11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail

The NYPD has release a new batch of statistics, the major takeaways that I found:

- Total Gunfights: 60
- Total subjects killed: 13
- Average number of shots fired: 4.6
- Average percentage of hits: 34%

It is also important to note:

In the New York reports, the hit ratio of officers who committed suicide with a firearm — and, therefore, hit their target 100 percent of the time — is included when the overall average is calculated, bringing it up.

I found this particularly interesting:

In 77 percent of all shootings since 1998 when civilians were the targets, police officers were not fired upon, although in some of those cases, the suspects were acting violently: displaying a gun or pointing it at officers, firing at civilians, stabbing or beating someone or hitting officers with autos, the police said.

I won't second guess the need for the officers to shoot in these circumstances, but it would appear that the stress of being under fire is not generally a factor in the officers accuracy.

This is a pretty small sample size, and like all shooting statistics I wouldn't be in a hurry to make many assumptions on this data.