2022-08-17
Tasked with protecting life and property, police officers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. Responding to emergencies, conducting traffic stops, patrolling high-crime areas and arresting suspects is a regular part of the job — and every year dozens of law enforcement officers are killed, criminally or accidentally, in the line of duty. (These are the most dangerous jobs in America.)
According to the FBI, a total of 984 police officers were killed on the job in the United States in the decade from 2012 to 2021. Just under half of those deaths – 480 – were accidents, often a case of police officers walking being struck by a moving vehicle or dying in a car crash.
However, the remaining 504 officers were intentionally killed, which the FBI defines as an officer “fatally injured as a direct result of the intentional and intentional act of a perpetrator.” The circumstances of these deaths range from unprovoked assaults to ambushes, calls about domestic violence, or active shooter situations. South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming are the only three states where no police officer has been killed on the job in the past decade.
In Georgia, a total of 53 police officers were killed on the job in the past decade, or 218 officers for every 100,000 officers on duty (as of 2021) — the 12th-highest death rate among the 47 states that had at least one police officer killed between 2012 and 2021.
Of the officers killed in the state, 26 were killed accidentally and 27 were killed intentionally. These numbers are a reminder that hundreds of thousands of men and women who work in law enforcement risk their lives every time they don their uniform.
