In 2012,95 law enforcement officers made the supreme sacrifice in the United States, which is the fewest number of officers killed in at least 26 years (1987-2012). While reducing line-of-duty deaths is always desirable, each officer's death still represents the needless and permanent loss of a spouse, parent, child, sibling, neighbor, and coworker.Despite the advent of improved technologies and much clearer understandings of the risks that officers face daily, historic trends suggest that law enforcement in terms of accidental-as opposed to felonious-deaths is becoming even more treacherous, as Figure 1 depicts. While an average of 6 more law enforcement officers per year were killed accidentally than feloniously over the past 26 years (1987-2012), that annual average doubled to 13 during the past decade (2003-2012). Those officers who were killed accidentally in the decade 2003-2012 were, on average, 38 years old with 11 years' service, data which remained virtually constant for the past two decades.
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