Ambush of Police - A DOJ Report

By George Fachner and Zoe Thorkildsen

DOJ report : Ambushes of Police: Environment, Incident Dynamics, and the Aftermath of Surprise Attacks Against Law Enforcement (usdoj.gov)

Executive Summary

Ambush attacks against law enforcement officers remain a threat to officer safety, with the number of attacks per year holding steady since a decline in the early 1990s and the proportion of fatal attacks on officers attributable to ambushes increasing. Concerns about targeted violence against police are on the rise, while officers must not only be guardians of the public but also be prepared to respond to violence targeting them.

In an era of strained community relations and struggles with police legitimacy, violence against police is of particular concern. Yet little research has examined ambush attacks as a specific and particularly directed form of violence against police. The current study addresses that gap in the research literature through a mixed-methods study of ambush attacks against law enforcement.

This report includes a literature review of extant research on the topic of ambushes against police specifically and violence against police more generally. This area of research remains understudied. Only a few national studies have been completed, and there have been only a handful of studies focused specifically on ambushes. This study includes the first comprehensive set of analyses conducted on the topic of ambushes in more than two decades. This report details findings from four inquiries on the topic:

1. A series of focus groups with police leaders to discuss ambushes, including definitional issues, preparation and protection strategies, and recovery after ambush incidents.

2. A quantitative analysis of environmental (agency and jurisdictional) characteristics associated with increases in the number of ambushes experienced by agencies over a fiveyear period.

3. A quantitative analysis of ambush incident survivability rates associated with officer, suspect, and incident characteristics.

4. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of organizational learning in the wake of ambush ncidents based on survey data collected as part of this study.

The findings from these lines of inquiry provide a staging ground for future research as well as recommendations to support practitioners and researchers alike in better understanding ambushes against police officers.

First, data collection methods must be improved and standardized to allow for a better understanding of national trends in ambushes of law enforcement officers. Second, more research is needed to assess the impact of law enforcement practices and operations on violence against the police. Numerous aspects of police practices and operations have the potential to impact the likelihood of violence against the police as well as the outcomes when violence does take place. More study is required to identify and quantify those impacts.