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Every Other Day, An American Cop Dies in the Line of Duty

Minneapolis Star Tribune
Bob von Sternberg; Staff Writer

It happens every few days, almost like clockwork.

On July 24, it was Roberto Dieto, a patrolman in Eagle Lake, Texas, hit by a train. A week ago, it was officer Jessica Wilson, shot in the face while answering an animal complaint in Hazel Park, Mich.

And Thursday night it was Melissa Schmidt, a Minneapolis officer who died of a gunshot wound after a bathroom confrontation.

On average, a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty somewhere in the United States every other day. Causes of death range from drownings to car accidents, but year in and year out, most of the carnage occurs when officers are shot.

Last year, 228 cops were killed nationwide, with two-thirds of those considered murders, according to the FBI and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

That was 74 more than the total in 2000, an increase almost entirely attributable to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, in which 70 local, state and federal officers were killed.

“Even if you take September 11 out of the equation, we were looking at an increase,” said David Johnston, a spokesman for the fund, which operates a memorial in Washington, D.C., that is dedicated to the 15,000 officers killed since 1792. “But the trend has been fluctuating over the past several years and it’s hard to come up with a complete explanation.”

Schmidt’s name eventually will be added to the memorial. When she was killed, she became the 193rd Minnesota officer to die on duty in the state’s history.

In a national context, her death was something of an anomaly: In 2001, 5 percent of the officers killed were women. But she also exemplified a grim statistic: During the past five years, as many as two-thirds of the officers shot to death nationwide were wearing bulletproof vests, as Schmidt was. The bullet that killed her entered below her vest _ something that occurred only 5 percent of the time an officer was killed while wearing such a vest during the 1990s, according to an FBI analysis.

When fatality statistics are examined on a state-by-state basis, Minnesota is a relatively safe place to be a cop. Its total number of deaths ranks 29th _ better than Wisconsin but worse than the Dakotas. California ranks first, with 1,293 officer deaths, and New York is second, with 1,067, according to statistics compiled by the memorial fund. Vermont, with 15 deaths in its history, is last.

The raw numbers don’t account for the vast difference in state populations. When the number of officer deaths is calculated per 100,000 members of a state’s population, Minnesota’s rank falls to 43rd nationwide, with 38.6 deaths _ higher than California, with 34.7 deaths per 100,000. And although Washington, D.C., is no longer considered the nation’s murder capital, it had the worst rate by far of officer deaths per 100,000 residents: 201.4.

The state-by-state statistics don’t break out the cause of death, but national statistics compiled during the past five years show that shootings, stabbings and other fatal assaults have led all other categories. Vehicle accidents have ranked second, while cases in which cops were struck by vehicles ranked third.

Miscellaneous mishaps _ such as motorcycle accidents, falls and drownings _ account for a handful of deaths each year. Until Sept. 11, no more than one officer a year was killed in a “bombing.”

The number of officers killed nationwide remained below 100 until the years of Prohibition and its attendant gangland activity, peaking in 1930 at 246. The rate dropped again until the 1970s, hitting 271 in 1974; that was the highest officer death toll in the nation’s history.

Two reasons for that increase, which lasted from 1970 until 1981: drug gang violence and violent radicalism, Johnston said. “We basically attribute that to the social unrest of the times, with all the negative views about the establishment and authority that were floating around,” he said.

The numbers eased during the 1980s, doing so precipitously during the ‘90s, in concert with dropping rates of violent crime nationwide. The number of deaths slumped to 134 in 1996 and 1998, a level that hadn’t been experienced since the 1950s and early ‘60s.

“We really don’t have a good explanation why those years stood out so much,” Johnston said. “Just chalk it up to a fortunate phenomenon.”

According to the memorial fund, when Schmidt’s name is added to the list of officer deaths that have occurred nationwide this year, the toll stands at 77.