Law enforcementHow Often Are Police Shot in the Line of Duty?
Though still near historic lows, violent crime has been rising in the U.S. since 2016. So far this year, murders are up 22 percent across three dozen cities. There’s no disputing that police work remains risky, and new research on officers killed and injured in shootings shows a dangerous profession — but not one that’s getting riskier.
Though still near historic lows, violent crime has been rising in the U.S. since 2016. So far this year, murders are up 22 percent across three dozen cities. The increase in violence has created a particularly tense moment: Black and Brown communities say they’re under attack by the police, and form the backbone of protests against police brutality, while the police say their job is exceptionally dangerous, especially amid calls to defund law enforcement.
There’s no disputing that police work remains risky, as a recent case in McAllen, Texas, shows: On July 11, two officers were fatally shot during a domestic assault call. But the “war on cops” that some news reports and police advocates describe isn’t backed up by evidence.
A new study from criminologists Justin Nix from the University of Nebraska Omaha and Michael Sierra-Arévalo from the University of Texas at Austin adds more data to the debate, while rejecting the notion that the profession has become increasingly unsafe.
Here are the facts about officer-targeted violence.
How Often Are Police Shot in the Line of Duty?
In a study published in Criminology & Public Policy on July 20, Nix and Sierra-Arévalo analyzed fatal and non-fatal shootings of police officers between 2014 and 2019. The analysis relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings through media and police reports. During the study period, 1,467 local and state law enforcement officers were shot in 1,185 incidents, 249 of which were fatal. That works out to, on average, 245 officers shot per year, 42 of them fatally. The study excludes federal officers, corrections officers, and shootings of officers by colleagues.
Nix and Sierra-Arévalo observed a spike in firearm assaults against officers in 2016, but did not find a sustained increase over the six-year period of their survey.
According to other research, policing has actually become a much safer profession over the last five decades. A study published last year in Criminology & Public Policy found that line-of-duty deaths fell 75 percent between 1970 and 2016, according to an analysis of FBI data.
