One resident, nine police officers injured in shooting in Arizona, US
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Nine officers who responded to the scene were injured by gunfire, says the Phoenix Police Department.
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A woman and nine police officers were injured.
A woman and nine police officers were injured in a gun shooting at a barricaded house in Phoenix, Arizona, early Friday morning, according to Phoenix Police Department.
"The barricade situation has been resolved. There is no threat to the public. The area will be restricted while investigators are on scene," the Phoenix Police Department police added.
The police initially stated that several officers were injured during the standoff with a barricaded suspect, but later clarified that nine officers were injured.
The incident occurred when officers responded to a shooting at 54th Avenue and Elwood Street in south Phoenix but were fired at upon arriving at the scene.
When officers attempted to take a baby to safety after an unidentified resident left him outside, the suspect opened fire again. According to the Phoenix Police Department, the baby was not hit, but one woman was injured and is in critical condition.
A government-funded research project has recently found that the number of Americans dying from mass shooters is on the rise.
Read more: US Air Force to pay more than $230 million over gun shooting
Two in NYC, two college police dead
During the last two weeks, two people have perished in New York, and two college police officers were killed in Virginia on Tuesday.
In 2020, Americans bought a record number of weapons. Last year, law enforcement officers recovered an unprecedented amount of weapons, and more are being discovered with serial numbers removed, making them impossible to track.
Early evidence reveals that, compared to previous years, the time between when a gun was acquired and used in a crime and when it was seized by police has shortened.
“It’s something of a perfect storm,” said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and chair of its Violent Crime Working Group. “There is no one single culprit. Broadly speaking, it’s the pandemic, the social unrest, and its guns.”
Police are conducting less proactive investigations, while communities are reporting fewer crimes and providing less information when police attempt to solve them, in part due to a growing mistrust gap following a focus on police killings of Black people and the ensuing unrest.
