Police in Iowa have taken a 46-year-old white man named Scott Michael Greene into custody in connection with the ambush killings of two officers in the Des Moines area today.
Those two killings would be the 51st and 52nd police officer deaths caused by firearms this year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a group that tracks police fatalities. As of today, these firearm-related deaths were up by more than 50 per cent year-over-year.
Some law officers' groups and conservative politicians have attempted to tie these numbers to a broader narrative of a "war on cops" stoked by Democratic politicians and carried out by the Black Lives Matter movement and its sympathisers.
There have been two high-profile instances this year where multiple police officers were targeted and killed by black male suspects with a history of antipathy towards law enforcement. In Dallas in July, Micah Johnson shot and killed five police officers and wounded nine others, telling authorities he "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers".
Later that month in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Gavin Long killed three police officers and wounded three others after leaving behind a lengthy trail on social media arguing that violence was the solution to the oppression of black Americans.