Bernas recently issued a response to the nation's police shootings.
Bernas recently issued a response to the nation's police shootings.
Jillian Bernas, Republican candidate in Illinois House District 56, issued a response to the nation’s recent police shooting incidents with a message to constituents via her Facebook page.
“As a nation, we must work together to improve our communities,” Bernas said in reference to the most recent spate of shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. “Senseless acts of violence will not help us solve hard, pressing issues.”
According to Carl Bialik of FiveThirtyEight news, 2016 may go down in history as the most dangerous year for police-targeted acts of terror since 1973, when 14 officers died.
A University of Maryland study revealed that since 1983, when two officers were slain, not one U.S. police officer was killed in police-targeted terrorist acts until recently, when eight separate incidents transpired between 2013 and 2015.
Although 72 officers perished as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, statistics excluded it in this context because the incidents were not specifically police-targeted.
Attacks in 2016 will not be officially categorized by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) until next year, but relative to earlier events, the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings may qualify as acts of terrorism. In order to be considered as such, crimes must meet the GTD’s established set of criteria: that an attack intends to achieve a specific goal, aims to send a message to people other than its victims and occurs outside the context of actual warfare.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends affected by this horrific event,” Bernas said.
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