2007 has been a deadly year for law enforcement / Traffic fatalities and shootings rise; Texas leads nation

Paper: Houston Chronicle

Date: Thu 12/27/07

Section: A Page: 10 Edition: 3 STAR

By MATT APUZZO

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A record number of fatal traffic incidents and a double-digit spike in shooting deaths led to one of the deadliest years for law enforcement officers in more than a decade.

With the exception of 2001, which saw a dramatic increase in deaths because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 2007 was the deadliest year for law enforcement since 1989, according to preliminary data released jointly by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and Concerns of Police Survivors.

Texas led the nation with 22 fatalities followed by Florida (16), New York (12), and California (11). The report includes the death of 17 federal law enforcement officers, including five Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents killed in two bombings in Iraq.

The report counted the deaths of 186 officers as of Dec. 26, up from 145 last year. Eighty-one died in traffic incidents, which the report said surpassed their record of 78 set in 2000. Shooting deaths increased from 52 to 69, a rise of about 33 percent.

Officer fatalities have generally declined since peaking at 277 in 1974, the report said. Historically, officers have been more likely to be killed in an attack than to die accidentally and shootings outnumbered car crashes. But those trends began to reverse in the late 1990s. This year, about six of every 10 deaths were accidental.

The report counted six times in which multiple officers were shot and killed in the same incident, such as the September shooting in Odessa that left three officers dead while responding to a domestic violence call. Domestic violence and traffic stops were the circumstances that most commonly led to fatal police shootings this year, the report found.

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