I posit that cops have body armor, training, and generally are equipped to take bullets, so to speak. Only 50 officers might have died, but if 1500 were shot, that makes the 1000 civilian fatalities look different; civvies aren't wearing vests.
That's a good point, but the corollary of that is, how many people were shot by the police but didn't die?
And going one step further, we've seen the stat for yearly police gun homicides but as far as I know there are no reliable statistics for how many people are killed by police by other methods. How many people are dying from chokeholds, from beatings, from having medical attention withheld?
I posit that cops have body armor, training, and generally are equipped to take bullets, so to speak. Only 50 officers might have died, but if 1500 were shot, that makes the 1000 civilian fatalities look different; civvies aren't wearing vests.