In 2011, according to data collected by criminologist Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent, police officers in the United States shot 1,146 people, killing 607. About 25 percent of those killed were suffering mental illness or emotional disturbance. In New York state alone, 49 persons were shot by police, including 23 fatally.

The mortal danger swings both ways. That same year, 73 police officers were shot to death in the line of duty.

Last week, three Liverpool police officers faced death on Sycamore Street when they were confronted by a 43-year-old man who had openly threatened to “take out” a village cop. A witness said the man appeared to be armed with a handgun.

It began on Tuesday evening, Sept. 9, when Sean Wells, a witness at the Sunoco A-Plus gas station at 500 Oswego St., alerted authorities that a man with a gun planned to “take out” a Liverpool police officer.

Wells, a former village resident, called police and told them the man was apparently carrying a loaded .45 caliber firearm.

Three Liverpool policemen, Sgt. Mike Manns and officers Fred Brough and Pete Rauch, responded to the A-Plus at about 9 p.m. and interviewed Wells, who gave them a detailed description of a man wearing shorts and drinking a beer. The officers searched the area in vain.

At 9:55 p.m. the cops reconvened at police headquarters at 310 Sycamore St., and as they stood talking in the LPD driveway, Brough spotted a man in shorts, sipping a Labatt Blue on the sidewalk about 45 feet away, standing in the shadows near the teardrop tree memorial to Baby Isabella.

“That guy fit our description,” Manns said.

All three officers drew their guns — a rarity for small-town cops — and split up. Brough shined a flashlight at the man, and Rauch took a position behind a car parked on the street. Manns began negotiating with the man who raised his weapon, pointing it not at the cops but to his own head.

“He kept saying, ‘Just shoot me. Just shoot me,’” Manns recalled, “and he started backing up toward Third Street.”

At that point Manns left Brough and Rausch on the scene and circled around the house at 314 Sycamore at the corner of Third Street to approach the man from behind.

“Mike saw an opportunity and he took it,” said LPD Chief Don Morris said. “He holstered his weapon and took out a Taser.”

Still backing away from Brough and Rauch, the man turned the corner east onto Third Street. As the man approached still walking backward, Manns crouched behind a vehicle parked in a driveway and deployed his Taser X26, temporarily disabling the man with an electro-shock.

“That gave us a good five seconds to tackle him and disarm him, without anybody getting hurt,” Manns said.

The weapon the man had displayed turned out to be a realistic-looking toy.

A few years ago when he’d lived on Vine Street, the suspect had been Tasered and arrested by a Liverpool cop, “But we didn’t know that at the time,” Manns said. “We just knew he was somebody with some kind of problem toward us.”

Although the encounter took just a few minutes, the Liverpool officers had called for backup, and a state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy soon arrived on the scene along with a Rural Metro ambulance.

“Everybody showed incredible restraint,” Manns noted. “Fred’s a seasoned cop. Like me, he’d worked for 20 years in the city [of Syracuse]. And even though Pete is still in training — he’s a district attorney office investigator, and this is his first job as a street cop — he handled the situation like a seasoned pro, doing everything by the book. I’m recommending him for a commendation.”

When Manns says “by the book,” he means it.

In July he took a three-day training course offered by the National Tactical Officers Association preparing officers to supervise critical incidents.

“The course and my teacher, Fred Farris from Kansas, made it clear that when dealing with emotionally disturbed people, we need to slow everything down,” Manns said. “In this case, we managed to surprise the subject before he could surprise us.”

No arrest was made, and the man was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital psychiatric emergency unit for evaluation. “It seemed as though he was attempting to commit suicide by cop,” Chief Morris observed. “They [the officers] all handled it extremely professionally, and we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”

On Thursday, Sept. 11, less than two days after the confrontation, Morris received a telephone call from the man. “I’m offering my heartfelt apology for what I did and what I put those officers through,” he said in part.

It could have ended in bloodshed, but instead it ended with a heartfelt apology.