NYPD Report: Fewer Police Shootings in 2011

An NYPD report shows police shot and killed 9 suspects and injured 19 last year — the lowest number in recent years.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly attributed the decline to increased firearm training and learning from past shootings. Each recruit spends 11 days on the range and police officers are trained on firearms twice a year, he said.

“It establishes that New York City police officers are very restrained in the use of deadly force,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Thursday, “and we are by far the most restrained of any major city in America.”

The report was only made public in recent years.

The New York Times says the report concluded that the 62 officers who fired at suspects demonstrated that "restraint is the norm" in police shootings.

Of the nine suspects who were killed, the report found five had firearms, two threatened officers with knives, one choked a detective and another used his vehicle as a weapon.

It found that more than two-thirds of the officers fired five or fewer shots. More than a quarter fired only one shot and none of the officers reloaded.

The annual firearms discharge report looks at everything from shooting stance to distances between officers and their targets.

Elizabeth Spain contributed reporting