FBI Stats Don't Support Claims That GTA is Cop Killer Game

With today's GTA IV launch, criticism of the series has risen to a whole new level.

GTA bashers invariably point to two instances of GTA violence as particularly worrisome.

The first deals with violence against the game's virtual hookers. This concern has been voiced by, among others, real-world hooker afficianado Eliot Spitzer. These criticisms generally run along the lines of "you can have sex with a prostitute and then kill her to get your money back."

While technically true, in GTA's sandbox world such activity is strictly optional. The player can choose not to have the virtual liaison in the first place. Or, if the player does opt to indulge, there's nothing in GTA which precludes allowing the hooker to stroll off peacefully in search of her next trick.

The game's virtual police officers, on the other hand, are more problematic. Because GTA is a crime adventure, the player will invariably run afoul of the law. For all practical purposes, it is impossible to log significant time on any Grand Theft Auto title without getting into a virtual confrontation with the game's animated depictions of law enforcement officers.

Not everyone is comfortable with shooting at cartoon cops, however, and that is perfectly understandable. When informed that GTA IV's expansive Liberty City setting was modeled after the Big Apple, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said:
 

The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers.

While there are no points to be earned in GTA (a common misconception among non-gamers), many will understand Bloomberg's sentiment.

Some high profile video game violence critics have also seized on the cops-and-robbers aspect of the game and frequently refer to it in their public comments. For example, noting a spike in police officer line-of-duty deaths in 2007, Time reported last October on remarks by Dave Grossman, a psychologist, former Army officer and frequent speaker on the law enforcement lecture circuit:
 

Every time [officers] take down a gang house, there’s always one thing that will always be there,” Grossman says. “It’s a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative. And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators.”

Actually, if you kick down any law-abiding 19-year-old's door these days, you're likely to find a video game system. And probably a copy of GTA.

Perhaps because Grossman spends much of his time making presentations to law enforcement, his comments about GTA are frequently repeated by police officials. Just last week the Calgary, Alberta Police Service condemned GTA IV, calling it a "grave concern."

As recently as last weekend, Miami attorney and longtime Rockstar Games nemesis Jack Thompson referred to the Grand Theft Auto series in these unflattering terms:
 

…Jack Thompson has today persuaded the Miami-Dade Transit System to pull all advertisements for the Grand Theft Auto IV cop-killing simulation game from its bus stops.

Thompson has also stirred the Grand Theft Auto IV pot in recent e-mails to Florida law enforcement organizations. On April 25th he wrote to the head of the Florida Police Chiefs Association in an e-mail which inexplicably sought to link GTA IV and Judge Dava Tunis, the referee who presided over Thompson's November, 2007 professional misconduct trial:
 

Judge Tunis is collaborating from the bench with the video game company that has specialized in making the Grand Theft Auto cop-killing simulators... Tunis’ protection of the makers of this cop-killing simulation “game” puts every police officer in this state at heightened risk.

Although I've read a good bit of the transcripts of Thompson's Bar Trial, I never got the impression that Judge Tunis showed the favoritism alleged by Thompson. Her recommendation on Thompson's future status as a licensed attorney, by the way, is due on August 31st. And while Thompson never explains exactly how GTA puts police officers at risk, the implication is clear: Young men will play the game and be motivated (or, as Thompson has termed it, given a cranial menu) to hurt cops.

Curious about the claims that the Grand Theft Auto series represents a threat of violence against police officers, I decided to take a look at the numbers. After all, GTA has been around for a half-dozen years. If what the critics are charging is true then there ought to be some measurable proof, right?

In the United States, the FBI tracks annual statistics on police officer slayings as well as assaults on police officers. I compared these figures to the various release dates for the three major GTA console game releases to date (GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas) and plotted the whole thing on the chart below. It's a bit like the well-known video games vis-a-vis juvenile crime graph created by Duke Ferris of GameRevolution a few years back, although with a much narrower focus.

The FBI statistics portray a much different picture than that painted by critics like Thompson and Grossman.

In the chart above, I've plotted FBI figures for police officers feloniously killed (blue line) and police officers assaulted (red line, listed in thousands). As can be seen, police officer murders peaked at 70 in 1997 (i.e., four years before GTA III) and again in 2001. GTA III was released in late October that year, so if the game caused that year's spike, it would have had only two months in which to do so.

The chart shows that since GTA III was released police killings have been trending downward to a low of 48 in 2006. Although the FBI has not yet posted 2007 numbers, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund lists 68 police officers as having been shot to death in 2007. But it's worth pointing out that while there may have been a spike in police slayings last year, there was no corresponding GTA release. There hasn't been a new Grand Theft Auto console title issued since San Andreas in October, 2004.

To be fair, I should point out that various other versions of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas have been released at different times for Xbox and PC. And, of course, the original games remain available as rentals and from used game dealers. These points, however, actually tend to reinforce the idea that police killings are generally down despite the overwhelming popularity and continual availability of the Grand Theft Auto series.

In regard to assaults on police officers (red line on chart), there is even less fluctuation. For the years listed, assaults peaked in 1998 at 60,673. Once again, this was three years before the release of GTA III. In the intervening years assaults hit a low of 55,971 (1999) and a high of 59,662 (2004). They have never again reached 1998's level. While San Andreas was released in 2004, it didn't hit retail channels until October 26th. Assaults on police subsequently dropped to 57,820 in 2005.

While GTA is a lightning rod for negative press, there are certainly other games in which virtual cops and robbers shoot it out. Eidos' 25 to Life took heat from politicians along with a well-deserved beatdown from game reviewers when it launched in early 2006. Saints Row, a GTA knock-off, and the video game version of Reservoir Dogs have also come under fire from police groups.

Which reminds me that I've never seen anything in a video game that is nearly as disturbing as the Reservoir Dogs movie scene in which Michael Madsen tortures a police officer hostage. How is it that cop-killing movies like Reservoir Dogs and Heat get a societal pass, while video games bear the brunt of criticism on the violence against police issue?

As a wrap-up, let me say that, personally, I'm uncomfortable with shooting virtual cops. But it's important to evaluate video games and their potential impact based on facts rather than unsupported, agenda-driven hyperbole.

And the facts say that Grand Theft Auto is no threat to police officers.