally.
Tallying Terrorist Attacks on Police
The GTD is the source of terrorism data. Like any data set, the GTD has limitations. First, little
research has compared incident-level terrorism databases, of which there are several in existence, to
validate their accuracy (LaFree, 2010). Similarly, another potential drawback is missing cases due to
unreported events. An inherent problem with using open-source information is that the data are more
likely to include only the most newsworthy events (LaFree & Dugan, 2007). However, terrorists
typically seek public attention for their actions and terrorist attacks on police are those activities that
“shock the conscience,” increasing the likelihood that both terrorist attacks in general and specif-
ically attacks on police will indeed be reported events. Studying other crimes (e.g., burglary) using
media sources would severely undercount the true number of incidents, but terrorism is unique in
that terrorist groups want the public to be aware of their attacks. Groups involved in terrorism are
interested in media attention, as a terrorist incident typically is “designed to send messages to
outsiders” (Damphousse & Smith, 1998, p. 209).
Another important limitation applies to open-sourced data. Governments may be more hesitant to
release information about terrorist attacks, especially against its own agents; this reluctance may
vary by type of government, as well. Thus, there may be measurement issues related to terrorist
attacks targeting police. Because police work is not as clandestine as, say, military operations, this
limitation should be less important—at least for the numerator in the proportions to follow—because
governments are less hesitant to release information about police to news media.
Despite these limitations, there are several advantages to using an event database to study
terrorism and the GTD data are preferred to other open-source terrorism databases (LaFree &
Dugan, 2007), especially when trying to capture the rare event of terrorism and, specifically, terrorist
attacks on police. First, several other data sources (e.g., U.S. Department of State, International
Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events or “ITERATE”) have been restricted to only international
terrorist incidents (LaFree & Dugan, 2007). Hamm (1998) points out that “incidents of domestic
terrorism are especially susceptible to legal and bureaucratic ambiguities, and their proportional
unreported rate probably exceeds that of index crimes” (p. 67). Indeed, the GTD is an improvement
over other terrorism databases because the GTD collects information on both intra- and international
terrorism.

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However, the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents (RDWTI) began to include
data on both domestic and international terrorist events in 1998 and is available through 2008 (2009
for some countries), also encompassing the time period of interest here. The GTD is preferred to this
data set because the definition of terrorism used in the GTD is very broad, erring on the side of
inclusiveness yet having controls to help insure that events fitting the definition and criteria dis-
cussed above are included. That said, a search of the RDWTI found 6,278 terrorist incidents where
the police were targeted worldwide between 1999 and 2008 compared to the 2,827 recorded in the
GTD. GTD data originally were collected by a private business, Pinkerton Global Intelligence
Services (PGIS), and as such PGIS was not subject to government influence like other data-
bases—a trend continuing today. For example, while RAND uses strict criteria, it is under pressure
to include ambiguous attacks in Iraq that are less likely to be terrorist related. Indeed, 4,112 (65%) of
the attacks on police recorded by RDWTI occurred in Iraq, while the GTD counted only 746.
Without Iraq (which is not included in the present sample, anyway), the number of attacks on police
is similar (2,116 in RDWTI compared with 2,081 in GTD). However, because GTD provides more
fields of information than that available in the publicly available version of RDWTI, scholars are
better able to clean the GTD data, so it is preferable over RDWTI. Overall, then, the GTD is the most
comprehensive database on terrorism events worldwide and these are the best data to use for
studying terrorist attacks on police.
The GTD defines terrorism as “intentional act of violence or threat of violence by a non-state
actor”(National Consortium, 2017b, {10). Two of the three additional criteria must be present to be
included into the GTD:
1.
The violent act was aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious, or social goal;
2.
The violent act included evidence of an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey some other
message to a larger audience (or audiences) other than the immediate victims; and
3.
The violent act was outside the precepts of International Humanitarian Law (National Con-
sortium, 2017b, {11).
Of the 30,583 worldwide terrorist incidents between 1998 and 2010, the GTD reports 3,938
incidents (12.8%) in which the police were targeted....