Number of police officers killed by suspects declined last year

The number of law enforcement officers killed by suspects declined last year, falling to the second-lowest number of such deaths during the Obama administration, according to FBI data released Tuesday.

In 2015, there were 41 officers killed in what the FBI called “felonious acts,” which overwhelmingly involved officers fatally shot during law enforcement activities. The toll declined from the 51 officers killed by suspects in the line of duty a year earlier, when more officers were killed in ambushes and during traffic stops.

The FBI’s figures were made public at a time when law enforcement officers say they are feeling under siege during an era of protests against how police officers use force against people of color — and during a year in which officers were shaken by deadly, high-profile ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

Preliminary statistics show that so far this year, more officers have been fatally shot than during all of last year. There have been 46 officers shot and killed, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit that tracks line-of-duty deaths. In a report released earlier this year, the fund said that more than half of the officers killed by that point were shot in ambushes.

Despite the figures this year, statistics show that being a police officer has gotten safer over the past four decades. During the 1970s, an average of 127 police officers were fatally shot each year, according to the memorial fund. Since then, the death toll has continued to decline, falling by more than half, to about 53 officers fatally shot each year during the past decade.

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