Comparing homicide rate for law enforcement officers vs. general population

January 13 2015

We know that public safety officers put themselves in danger in service to the public. However, they are trained for these jobs and the actual fatality rate is surprisingly low. In 2014, there were 121 line of duty deaths among an estimated 900,000 law enforcement officers in the U.S., and only 59 of those were homicides (assault, gunfire and vehicular assault): (source)

Fifty-nine homicides among 900,000 officers is .066 per thousand (59 divided by 900).

To compare that with the homicide rate for a similar group of U.S. citizens, I found a site that provides USA Causes of Death by Age and Gender. I used the homicide figures for males age 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54, groups which combined seem comparable to the law enforcement population.

	U.S. population	Homicide deaths
Males age 25-34	21,338,792	3,651
Males age 35-44	20,173,607	2,138
Males age 45-54	21,806,870	1,530
Total:	63,319,269	7,319

7,319 homicide deaths among 63,319,269 men is .116 per thousand (7,319 divided by 63,319,269), which means the homicide rate for law enforcement officers (.066 per thousand) is a little more than half the rate for U.S. men age 25-54. For law enforcement officers, however, I am leaving out homicides that occur off duty, which we'd expect to be less than while on duty. I've also left out deaths that occurred on duty but do not meet the criteria for including an officer's death on the Officer Down Memorial Page.