New York City police fired fewer bullets at suspects last year than any time since the department first began keeping in-depth shooting statistics 39 years ago, according to a report due to be released on Wednesday.
Experts said the drop reflected a police department that has become increasingly restrained about pulling the trigger, but also one scarred by two ugly incidents in the past 11 years when police officers shot and killed unarmed men.
The department now has cops take part in computer simulations in which they are taught to make instant life-and-death decisions.
The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the 2009 "New York City Police Department Annual Firearms Discharge Report." It shows that city police were involved in 105 shooting incidents during which 130 officers fired a total of 296 bullets, about 19% fewer than the previous year. In 2008, the NYPD was also involved in 105 shooting incidents, with the 125 officers firing a total of 364 bullets.
No city police officer last year was shot by a suspect for the first time since the police department started keeping detailed shooting statistics in 1971. There was one "mistaken identity" fatality when off-duty police officer Omar Edwards was shot and killed by another police officer on May 28, 2009, as Mr. Edwards was chasing a car thief down the street with his gun drawn. NYPD officers shot and killed 12 suspects in 2009 and wounded an additional 20. Both numbers are about average for the past decade.
The 2009 shooting tally stands in stark contrast to the numbers when the NYPD first started keeping shooting statistics. In 1971, 12 officers were shot and killed and an additional 47 shot and wounded. City cops, in turn, shot and killed 93 people and wounded an additional 221. A much smaller police force that year—it had 5,500 fewer officers than today's—fired a total of 2,113 shots.
John Cerar, a retired deputy inspector who headed the NYPD's firearms training unit from 1985 to 1994, said of the 2009 shooting numbers, "It's amazing."
Mr. Cerar said 40 years ago the police department adopted an order called "SOP 9" requiring that an in-depth report be filled out every time an officer fired his or her weapon in a hostile encounter.
In effect, he said, the police department began to hold officers "accountable for every shot fired."
Those documents became a basis for the annual NYPD shooting reports. "Because they [shootings] were being codified and counted I think it had a big impact on the way the training evolved," Mr. Cerar said. "There is a definite concentration on the amount of rounds fired."
Mr. Cerar said that two shooting "anomalies"—the high-profile fatal police shootings of two unarmed men, Amadou Diallo in 1999, and Sean Bell in 2006 —also drove home to cops the importance of restraint.
"Training happens through the newspapers sometimes," he said. "I hate to admit that but indicting officers definitely tells a story."
Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that the NYPD training these days is so focused on weapon control that "the argument you hear from some of the rank and file is that restraint is drilled into them so much that they might hesitate in dicey situations."
Mr. O'Donnell, a former city police officer and prosecutor, also believes that the record-low number of shots fired by the NYPD is an indication of how safe the city has become these days. Despite a spike this year in homicides compared with a record low in murders last year, the city's overall crime rate is the lowest it's been since such statistics were first kept in 1963.
In fact, when the 2009 shooting numbers are broken down they show that of the 105 shooting incidents only 47 were "adversarial conflict" shootings, involving armed suspects. In those 47, police wounded or killed 32.
The racial breakdown of those shot by police is 73% black and 29% Hispanic. The report doesn't break down the races of the remaining people shot by police. Of those shot, 92% had prior arrest records and 77% of those had multiple prior arrests, according to the report.
According to the report, only 68 of the NYPD's 34,953 uniformed officers intentionally fired their weapons.
There are no national police shooting statistics. But the 9,700 officers in the Los Angeles Police Department fired a total of 264 bullets in 2008, the most recent statistics available.
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