Full Notification

by Kevin Johnson of USA Today News

Clark County, Ohio Deputy Sheriff Suzanne Hopper had no reason to believe she was in danger.

It was New Year’s Day this year when she arrived to investigate a disturbance at a local campground. A window had been shot out of a mobile home. Sheriff Gene Kelly said the incident, at the time, easily could have been attributed to a prank or the result of an over-heated celebration when some revelers are known to fire weapons into the air to mark the New Year.

Finding no immediate threat, Hopper, 40, began photographing footprints in the soft ground near the mobile home. Then the door of the neighboring trailer swung open.

The suspect, armed with a shotgun, leveled the weapon at Hopper’s head just feet away and pulled the trigger.

“He shot her right in the mouth,” Kelly said, adding that the wound severed the deputy’s spine.” She likely died before she hit the ground.”

The attack, which wounded another officer in a ferocious firefight, marked the beginning of a unusual series of attacks against law enforcement officers this year that bear little in common beyond uncommon brutality.

Since Hopper’s murder, at least 18 officers have died in similar ambushes or surprise assaults during routine service calls.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it,” said Craig Floyd, chairman of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which closely tracks officer deaths.

Floyd said the poor economy is threatening to put officers at greater risk by forcing steep cuts in agency budgets, including training programs. “Something is wrong,” Floyd said.

The issues contributing to this year’s series of attacks appear to represent a collision of societal ills, ranging from mental illness and domestic disputes to access to firearms, police officials said.

In Arizona, Buckeye Police Chief Mark Mann said the May 1 murder of officer Rolando Tirado bordered on the inexplicable.

Tirado, 37, had stopped a sport-utility vehicle in a Phoenix-area parking lot that was being driven erratically. During a friendly exchange with the driver, Mann said a passenger slipped behind Tirado in the early-morning darkness, placed the nose of a .45-caliber handgun under the back of the officer’s protective vest and fired. He fired a second round in the back of Tirado’s head.

“He executed officer Tirado,” Mann said of the 27-year-old shooter, an illegal immigrant, who died in a gunbattle in which a second Buckeye officer was wounded.

Mann said lack of training did not appear to be an issue in the shooting. Shortly before the May incident, the chief said that SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team officers from Phoenix conducted tactical training sessions for the department. The training may have helped the second officer, who despite being wounded in the neck, was able to find cover and return fire, the chief said.

“It’s a very difficult loss,” Mann said of Tirado, the first officer killed in the department’s history.

Lakewood, N.J., officer Christopher Matlosz, 27, was the third Lakewood officer to die in the line of duty. But the Jan. 14 death marked the first time a Lakewood officer was murdered by gunfire (the two others were killed in auto accidents).

Chief Robert Lawson said Matlosz had stopped his patrol car to talk with a man walking on the side of the road when “the man started walking toward the car, pulled out a gun and fired three times.”

“It was a total surprise attack,” Lawson said, adding that Matlosz had no time to remove the service weapon from his holster. Later, it was determined that suspect Jahmell Crockham, 19, was a suspect in a fatal shooting the year before. “The officer didn’t know who he was,” Lawson said.

In Clark County, Ohio, Sheriff Kelly said Deputy Hopper had no way of knowing that Michael Ferryman would be laying in wait for her. Ferryman, 57, had been charged 10 years earlier with shooting at sheriff’s deputies in another Ohio jurisdiction. In that case, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and eventually settled in the Enon Beach park.

Having been judged mentally ill, Ferryman was prohibited from owning a firearm. Kelly said he obtained the shotgun used in Hopper’s murder through a relative.

“We didn’t know he was even in our community,” Kelly said of Ferryman who was later killed in a three-hour shootout.

Well before Hopper’s murder, the sheriff said the department invested heavily in equipment for its 131 deputies, from assault rifles to vests.

“The vest didn’t help; she was shot in the mouth,” he said. “We have trained and trained and trained, but you can’t go on every call with your gun out.”