The morning after a gunman targeted and killed five law enforcement officers, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings called it "ironic" that his city was the target of the worst police loss-of-life since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Ironic because the police department says it has taken great strides to avoid the kind of confrontations and incidents that have led to distrust and frayed race relations in some communities. "This police department trained in de-escalation far before cities across America did it," Rawlings told reporters Friday. "We are one of the premier community policing cities in the country." According to data from the Dallas Police Department, the number of complaints alleging excessive and improper use of force has fallen from 147 in 2009 to 13 through mid-November of 2015. Even more dramatically, the department reports that the number of shootings involving police went from 23 in 2012 to just one this year (before last night). There appear to be two reasons for the
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