Posted on July 22, 2015
Note: The following op-ed was submitted to the Outpost by Bang Cao, a former deputy with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office.
According to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 64 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty during the first half of 2015. This represents a three percent increase over the same period in 2014 in which 62 officers were killed.
Read the report at http://www.nleomf.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2015-Mid-Year-Officer-Fatalities-Report.pdf
For the third year in a row, traffic-related incidents were the leading cause of officer fatalities in the first half of 2015. Thirty officers were killed as a result of traffic-related incidents, increasing 20 percent from the same period in 2014.
Firearms-related fatalities were the second leading cause of death among our nation’s law enforcement officers in the first half of 2015, decreasing 25 percent with 18 fatalities compared to 24 in the same period last year.
Officers feloniously killed during a traffic stop or pursuit was the leading circumstance of fatal shootings, with four fatalities.
In the first half of 2015, 16 officers died as a result of other causes unrelated to firearms or traffic, increasing 23 percent during the same period in 2014.
Job-related illnesses, such as heart attacks, increased in the first half of 2015, with 16 officer deaths compared to 13 officers during the same period in 2014.
Sixty-two fallen officers were male and two were female. Their average age was 40 years, with 13 years of service. On average, each officer left behind two children.
For the original article on nleomf.org, http://www.nleomf.org/facts/research-bulletins/
To read the press release, http://www.nleomf.org/newsroom/news-releases/mid-year-report-2015.html
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