Reported Sniper Attacks, 1982–2001

Introduction

For 23 days in October 2002, the world was shocked by media reports of attacks in and around the Nation's capital—a Metropolitan Statistical Area of nearly five million inhabitants—resulting from the actions of snipers. The first six victims were killed within the first 27 hours of the ordeal. By the end of the 23 days, 10 people would be dead, three others injured, and two men would be in police custody. (Cannon, A. and staff of U. S. News and World Report, (2003). 23 Days of Terror. New York: Pocket Books.)

Because of the nationwide interest in sniper attacks and the terror the attacks in the fall of 2002 wreaked on the people living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program decided to look at the data law enforcement agencies throughout the United States submitted to the Program for the past 20 years and prepare a report summarizing that data. Several limitations to these data must be stated so that one can put this report in perspective. First, it must be noted that the data in this report are limited to those sniper attacks reported by law enforcement agencies participating in the UCR Program. Further, there is no uniform definition of sniper attack for law enforcement to follow, so the interpretation of this circumstance is left to the agency's discretion. The sniper-attack designation is a circumstance available on the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR), a form law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit for the offense of murder only. Consequently, the UCR database does not contain those instances of sniper attacks in which the victim survived. Finally, even though there are other circumstances on the SHR from which the reporting agency can select, the agency is limited to reporting only one. It may be that a sniper attack occurred in conjunction with another circumstance, for example a romantic triangle or a gangland killing, and the agency selected that other circumstance to report, not the sniper attack.

Caution is urged when trying to draw any conclusions from the data presented in this report. The data are presented as a compilation of statistics and are of informational value only. The statistics in this report include only those instances in which 1) sniper attack was selected as the circumstance, 2) the victim was killed, and 3) the weapon reported by the agency on the SHR was a firearm.

Purpose of Report

The report presents the information submitted on the SHR about the characteristics involved in homicide incidents limited to murder by sniper attack with a firearm. Specifically, this report looks at:

Focus of Report

This report focuses on incidents of criminal homicide in which the law enforcement agency has reported the circumstance as sniper attack in which the weapon was a firearm. Any murders involving a sniper in which the weapon was reported as something other than a firearm were excluded. For this report, 20 years (1982 to 2001) of SHR data were examined in order to acquire specific information regarding the victim, offender, their relationship, the weapon used, and the circumstance surrounding those incidents. The race categories considered in this report are the standard UCR categories of White, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaskan Native and unknown. Agencies submitting data on the SHR identify the age, sex, and/or race of the offender, if it is known. If none of these characteristics of the offender can be identified, the offender is, obviously, unknown. The selection of firearm categories available to law enforcement on the SHR are firearm, type not stated; handgun (pistol, revolver, etc.); rifle; shotgun; and other/unknown gun. The data in the tables are limited to those reported to UCR by law enforcement on the SHR.

Discussion

Incidents

During the 20-year period from 1982 to 2001, law enforcement agencies contributing data to the UCR Program submitted supplemental information on 364,648 homicides in the United States. According to data from the SHRs from 1982 to 2001, there were a total of 327 incidents involving murder during a sniper attack in which the weapon was a firearm, or 0.1 percent of the 20-year total of 364,648 homicides for which supplementary data were received. Within those 327 incidents, there were 379 victims and 224 instances in which the age, sex, and/or race of the offender was identified. Law enforcement agencies nationwide reported as few as 2 incidents in 1994 and as many as 47 incidents in 1988 that fit the aforementioned criteria. (See Table 5.13.)

Single sniper victim incidents accounted for 306, or 93.6 percent, of the total incidents. Of the 306 single sniper victim incidents, most (53.9 percent) were committed by an unknown offender, 33.3 percent by a single offender, and the remaining by multiple offenders. Of the 21 incidents that involved multiple victims, 57.1 percent involved a single offender. (See Table 5.14.)

All but 1 of the 327 incidents involved a single firearm type. A handgun was involved in 63.6 percent (208) of the incidents. The next most commonly used firearm was a rifle (75 incidents), followed by shotgun, firearm (type not stated), and other/unknown gun, in that order. One incident involved two firearm types, a handgun and a rifle. (See Table 5.15.)

