Guns involved in most police officer homicides: study

Baltimore – Firearms were responsible for more than 90 percent of on-the-job homicides among law enforcement officers from 1996 to 2010, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Using FBI data, researchers identified 796 officer homicides, excluding officers killed during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many of the cases involved a “disturbance call,” and assailants sometimes waited to ambush the officer, the study abstract states. Officers often were working alone and, in some cases, they suffered fatal injuries despite wearing body armor.

The study was published online May 30 in the journal Injury Prevention.