“Alarming,” “disheartening,” “concerning.”
These are just a few of the words that describe the reaction to the news that law enforcement-involved shootings in Clark County hit a three-decade high in 2024. As The Columbian’s Becca Robbins reported, there were seven shootings that left six people dead and one wounded. By comparison, there was one police shooting in Clark County in 2023 and two in 2022.
One of the 2024 shootings has been determined to have been legally justified. The other six are still under investigation.
Law enforcement officials and police accountability advocates had sobering if differing views on what’s going on. Sheriff John Horch said, “I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s happening.” Nickeia Hunter, a board member for the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, cited the Legislature rolling back police-reform legislation passed in 2021. “We saw how they stopped killing people when the bills were enacted,” said Hunter, whose brother Carlos Hunter was fatally shot by Vancouver police during a 2019 traffic stop.
The executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs attributes the increase in law enforcement shootings to a rise in attacks on officers. Steve Strachan told Robbins that 2,156 officers were assaulted in Washington in 2023, and he anticipates the 2024 figure to be higher.
“Use of deadly force is rare, but with the increase of attacks on law officers, it is common sense that they must sometimes protect public safety and themselves,” Strachan said.
Both the sheriff’s office and Vancouver Police Department review each shooting their officers are involved in. New Vancouver Police Chief Troy Price said he hopes to conduct deeper reviews of shootings by his department over the past 10 years, including examining the circumstances of the people shot to determine what previous contacts they might have had with law enforcement or mental health professionals.
One aspect of the 2024 shootings that is beyond dispute is that guns were a common denominator. In each case investigators recovered firearms or replica firearms belonging to the people who were shot. Simply put, law enforcement officers are trained to protect the public and themselves from armed individuals who appear to pose a threat.
According to the website Statistica, in 2021 Washington reported its residents owned 165,534 registered weapons, ranking the state No. 11 in the United States. According to the website World Population Review, 42.1 percent of Washingtonians own a weapon.
Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University reported that in 2022 Washington recorded 1,022 gun deaths, including 33 children and teens aged 1 to 17. That made firearms the leading cause of death among that age group in Washington that year.
Being a law officer is a difficult and dangerous job. As Robbins’ story notes, they often have to make split-second decisions with little information and in quickly unfolding situations. We applaud Horch and Price for taking these incidents seriously with the intent to delve deeper to address issues that if resolved can hopefully lead to nonlethal outcomes in the future.
We also praise advocates like Nickeia Hunter who strive to ensure law enforcement officers are serving their communities in a manner that keeps public safety top of mind.