An analysis of the data by region showed that nearly one-half (45.6 percent) of the total instances of sniper attack reportedly occurred in the West. The Midwest followed in frequency with 25.4 percent, and then the South and Northeast with 18.3 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively. (See Table 5.16.)

A breakdown of the data by population showed that Population Group I, which includes cities with the population range of 250,000 and over, had the highest number of reported sniper attack murders with a firearm with 43.7 percent. Agencies classified as Group IX, Suburban Counties, reported 12.5 percent of the incidents. The remaining 143 of the 327 total incidents were reported by agencies in other population group sizes. (See Table 5.17.) (Refer to Appendix III of this publication for an explanation of the Population Groups.)

Victims

Of the 379 reported murder victims of a sniper attack with a firearm, 77.8 percent were male and 22.2 percent were female, dispersed over all age groups. (See Table 5.18.) More victims (55) were killed in 1988 than in any other year of the 20-year period under consideration. (See Table 5.13.) Fifty of the total number of victims were under the age of 18 (juveniles); the remaining 329 victims (86.8 percent) were age 18 or over or of unknown age. Of the 295 male victims, 155 (52.5 percent) were between the ages of 25 and 49. Females in that age range comprised 47.6 percent of the 84 total number of female victims. (See Table 5.18.)

A breakdown of the data by race of victims showed that 52.5 percent were white, 44.1 percent were black, and the remaining 3.4 percent were other races (American Indian/Alaskan Native or Asian/Pacific Islander) or unknown. (See Table 5.18.)

Offenders

There were 224 instances in the 327 reported sniper attacks in which at least one characteristic (age, sex, race) of the offender was reported. Of the 224 instances in which a characteristic was reported, 96.9 percent of the time the offender was reported as male and the remainder, female. Of the 217 instances in which the offender was reported to be male, 42.4 percent of the time the male was reportedly between the ages of 18 and 24. No particular age group was most frequent for those offenders reported to be female. The youngest identified female offender was reported to be 13 years old and the oldest was reported to be in the 30- to 34-year-old age group. The youngest reported offender overall was in the 10- to 12-year age category. (See Table 5.19.)

Of the 224 instances in which at least one characteristic of the offender was known, 215 of those instances identified the race of the offender. An analysis of the data by race showed that of the 215 instances in which the race was identified, 54.5 percent of the time the offender was white and 43.7 percent of the time the offender was black. In 4 instances the offender was either an American Indian/Alaskan Native or Asian/Pacific Islander. Of the 211 instances in which the offender was identified as either white or black, 87.2 percent showed the offender to be an adult (18 and over) or unknown and 12.8 percent a juvenile. (See Table 5.19.) 

Confrontations

For this report, a confrontation is defined as the relationship of one or more victims to one or more offenders within the sniper attack. Of the 444 confrontations in the 327 total sniper attacks during the 20-year period, only 1 showed the relationship of the victim to the offender to be a family member—a father.

Stranger was reported as the relationship of victim to offender in 207 (46.6 percent) of the confrontations, and in 166 (37.4 percent) the relationship was reported as unknown. The remaining reported confrontations were dispersed over various victim-to-offender relationships. (See Table 5.20.)

Summary

The SHR data collected by the UCR Program show that sniper attack is a unique circumstance that occurs infrequently in everyday life. The stealth of the offender and the randomness of the victim contribute to the uniqueness of those incidents. In the 20-year period studied in this report, there were a total of 327 circumstances of murder by a sniper with a firearm, involving 379 victims and 224 instances in which a characteristic about the offender was reported by law enforcement. Fifty-two percent of the incidents involved unknown offenders; the victims were dispersed over all age groups. The data show that most victims were between the ages of 25 and 49, male, and white. The offenders followed a similar pattern in that in most instances in which age, sex, and/or race were reported, the offender was reported as being between the ages of 25 and 49, male, and white. Most incidents involving snipers were reported by law enforcement agencies in the Western region, and the majority of the attacks involved a handgun.