I was disturbed by the recent deaths of police officers in Dallas. This prompted me to do a little research on police officer deaths in the line of duty. I was relieved to find that police officer deaths are relatively infrequent.

According to the Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial Fund, there were 123 police officer deaths in the line of duty in 2015. That is out of approximately 800,000 sworn police officers in the United States. Another way to look at this is that, out of a population of approximately 320 million people in 2015, there was one police officer death for every 2,600,000 people.

Throughout history there have been spikes in officer deaths, especially from 1921 to 1935 and from 1970 to 1981. The highest number of police officer deaths was in 1930 when 304 police officers were killed  in the line of duty (think prohibition and mobsters), which means there was a police officer killed for every 404,000 people in the United States. The rate of death of police officers in 1930 was about 6 times higher than it was last year. In 1974 there were 280 officer deaths in the line of duty with a U.S. population of close to 214 million which means there were about 1 police officer death for every 764,000 people in the United States.

My research shows that police officers are less likely to die in the line of duty than they have been throughout most of the history of the United States. With the wall to wall media coverage trying to make the news more sensational than it really is, many Americans seem to see these times as more violent and dangerous than other times in our history. In the case of the deaths of police officers, as with many other aspects of our culture, things are actually better than they have been in most of our history.

The media coverage and/or the sensational nature of an event makes us see things as more negative. If we can put what happens in perspective with history and with what is really happening in everyday life, we can realize the normal positive nature of that every day life.