Murder Thins the Thin Blue Line : The killing of still another area policeman points up the need for stronger anti-gun laws

Southern California enjoys no immunity from the national outrage of murderous violence against police officers. The area’s third police officer in a little more than two weeks fell in Garden Grove early Tuesday, shot before he could draw his gun. The killing came at the hands of a motorcyclist whom the policeman had stopped in a quiet residential neighborhood.

In Compton late last month, two officers were gunned down after they pulled over a pickup truck.

Such have come to be the risks of the routine traffic stop. The latest victim, Officer Howard E. Dallies Jr. of Garden Grove, had a file full of commendations and had undertaken studies at Orange Coast College in the hope of a promotion. And it didn’t matter in the end that Dallies was known especially for being alert and cautious, or that he was a veteran who could teach younger officers about proper procedures for handling just the sort of encounter that ended his life.

The tide of violence claims a national average of almost 170 on-duty officers a year, even as officers are better trained and equipped than ever. In Los Angeles County, violence against law enforcement officers has brought the grim total of officer fatalities since 1985 to 23; in suburban but increasingly armed and dangerous Orange County, six officers have been murdered in the same period.

As more brave officers die while doing their jobs, their colleagues grow more anxious about exposure in even the most routine encounters. Understandably so.

And the public, which law enforcement officers are sworn to protect, has an ever-thinner margin of safety as outmatched police try to cope with a tide of weapons let loose in society. Until the nation has stronger gun control laws, risk to officers in even the most routine stops will continue unabated.