In America On Thanksgiving Day, 2 Cops Didn’t Make It Home

In two places in America Thursday, police officers didn’t make it home to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. They were both killed in the line of duty. A county deputy in Michigan was deliberately plowed down by a fleeing suspect as he placed “stop sticks” in the road, investigators said, and a trooper in Texas was gunned down as he walked back to his cruiser after a traffic stop.

A fatal attack on police — or anyone — is a tragedy, but when it occurs on a treasured American holiday that encapsulates family, togetherness and gratefulness, the awfulness is magnified. The words last summer of Craig W. Floyd, the president and CEO of the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, weren’t a premonition of a terrible Thanksgiving for the families of the two police officers, but a solemn reminder of the danger they and other men and women in law enforcement confront every day.

“When our law enforcement officers put their badges on at the start of their shifts, they do so with the intention of protecting the citizens of their communities and this country,” Floyd said in July after a New York City police officer was gunned down in her parked cruiser. “Officers have been targeted for the job that they do, shot and killed or hit with vehicles.”

A Family Man, Even Friend To 'The Bad Guys'

Deputy Eric Overall, 50, has worked for Michigan’s Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, one of the largest county sheriff’s departments in the country, for 22 years. A colleague said he was “even keeled,” and his widow, Sonja Overall, said he was one of those cops who would help anybody, “even the bad guys.”

Overall was placing the stop sticks in the road shortly after midnight Thanksgiving morning when the suspect — a four-time felon with convictions in previous clashes with police — used his vehicle as a deadly weapon and deliberately swerved “to hit him,” investigators said. The 22-year-old suspect is in custody in a neighboring county. A GoFundMe account has been established for Overall's family.

Some 15½ hours later and more than 1,200 miles away, Texas State Patrol Trooper Damon Allen pulled over Dabrett Black's gray Chevy Malibu near Fairfield. As Allen was walking back to his police vehicle, Black killed him in a spray of gunfire, police said, then led authorities on a chase that ended 125 miles away. Black was captured after hiding in hay bales and exchanging more gunfire with police, investigators said.

Allen was “a loving husband and father of three,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said in a statement. “Trooper Allen's dedication to duty, and his bravery and selfless sacrifice on this Thanksgiving Day, will never be forgotten."

41st To Die In Gunfire

Deputy Overall and Trooper Allen are the 113th and 114th police officers who have died in the line of duty so far in 2017, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Allen was the 41st officer to die in gunfire and Overall, through sheer coincidence, was the 41st killed in a traffic-related incident. Last year, 62 officers lost their lives to gunfire, and 51 died in traffic-related incidents.

As grim as statistics are — and certainly they’re of little solace to the families, colleagues and friends of the two policemen who were killed on Thanksgiving — the trend line shows a measure of good news.

The number of officers killed by guns is down 34 percent from 2016, and deaths due to traffic-related incidents are down 20 percent. The statistics were updated by the Officers Memorial Fund on Nov. 24, 2017.

Officer Fatalities Highest In 1970s

High-profile shootings like those last year in Dallas and Baton Rouge left an already charged public with the impression gun violence against police was increasing. President Trump and other Republicans made the police assassinations campaign talking points. But while it is true 2016 was particularly deadly for law enforcement, statistics show it to be an anomaly.

Politifact, which looked at the issue in mid-2016, found the highest incidences of officer fatalities from 1956-2013 occurred in the 1970s, with two exceptions, including the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Information from the Officers Memorial Fund shows the number of police officers who were shot and killed peaked in 1973 at 156, and has since decreased from an average of 127 per year in the 1970s to 57 in the 2000s.

The 2016 rise in fatal shootings of police was fueled by the ambush of police officers in Baton Rouge and the sniper’s attack in Dallas, two incidents over a 10-day period in July that together accounted for eight of the 2016 police officers killed. Two officers were killed in Iowa by the same gunman. In all, 20 officers died in eight shooting incidents in 2016. It tied 1971 for the total, the highest of any year since 1932, according to the Officers Memorial Fund.

Together, the officers slain in 2016 accounted for a 25 percent increase over the year prior, when 41 died in criminal acts, according to FBI statistics released this fall. Also from that report:

• Of the 62 officers who were fatally shot, 37 were slain with handguns, 24 with rifles and one with a shotgun. They were among 66 officers who were killed in a criminal act; vehicles were used as weapons in the other four.
• Another 57,180 police officers were assaulted while doing their jobs last year, according to the FBI report. More than three-fourths of those assaults were physical, but in 4.2 percent of them, guns were used.
• The South was the deadliest region for police in 2016, with 30 reported felonious deaths. Another 17 were in the West, 13 were in the Midwest, four were in the Northeast and two were in Puerto Rico.

Police Shootings Now Hate Crimes

Another thing that makes 2016 stand out as a deadly year for police is that many of the officers were killed against the backdrop of protests around the country decrying what demonstrators called unfair police treatment of African-Americans.

The Dallas police officers were shot as they patrolled an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. In Baton Rouge, a police officer hit in the head with a rock while on duty at a protest tried to sue the Black Lives Matter movement, but a federal judge tossed his lawsuit, saying Black Lives Matter wasn’t a formal organization but a social movement akin to the civil rights and tea party movements.

The violence targeting police last year prompted a flurry of Blue Lives Matter bills passed by multiple states. Louisiana was the first state to make an attack on a police officer a hate crime, a response to the ambush that killed three Baton Rouge officers and sent three others to the hospital. Texas did the same after the sniper killed five and wounded seven police officers in Dallas.

California, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin have similar versions, and while Arizona and Kansas lawmakers approved tougher penalties in police shootings, they don’t include them in hate crime laws, Newsweek reported.

Read More

• Funeral Services For Slain Texas Trooper Damon Allen
• ‘My Thoughts Are With You’: Michigan Mourns Fallen Deputy

Photos: Oakland County, Michigan, Sheriff’s Deputy Eric Overall, left, courtesy of the sheriff’s department, and Texas Trooper Damon Allen, courtesy of the Texas Department of Public Safety