Wisconsin Right Now

The commander in charge of the police response to Tuesday's mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school made the "wrong decision" to not send officers into the classroom to confront the gunman who shot and killed 19 children and two fourth grade teachers, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said Friday. The chief of the Uvalde Consolidated School District Police Department, who was in charge of the initial response at Robb Elementary School, thought the shooter, 18-year-old Uvalde resident Salvador Ramos, was barricaded inside that classroom and that no other children were at risk, McCraw said. “Obviously, based on the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were still at risk,” McCraw said. “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. Period.” Nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classroom for more than 45 minutes before federal ...

Nearly 12% of law enforcement officers were assaulted while on duty in 2020, according to annual state-level data collected by the FBI. Alaska reported the greatest percentage, California the greatest number. A total of 60,105 officers were assaulted nationwide, with the overwhelming majority assaulted, and injured, by assailants’ hands and feet. Nationwide, 26% of assaults in 2020 involved a deadly weapon that wasn’t a firearm; 5% involved a firearm. California and Texas had the greatest number of officers shot in 2020: 379 and 300, respectively – less than half of one percent of their entire force. The report was based on the most recently available data from 2020 on 505,212 officers, or 72.5% of all police officers nationwide. The two largest states, Alaska (by area) and California (by population) reported the greatest percentage and number of assaults, respectively. Nearly two-thirds of Alaska’s officers, 813 out of 1,259, 64.6%, were assaulted, according to the data. Wh...

  (The Center Square) – More police officers in the U.S. died in 2021 than any other year officer fatalities have been recorded, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. From Jan. 1 to Dec. 28, 2021, 358 active duty officers died. That's compared to 296 over the same time period last year, the Memorial Fund reports . Firearms related deaths were up 31%; traffic-related deaths were up 30%. Last year’s numbers were significant because officer deaths in 2020 were the second-highest the Memorial Fund recorded since 1930, when 312 officers died. Deaths the Memorial Fund recorded in 2021 topped those figures. As of November 30, 2021, 314 officers were shot in the line of duty, of which 58 were killed, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) reports . Ambush style attacks were also up 126%, a worrying trend, it notes. The most officers shot in the line of duty this year were in Texas, with 42 officers shot, followed by 25 shot in Illinois and 21 shot in C...