More than 1,790 officers have died in the line of duty in the last five years

A Navy veteran with 30 years of police service behind him, Lt. Mark Meadows (60) was struck while placing cones at an intersection in Irondale, Ala., in the morning, in front of Highlands Church. Rushed to Grandview Medical Center, he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was survived by his mother, wife, three children and a granddaughter.

The death of Meadows, the "silent warrior," as his loved ones remember him, on Jan. 6 began the grim count of uniformed officers killed in service in 2025. Since then, 14 more names have been added to this list:

All those deaths collected by the National Law Enforcement and Security Forces Memorial (ODMP) come in addition to the 1,780 recorded by the organization over the past five years. There were another 903 in the previous five years, totaling 2,698 officers killed in a decade.

There has been an annual average of 300 officers killed in service since the year of the death of George Floyd, which sparked a national debate on police. Those who point to that figure with concern point to movements stemming from that episode such as "defund the police" for discrediting officers and promoting a life-threatening drain on resources.

ODMP data analyzed by VOZ reveals that while the number of officers killed on duty has fallen since 2020, after an initial increase in 2021, the proportion of violent deaths has increased. Shootings, assaults on patrol, hit-and-runs, stabbings and even drownings all figure into the count.

Thus, while in 2020 and 2021 the percentage of criminal deaths hovered around 20, in 2022 the number climbed to 56%. In 2023, it rose again to 66% and in 2024 it dropped slightly to 63%.

Reports of attacks on police officers from the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) help to complete that picture: they counted nine "ambush attacks" against law enforcement officers from the beginning of the year until the end of February.

In 2024, the FOP registered 61 such attacks. In 56% of them, the officers were not participating in an operation. "Ambush attacks against police officers have surged," they denounced in a publication at the beginning of the month: "This is unacceptable—our officers deserve better."

"These types of attacks are carried out with an element of surprise and are intended to deprive officers of their ability to defend against the attack," the police union explained. "Premeditated attacks contribute to a worrisome desensitization to evil acts that were once largely considered taboo except by the most depraved individuals."

Likewise, the FOP points out that the number of shootings and officers killed in shootings has fluctuated in the last decade with around 350 shootings and 50 police officers killed by gunshot wounds. According to the union, 2023 was the year with the most shootings (378), while 2021 was the year with the most deaths (64).

A dark decade

In a special report in 2023, the FBI noted that more officers had been killed between 2021 and 2023 than in any consecutive three-year period in more than 20 years. 

On attacks, fatal or otherwise, it claims that in the last decade "the rate of assaults against law enforcement officers has been increasing since 2021, with firearms being used in more than 300 assault incidents against officers each year since 2020."

Breaking down that data, which partially matches ODMP's, the agency explains that officers killed between 2014 and 2023 had an average of 12 years of service. The time slot between 6:01 p.m. and 12 a.m. was the deadliest. Public spaces were the most deadly location, followed by residential, commercial, and lastly governmental locations.