
About Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted
The FBI publishes Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) each year
to provide information about officers who were killed, feloniously or accidentally, and
officers who were assaulted while performing their duties. The FBI collects these data
through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
Data considerations
When reviewing the tables, charts, and summaries presented in this publication, readers
should be aware of certain features of the LEOKA data collection process that could
affect their interpretation of the information.
- The data in the tables and charts reflect the number of victim officers, not the
number of incidents or weapons used.
- The UCR Program considers any parts of the body that can be used as weapons
(such as hands, fists, or feet) to be personal weapons and designates them as such
in its data.
- Law enforcement agencies use a different methodology for collecting and
reporting data about officers who were killed than the methodology used for
those who were assaulted. As a result, information about officers killed and
information about officers assaulted reside in two separate databases, and the
data are not comparable.
- Because the information in the tables of this publication is updated each year, the
FBI cautions readers against making comparisons between the data in this
publication and those in prior editions.
History
Beginning in 1937, the FBI’s UCR Program collected and published statistics on law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in its annual publication, Crime in the United States. Statistics regarding assaults on officers were added in 1960. In June 1971, executives from the law enforcement conference, “Prevention of Police Killings,” called for an increase in the FBI’s involvement in preventing and investigating officers’ deaths. In response to this directive, the UCR Program expanded its collection of data to include more details about the incidents in which law enforcement officers were killed and assaulted.
Using this comprehensive set of data, the FBI began in 1972 to produce two reports annually, the Law Enforcement Officers Killed Summary and the Analysis of Assaults on Federal Officers. These two reports were combined in 1982 to create the annual publication, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted.
Training
Based on more than 40 years of research and data collection, the LEOKA Program provides free Officer Safety Awareness Training (OSAT) to city, university and college, county, state, tribal, federal, and international law enforcement agencies. The goal of the LEOKA Program’s OSAT course is to provide relevant, high quality, potentially lifesaving information to law enforcement agencies focusing on “why” an incident occurred, as opposed to “what” occurred during the incident. (Tactical issues are not part of the training.) To request an OSAT course in your area, e-mail the training staff at leoka.training@fbi.gov.
Publishing on the Web
For several years, the FBI’s UCR staff worked toward the goal of publishing all of its reports solely to the Internet, which removes many of the limitations of hard copy books without losing the value of the information being provided. Beginning with the 2005 edition, the FBI began producing Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted exclusively as a Web publication. That report, along with the subsequent publications, contains all the information that was published in previous years’ hard copy reports but with the benefits of navigable files and downloadable information.
eBook and Portable Document Format (PDF) file available
Included on the home page of this electronic publication of Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2016, are links to an eBook and a PDF file of summaries of incidents in which law enforcement officers were killed or assaulted and injured in the line of duty. The compilation of narratives includes 14 years of information and is titled:
The objective of these products is to offer LEOKA information in portable, convenient formats (.epub and pdf) that can be downloaded for use on mobile devices (e.g., tablets, smartphones, etc.) by law enforcement researchers, trainers, and other partners.
What do you think?
The E-Government Act of 2002 promotes more efficient uses of information technology by the federal government. This online report is a product of the FBI’s effort to reach a larger audience more efficiently. The FBI welcomes your input about this electronic report via a short feedback form. Your comments will help us improve the presentation of future releases of Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted.
What you won't find on this page
Raw data. The data presented in Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted provide information about law enforcement officers killed and assaulted in the nation broken down by state and region. More detailed data (including the source data from which this publication is created) may be obtained by contacting the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division via e-mail at leoka.statistics@fbi.gov.
LEOKA data for 2017. The LEOKA data collected in 2017 will be released in 2018.
Questions?
To submit questions about this information or for Web assistance, contact the FBI’s LEOKA Program at leoka.statistics@fbi.gov.
Summaries of Officers Killed, by State
Criteria
Methodology - Officers Killed
Methodology - Officers Assaulted
Methodology - Federal Officers Killed and Assaulted
LEOKA Definitions
Topic Guide
Tables by Title
Downloadable Files
Summary of LEOKA 2016
Feedback
About the UCR Program
FBI UCR Program Directory
State UCR Program Directory
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
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Figure 6
Maps
Officers Feloniously Killed
Officers Accidentally Killed
Officers Assaulted
Roll over table numbers for table titles.
Law Enforcement Officers Feloniously Killed
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Table 7
Table 8
Table 9
Table 10
Table 11
Table 12
Table 13
Table 14
Table 15
Table 16
Table 17
Table 18
Table 19
Table 20
Table 21
Table 22
Table 23
Table 24
Table 25
Table 26
Table 27
Table 28
Table 29
Table 30
Table 31
Table 32
Table 33
Table 34
Table 35
Table 36
Table 37
Table 38
Table 39
Table 40
Table 41
Table 42
Table 43
Table 44
Table 45
Table 46
Law Enforcement Officers Accidentally Killed
Table 47
Table 48
Table 49
Table 50
Table 51
Table 52
Table 53
Table 54
Table 55
Table 56
Table 57
Table 58
Table 59
Table 60
Table 61
Table 62
Table 63
Table 64
Table 65
Table 66
Table 67
Table 68
Table 69
Law Enforcement Officers Assaulted
Table 70
Table 71
Table 72
Table 73
Table 74
Table 75
Table 76
Table 77
Table 78
Law Enforcement Officers Assaulted and Injured
Table 79
Table 80
Table 81
Table 82
Table 83
Table 84
Table 85
Table 86
Table 87
Table 88
Table 89
Table 90
Table 91
Table 92
Table 93
Table 94
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Table 97
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Table 99
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Table 109
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Table 111
Table 112
Table 113
Table 114
Table 115
Table 116
Table 117
Table 118
Table 119
Table 120
Table 121
Table 122
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted
Table 123
Table 124
Table 125
Table 126
Table 127
Table 128
Table 129
Table 130
Table 131