The iconic confrontation in American policing, in which brave officers shoot it out with armed thugs, has occurred time and again in the annals of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Only days ago, what seemed like a routine traffic stop turned into a gun battle when officers pulled over a car only to see a passenger emerge with an AK-47 assault rifle. The gunman sprayed the squad car with about 20 high-velocity rounds, one of which nearly severed an officer's wrist.
As unsettling -- and unpredictable -- as such incidents are, a Times analysis of two decades of police records highlights another danger to officers, one little appreciated even by officials who oversee the department: Officers over those years shot themselves or one another nearly as often as they were shot by suspects.
Since 1985, there have been more than 350 accidental discharges by LAPD officers. There also have been more than a dozen so-called friendly fire incidents.
Though the resulting wounds tended to be less serious than in gun battles with suspects, scores of officers and more than two dozen suspects and bystanders have been injured in incidents that department officials blame on careless handling of firearms.
"Any officer being shot for any reason is an unacceptable number," said Police Commission Vice President Alan Skobin, who is one of two commissioners assigned to review accidental discharges of guns. "Unfortunately, when you have a large number of people who frequently handle weapons, there will be accidents. You just hope that there aren't serious consequences."
Last month offered up a sad example: The 3-year-old son of an LAPD officer got hold of his father's 9-millimeter service handgun as they sat in a pickup truck at a traffic light in Anaheim. When the child pulled the trigger, a bullet passed through the officer and left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Officials say that kind of tragedy is rare, but department records don't track accidental shootings not committed by an officer.
The vast majority of accidental shootings the department does monitor are avoidable and generally the result of careless or reckless conduct.
Over the last five years, the number of accidents has declined -- as have all types of officer-involved shootings -- but such incidents still accounted for about a third of all gunshot injuries sustained by officers.
