The National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum (NLEOMF) has issued its “2021 END-OF-YEAR PRELIMINARY LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS FATALITIES REPORT” and, on its face, the report notes that things are looking pretty grim:
According to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), as of December 31, 2021, 458 federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement officers died in the line-of-duty in 2021. This is an increase of 55% from the 295 officers killed during the same period last year, and is the highest total line-of-duty officer deaths since 1930 when there were 312 fatalities.
Except in the following paragraph of the report, it says:
This year’s statistics demonstrate that America’s front-line law enforcement officers continue to battle the deadly effects of the Covid-19 pandemic nationwide. Preliminary data shows that some 301 officer fatalities have been identified as caused by Covid this year, and this number appears to increase almost daily. Covid-19 related fatalities continue to be the single highest cause of law enforcement deaths occurring in 2021.
Got that? 301 of 458 “record” “line of duty” deaths were related to Covid-19.
In fact, policing has become much safer in terms of total number of actual line-of-duty deaths.
It is interesting that pro-police groups like NLEOMF are scrambling to count Covid deaths as line-of-duty deaths when so many police unions have fought so hard against rules requiring police officers to be vaccinated as a pre-requisite to keeping their jobs.
