CPAC Myth Buster: 0.0004 Percent Chance of Being Shot by Police

Former New York Police Department (NYPD) Detective Rob O’Donnell was interviewed on a panel moderated by Matt Boyle, Washington Political Editor for Breitbart News Network, about police data and anti-police rhetoric.

Boyle asked O’Donnell if he could debunk the “defund the police narrative.”

O’Donnell provided the following myth-busting data points in response to the habitual framing of police brutality:

1. Police use deadly force under 1,000 times out of 30 million violent felony criminal contacts per year. That’s a 0.0004 percent chance of being shot by the police. In America, “you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be shot by police.”
2. The NYPD in 2019, with 35,000 officers only fired their weapons in the line of duty 34 times. The Chicago Police Department, with 13,000 officers, only fired their weapons in the line of duty 34 times, and the Baltimore Police Department only fired their weapons in the line of duty four times.

O’Donnell accused politicians of playing a “shell game” by distracting the voters’ attention to false policing narratives while failing voters in “education, infrastructure, and transportation.”

O’Donnell noted that by defunding the police, “politicians will not decrease your taxes” but relocate the money to different areas. And when crime goes up, the municipality will “raise your taxes to lower the crime.”

“That’s all this is; they are just using this money and this opportunity because ‘never let an opportunity go to waste,’ that’s a democratic motto – to fund all these projects they’ve always wanted to fund all along.”