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Friday, March 16, 2001

The statistics show 19 fewer officers were killed in 1999 than in 1998.

The new figures were in "Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 1999," published Thursday by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program. The program gathers data from law enforcement agencies around the country.

The report credited "the concerted training efforts of law enforcement," in part, for the decreases.

"Improved training built on the lessons learned over the years, along with advanced technological support and other factors, have garnered obvious results," the report said.

The report showed the presence of firearms as the main factor in whether an incident ended in the killing of an officer or a non-deadly assault.

Almost all of the 1999 deaths, 41 out of 42, were by firearms. Of those, handguns were the murder weapons in 25 killings, rifles were used in 11, and shotguns in five. Of those officers killed by firearms, 27 were wearing some type of body armor at the time. Five officers were slain with their own weapons.

Twenty-three of those killed were employed by city police departments, 13 by county police and sheriff's offices, five by state agencies and one by a federal agency.

In 1999, the South led the nation in murdered officers with 20. The West had 11; the Midwest, six; and the Northeast, five.

Twelve officers were killed during "arrest situations." Six of those were serving arrest warrants, four were trying to prevent robberies or capture robbery suspects, and two were investigating drugs.

Eight officers were killed while enforcing the traffic laws, seven while investigating suspicious persons or circumstances, seven while answering disturbance calls, six in ambushes and two while handling prisoners.

Forty-nine suspects were identified in the 42 killings. Of those suspects, 39 were arrested by law enforcement agencies, five were killed after they slew the officers and five committed suicide after killing an officer.

In addition to those officers killed by others in the line of duty, 65 officers were accidentally killed in 1999 while performing official duties, a decrease of 16 from 1998. Automobile, motorcycle and aircraft accidents claimed the lives of 51. Nine other officers were struck by vehicles, three were accidentally shot, one was killed in a fall and one was killed in an all-terrain vehicle.

Assaults on officers by far outnumbered the killing of officers.

There were 55,026 assaults on officers performing their duties in 1999. The assaults were reported by 8,174 law enforcement agencies covering 72 percent of the U.S. population that year.

Of those assaults, 81.5 were committed with personal weapons such as hands, fists and feet, and 30.5 percent of those incidents resulted in injury. Firearms were used in 3.2 percent of the assaults, and of those, 15.7 percent resulted in injury. Knives or other cutting instruments were used in 1.8 of the assaults, with 22.1 percent of those resulting in injury.

Other unspecified dangerous weapons were used in 13.4 percent of the assaults. Of those, 28.4 percent of the officers involved were injured.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.