What Changed

In the first week of January 2026, two national organizations published their year-end counts on officers hurt and killed in the line of duty.

On January 5, 2026, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) reported that 347 law enforcement officers were shot in the line of duty in 2025 and 45 of them were killed. On January 6, 2026, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) released its 2025 End-of-Year fatality report, which counted 111 line-of-duty deaths from all causes, 44 of them firearms-related.

Most coverage focused on the NLEOMF headline: deaths down 25% from 2024, the lowest level since 1943. That matters. But for anyone training officers to treat a gunshot wound, the more useful number is in the FOP release.

The Numbers

These figures come straight from the published reports. The calculations below are ODM's arithmetic, not figures the reports themselves state.

  • Officers shot in 2025: 347 (FOP)
  • Officers shot and killed: 45 (FOP)
  • Officers shot and not killed: 302, by subtraction
  • Ambush-style attacks: 67 incidents, 90 officers shot, 22 killed (FOP)
  • Firearms-related deaths: 44, down 15% from 52 in 2024 (NLEOMF)
  • All line-of-duty deaths: 111, down from 148 in 2024 (NLEOMF)

Run the FOP numbers and roughly 13% of officers shot in 2025 died. In ambushes, 22 of 90 died, about 24%. Outside ambushes, 23 of 257 died, about 9%.

NLEOMF's top circumstances for firearms deaths: investigating suspicious persons or activity (9), attempting arrests (7) and serving felony or search warrants (5).

One caution: FOP and NLEOMF count differently (45 shot and killed versus 44 firearms-related deaths), and their ambush categories differ. Don't mix their figures as if they were one dataset.

Why It Matters Operationally

Most officers who get shot are not killed. In 2025, the FOP count puts that at roughly seven in eight. Each of those officers had a period between wounding and definitive surgical care. Whatever care they got in that window came from themselves, their partner, or whoever reached them first.

That gap is not proof that care saved anyone. Survival after a gunshot wound depends on the wound, armor, distance to a trauma center, transport time and a lot of luck. The reports say nothing about what care each officer received, and ODM won't guess. But the numbers do tell trainers what kind of event they're preparing for. The typical officer shooting is a survivable-casualty event, not a line-of-duty-death event.

Military data explains why the first minutes matter. The Joint Trauma System's Damage Control Resuscitation Clinical Practice Guideline states plainly that "hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield," and says point-of-injury hemorrhage control paired with rapid evacuation saves lives. That's battlefield evidence, and a patrol beat isn't a combat outpost. The civilian translation for law enforcement, fire and EMS comes from the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (C-TECC). The core principle holds in both: uncontrolled bleeding kills fast, and the person closest to the casualty is the one who can stop it.

The ambush figures add a layer. A 24% fatality rate in ambushes against about 9% elsewhere suggests that when officers are attacked without warning, there's less room for anything to go right. Ambush survival starts with tactics, cover and getting out of the kill zone. The medical piece is what happens next: self-aid when you're alone, and getting a wounded partner out of the line of fire before treatment.

ODM's Position

Trainers should treat the 302 as the planning number. Every officer on the street should be able to put a tourniquet on their own arm or leg, one-handed, under stress, from wherever it's carried on their kit. They should be able to pack a junctional wound and hold pressure. They should be able to move a partner to cover.

The strongest counterpoint is fair: the decline in officer deaths has many possible causes, and nobody can credit it to any one intervention, medical or otherwise. ODM agrees. We're not claiming tourniquets or training explain the drop. What we are saying is that the data describes a population of wounded officers who lived long enough to need care, and agencies should train for that population.

What good looks like: casualty care runs through every scenario, not in a separate first-aid block once a year. Officers practice self-aid with the gear they actually carry, in the positions they would actually be in: seated in a cruiser, prone behind cover, in a doorway.

What Your Agency Should Do Now

  • Audit carry position. Can every officer reach their tourniquet with either hand, seated and prone? Check it in person, not on paper.
  • Run one-handed self-application. Time it. Do it after exertion. Repeat it quarterly, not annually.
  • Rehearse partner extraction to cover. Use real vehicles, real doorways and real body weight, with the officer's full kit on.
  • Build a warrant-service medical plan. Five officers died serving warrants in 2025, according to NLEOMF. Every operational plan should name the nearest trauma center, the casualty collection point and who carries the team's medical gear.
  • Train for ambush aftermath. Scenarios should start with an officer already down and alone, not with a medic on scene.
  • Track your own data. Review what care was given and how long transport took in your own officer shootings. Use it to shape training, not assign blame.

Bottom Line

In 2025, far more officers were shot and survived than were shot and killed. That gap is where training earns its keep. Plan, equip and rehearse for the wounded officer who is still alive and still needs a tourniquet.

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