The previous article determined that terrorists around the globe target police officers. Indeed, preliminary figures from 2005 may indicate a continuing and perhaps growing trend in the violence against law enforcement. According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), Terrorism Knowledge Base (TKB), as of August 14, 2005, world-wide, there have been 554 terrorist attacks targeting police officers. These attacks resulted in 2,546 injuries and 1,327 fatalities.
Preliminary information should be viewed with caution because the data includes all persons wounded or killed as a result of the incident. It is very likely that when just police officer casualties are considered the number significantly decrease. Also, most of the increase in attacks is taking place in Iraqi. While the violence in Iraqi is instructive it may be causing an anomaly in the overall trend in incidents against police officers. The most definitive deduction from the latest data simply reinforces the idea that terrorists target law enforcement officials and that this trend may be increasing.
