Law Enforcement Death Count Up from COVID.

• Position: OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

The number of law enforcement professionals nationwide who died in the line of duty in 2020 increased 96% over the previous year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit group that has long tracked officer fatalities.

The Memorial Fund announced in its proprietary Law Enforcement Officers Fatalities Report that, as of Dec. 31, 2020, 264 Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial officers died in the line of duty over the past year; 135 officers died in the line of duty in 2019. In the category of "other" causes, which includes COVID-19 deaths, the number of fatalities is up 300% over 2019.

"The year 2020 will go down as the year of the most line-of-duty fatalities since 1974," says National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund CEO Marcia Ferranto.

Most significant in the 2020 Fatalities Report is the number of officer deaths in the category of "other" causes, which increased 300% over the number of deaths from other causes in 2019, due to...