Assault Of Police

The assault of law enforcement officers is an important but understudied topic. To better understand this form of violence, this study drew on the National Incident-Based Reporting Systemthe nation's largest data set tracking assaults against police alongside detailed information on situations surrounding attacks. Risk factors were examined within a fixed-effects logistic regression framework via a case-control method in which all incidents involving assault against police (n = 20,140) were compared with a random sample of arrest encounters that did not involve this form of aggression (n = 20,118). The data showed that a number of victim, offender, and situational characteristics predicted violence against officers, and the models were able to explain a substantial portion of the variance. Implications for research are discussed.