In 2022, 118 officers died in the line of duty, with 60 “killed feloniously, primarily by firearms;” and 58 deaths deemed accidental, according to USAFacts, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan initiative focused on government data. There were more accidental police officer deaths in 2022 than in any year since 2011. More than half of the accidental 2022 deaths came from motor-vehicle accidents, according to the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted database, which has collected data since 1996.
A three-decade graph shows that the totals of officers killed has moved up and down with little explanation, reaching a low of 76 in 2013 and a high of 146 in 2001. In 2022, there were fewer officers killed than in 1997, but the total reached a low of 76 in 2013. When broken down by region, 66 officers were killed in the South in 2022, more than twice the rate of any other region. (The South also has roughly double the amount of law enforcement officers than any other region, according to BLS employment data.)