The NY Post reports:

Over the past 10 years, city cops fired 4,702 bullets, accidentally pulled the trigger 323 times, and missed 78 percent of their intended targets, according to data The Post culled from a decade’s worth of NYPD annual firearm-discharge reports.

Cops’ bullets flew most in the 75th Precinct of East New York, Brooklyn, where lawmen gunned it out a total of 11 times in 2008 and 2009.

The area led or nearly led the city in 2010 in the four most violent crime categories: murders, 33; rapes, 61; robberies, 763; and felony assaults, 748.

At a distant second were the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and the 44th Precinct in Morris Heights, The Bronx, which each logged seven cop-involved shootings over the past two years.

Watchdogs contend that some of the gunplay is preventable.

In the 713 reported incidents in which cops shot at civilians, the officer was the only one firing 77 percent of the time.

“The large percentage of cases in which only officers are firing weapons raises important questions about the extent to which officers may be firing excessively,” said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Often cops don’t even mean to pull the trigger.

Officers accidentally fired shots an average of 29 times a year since 1998, the stats show. The reports note that many of those shots occur when officers are struggling to apprehend a suspect.

Lawmen also draw their guns in personal battles with depression. There have been 46 police suicides since 2000.

Cops shot 337 dangerous dogs in the past 10 years.

The NYPD steadfastly maintains that The Finest are models of restraint.

The preliminary 2010 figures show that officers logged a record low number of civilians shot and injured, 16; suspects and civilians shot and killed, 8; and total shooting incidents, 93, for the second straight year. That’s down from 2009, when the department counted 21 civilians shot and injured by police fire, 12 fatally shot, and 105 total gun-firing incidents.

(Source: NY Post)