Department officials say officers have been threatened with guns, shot at or shot in eight incidents this year; that's more than the previous two years combined
Like other forms of crime, deciphering why violence against officers rises or falls is nuanced. Homicide investigators noted that ghost guns, drug use and mental health struggles were regularly involved when officers faced gun threats. The District Attorney’s Office found that drug use and/or mental health played a role in nearly 80 percent of officer-involved shootings from 1993 to 2017.
The department’s data zeroes in on a specific kind of assault against police — threats involving guns — but overall assaults against San Diego officers have held fairly steady over the last two decades. In 2022, the most recent year that’s available, about 275 San Diego officers reported being assaulted in some way, according to FBI data. In 2000, about 285 officers reported assaults.kept by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Of the eight gun threats officers have faced this year, five of them involved non-serialized firearms, San Diego police Lt. Steve Shebloski said. “I think the biggest issue that I’ve noticed, at least this last year, is the availability of ghost guns and the the amount of people that are using them,” Shebloski said.
It wasn’t Teague’s first police shooting. In 2003, when he was just 19, he was shot by police who said he drove a stolen Honda at them as he tried to flee. A year later he was was sentenced for driving or taking a vehicle without consent. And in 2017, he was sentenced for charges that included identity theft and buying or receiving a stolen vehicle.
“The morale is hurt by the fact that officers do not feel that these criminals are being held accountable, that jails have become a revolving door, that the justice system is not sentencing these people to the appropriate amount of time,” he said.
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