A Wall Street Journal story about violence in rural policing gets some concepts right; however, the story's data and overall conclusions are faulty, writes rural police reporter Kathleen Dias in her column for Police1. "I agree with the premise of the article: there really are a lot of harsh interactions between law enforcement and the public in rural places. . . . Where the WSJ writer and I disagree is in the conclusion he draws (that rural cops kill people because they are poorly trained or trained to overreact), the sources for his statistics, and his slant."

"Rural places have high rates of shootings by law enforcement and also of law enforcement officers who get shot; that’s not new information or a new trend," Dias explains. "The writer is also correct that rural agencies frequently lack the ability to use the tools of time, distance and backup to defuse volatile situations."

The article's primary focus is that "rural sheriffs are killing more civilians," Dias adds. "The writer cites Mapping Police Violence stating that since 2013, killings by sheriff’s deputies have risen 43% while killings by police have risen by 3%. . . . First, sheriff’s offices are not all rural [and] not all rural police interactions, lethal or otherwise, are by sheriff’s offices."

Overall, MPV as a source is "profoundly troublesome. 'Police violence' is a broad, provocative term," Dias explains. "The definition from MPV is 'Any incident where a law enforcement officer (off-duty or on-duty) applies, on a civilian, lethal force resulting in the civilian being killed. . . . I found incidents like an off-duty Virginia state trooper who killed a man who was breaking into his home, an off-duty officer who killed his domestic partner and then himself, an off-duty deputy who struck a bicycle rider at night on a Florida highway notorious for wrecks. . ."

The WSJ article uses examples that aren't rural. Dias writes, "The article is about rural police killings, yet the first several quotes are from urban sheriffs about their resources, their experiences and cultural changes they made."

Read the full article about rural law enforcement violence by Heather Close and Kathleen Dias at The Rural Blog.