According to The Officer Down Memorial Page, 146 police officers were killed in 2003 while on-duty protecting citizens and enforcing laws across the country. That number is down from the 153 officers killed in 2002. According to The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), an average of 166 officers died annually over the past 10 years."I am troubled by the increasing loss of life represented in these numbers," said Craig W. Floyd, chairman of NLEOMF. "Despite all that is being done to make policing safer including better training and use of the best equipment available, we are still seeing a very alarming rate of fatalities among our law enforcement professionals."Suzie Sawyer, the executive director of Concerns of Police Survivors, Inc, (COPS), an organization that is active in honoring officers killed in the line of duty but chiefly concerned with their families, stressed that the numbers of deaths reported are preliminary and may differ according to the criteria the organization using.According to Sawyer, COPS follows the numbers reported by the Federal Department of Justice Public Safety Office Benefits Program, which provides death benefits to the eligible survivors of federal, state or local public safety officers who die in the line of duty. She reports 148 deaths in 2003. "You'll never get the numbers to match," said Sawyer. "You have to make a judgment call or it could take years to get a number."
Chris Cosgriff, the chairman of The Officer Down Memorial Page, a Web site that honors law enforcement officers who have died while on duty each year, agrees with Sawyer, but pointed out another important fact. "I think it is important to point out, that although these numbers are preliminary, it shows that 2003 is tied with 1996, for having the lowest number of deaths since 1970," said Cosgriff. "We hope that 2004 will continue this trend and produce less deaths than 2003." According to ODMP Web site, most officers died as a result of some form of gunfire exchange. The site states that 47 officers were killed this way. However, the second most frequent cause of death, automobile accidents, which includes accidents that occurred responding to or leaving a call as well as other accidents that occurred while on-duty, accounted for almost as many deaths with 42 recorded incidents. According to ODMP, 12 officers were killed in vehicle pursuits and 10 in criminal vehicular assaults, while seven were struck by a vehicle while responding. Other causes of death included accidental gunfire, heart attacks, and motorcycle accidents, various types of assaults, including a stabbing, falls, drowning, an aircraft accident and an electrocution. one officer was struck by a train in New Jersey on the last day of 2003. Cosgriff pointed out that the number of deaths caused by felonious means is exactly equal to the number of deaths by non-felonious means; (73) meaning that there was not a criminal action involved in the death. "This is an important reminder that there are more dangers facing our law enforcement officers than just the common criminal," said Cosgriff. He also pointed out that although charges were filed in most accidents where an officer was killed, ODMP does not consider those felonious deaths. They do, however, include alchohol-related deaths as felonious deaths. While it's hard for any department to lose a member, departments in California were hit the hardest last year. California lost 17 officers, with the California Highway Patrol losing four officers in separate incidents. States like Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota all lost just one officer in 2003. Sawyer pointed out that California, Texas and Florida are the states that tend to have the most officers killed yearly. They are at the top of the list again this year, along with Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee. Some departments suffered the loss of two officers in a single incident as in the small towns of Mishawaka in Indiana, and Abbeville, South Carolina. Both of those incidents involved a standoff with suspects and ended with their deaths by gunfire, the most common cause of officers' deaths. There were a few states that did not have any officer line of duty deaths in 2003. Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wyoming did not lose officers last year. November had the most officers killed, and the fewest line of duty deaths occurred in September. Of the 146 officers killed, six were female. The average age of those killed was 38.