The Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted Program
Data and Training Aimed at Saving Lives
July 3, 2012
The FBI’s CJIS Division serves its mission—to equip its law enforcement, national security, and intelligence community partners with the information they need to protect our nation while preserving civil liberties—with every program and system it oversees. Through the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) Program, the FBI is committed to providing data and training that help keep law enforcement officers safe as they protect our nation’s communities.
The first effort of the two-tier approach to officer safety, and perhaps the most well-known, is the long-running LEOKA data collection and its annual publication, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted. The second effort of the CJIS Division’s commitment to officer safety is the LEOKA Program’s Officer Safety/Awareness Training, which uses much of the information provided by the data collection to add an applied approach to safety education. In tandem, these components provide statistics, knowledge, and education to advance safe procedures for officers everywhere.
The FBI has collected data regarding assaults on law enforcement officers since 1960. Beginning in 1972, detailed facts about line-of-duty deaths have been published. Recent expansion of the data collection methods are providing even more facts that can be studied by experts and officer safety trainers in order to tailor training to real world circumstances. For instance, recent LEOKA data has shown an increase in ambush situations in assaults and officer deaths. As a result, the LEOKA Program’s Officer Safety/Awareness Trainers are studying the data with the purpose of shaping future training that addresses this problem.
Since 2008, the number of officers feloniously killed has been on the rise. In 2011, 72 officers were slain while performing their sworn duties. It was the deadliest year for police officers since 1995. The aim of the LEOKA Program is to help reverse this trend with information and education that will keep officers safer on our nation’s streets.
In 2011, the CJIS Division’s LEOKA Officer Safety/Awareness Program trained more than 11,000 officers in over 3,000 agencies. CJIS’ LEOKA trainers are all former law enforcement officers who have extensive law enforcement backgrounds that provide credibility to the training. They travel throughout the nation each year providing targeted officer safety instruction in topics such as felony pursuit situations, conducting traffic stops, and other relevant subjects for modern law enforcement.
To access the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted publications, visit the FBI’s UCR page. LEOKA trainers can provide a full day of training or adapt topics to shorter amounts of time to accommodate conferences or specific agency needs. To find out more about the LEOKA Program’s Officer Safety/Awareness Training, agencies can e-mail LEOKA.training@leo.gov.