On August 7, Nick Armstrong became the 49th law enforcement officer killed by gunfire in America this year. He was 27-years-old.
If the bad, sad numbers continue at this pace, the 2011 gunfire deaths of officers will exceed every year in the last decade except possibly 2001. No one seems to know why there is a rise in these fatal attacks. After all, crime as a whole is down.
Nick Armstrong’s death is the most recent.
Nick was shot on August 2—a Tuesday—along with two other Rapid City, South Dakota, police officers. The three had reportedly approached a group of men who were drinking and causing a disturbance. At some point in the exchange, in an action that seemed to have no rhyme or reason, one of the drinkers pulled out a gun and began blasting at the officers, hitting all three, wounding two of them mortally.
One officer died almost immediately, a well liked 28-year-old named Ryan McCandless (number 46 killed this year).
Nick Armstrong was taken off life support the following Sunday.
He died just a few hours after still another officer was killed, San Diego PD’s Jeremy Henwood, a reserve Marine, who was shot and killed while in his patrol car. (Number 47)
The death of a police officer—or similarly a firefighter— wounds not only his or her family, but it also rends a hole in the psyche of a community.
And so it has been in Rapid City where, from August 2 onward, the town was thrown into a state of shock and mourning.
In the case of Nick Armstrong, however, for me the wound is a far more personal one. Nick is….was….the eldest son of my closest cousin, and just two years older than my own son.
Nick was also exactly the kind of person you’d want protecting and serving in your city, your town, your community. He was a great-hearted man with a wonderfully silly sense of humor, and a supremely kind and generous spirit. Unwaveringly fair-minded, even the people he arrested weren’t mad at him, said a fellow officer in one of the many news articles on his death.
Losing him seems impossible.
Nick followed his father, my cousin, Bill Armstrong, into law enforcement. Bill retired as an extremely highly-regarded captain in the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department, and is one of the bravest and best men I know. Bill’s wife Kim, who is the ferociously devoted mother to Nick and his two brothers, trains search and rescue dogs. In other words, both Bill and Kim have spent their lives committed to service. They are both shattered.
How could it be otherwise. Some storms you’re not supposed to weather.
Nick was buried Thursday morning in a ceremony that, between the grieving community, grieving sheriffs and grieving cops, drew people from all around the state. The live stream of the funeral was watched by more than 38,000 viewers. And while the outpouring of support couldn’t heal anything, it was steadying to parents who now have to bear the unbearable.
So, aside from being an account of personal loss and grief slamming into people I love, what are we to make of all of this?
I don’t really know. In truth, individual crime stats tend to spike up and down and even the best of those who study such things cannot always say why. I don’t think there’s a “war on cops,” as some articles suggested earlier this year. Suicides have risen with the economic downturn too. So, maybe it is that, in fiscally insecure times, already disturbed people are more likely to snap and do terrible things to themselves and others. Really, I don’t have an answer.
What I do know is that, in the space of a week, three excellent people—two in South Dakota, one in California—were shot and killed while working to make our communities safer for the rest of us.
And attention must be paid.
The video was made by Nick’s friend, Jessica
UPDATE: I see that yet another officer was shot and killed on Thursday as I was writing this; Officer Robert Lasso, 31, of the Freemansburg Police Department in Pennsylvania, was shot in the head when he went to answer a disturbance call.
Robert Lasso is Number 50.
So sorry, Celeste.
If these numbers include all “gunfire deaths” then the following should be considered,
From tearsofacop.com:
Many suicides by police go unreported to avoid stigmatizing families and to allow them to collect insurance claims and other compensation.
Another officer admitted he’s seen reports that list suicides under a broad classification of “accidental discharge of a weapon” that was anything but accidental.
…
Feldman said his organization didn’t keep statistics on police suicides by city “because I know we wouldn’t be given the right numbers.”
Mindbuilder, I just assumed these were deaths in which someone else shot an officer. I honestly don’t know if self-inflicted wounds are included. I kind of don’t think so.
But you bring up an important issue.
http://www.odmp.org/search/year/2011
The numbers don’t include suicide and I know that from having a cop friend take his own life three years ago and looking into that question. The above link is to the Officers Down Memorial Page. There it shows 47 officers killed by gunfire this year and 2 by accidental gunfire. Where traffic fatalities have gone down, deaths by felonious gunfire, as of this date last year, are up 21%. Over all deaths are up slightly.
In 2008 40 officers were killed nation wide by felonious gunfire. In 2009 there were 47 and 59 last year. We’re 21% up in 2011 and people wonder why cops seem a bit antsy at times? My son and I talk nightly when he’s at work and there is no doubt in our minds that people are more likely to attack officers now days than in recent years. How many years of increasing officer deaths by gunfire does someone need to see before it becomes a trend or problem and papers like The L.A. Times make it front page coverage? In the article they did on the killer of the San Diego Officer
I’m sorry for your loss Celeste and in reading about Officer Armstrong I’m sure he was an outstanding cop. In the below link you’ll get a look at what the guy was like who shot him. He should have been in jail at the time your cousin’s son was murdered, I’ll leave it at that.
R.I.P. Officer Armstrong.
http://mydeathspace.com/vb/showthread.php?24097-Daniel-Tiger-%2822%29-shot-and-killed-in-shoot-out-with-police
People by and large don’t have a clue when it comes to how many officers die yearly or the circumstances of their deaths. On the page I linked you to you’ll see the many different ways they died and what they were doing.
There is no way attacks on officers are down, ask any cop. I got into countless fights as a cop but not every day or even every week. Working the kind of assignment Officer Armstrong was working would raise the odds of having physical confrontations with people.
I don’t remember the last time my son went a week without getting into a fight with someone and he’s a patrol officer. Now with flash mobs and social media actually pushing the types of events where confrontations with police take place it’s only a matter of time before a cop’s death is the end result.
Thanks, Jim.
Hi, Surefire,
Thanks for the link. I tend to use the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund site (linked in the post) as I’ve found the multiple ways they break down officer deaths—in any given year and also historically—to be very straight ahead and useful.
But I appreciate the ODMP link as it has some helpful stuff too and I’d not seen it. More information is always a good thing.
Celeste,
As a friend of yours and as a former policeman I am very saddened to hear of Nick Armstrons’s death. My deepest sympathies.
Thanks so much, Clark. We’ve all been hit very, very hard.
Bad week, my nephew was wounded in Afghanistan in the past 24 hours but thankfully no one in his unit was killed.
That’s very scary news, SF. I am sending prayers that he’s okay.