What Changed

On May 11, 2026, during National Police Week, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program released Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted in the Line of Duty, 2025, along with updated law enforcement employee counts. Two days later, 363 names were honored at the Candlelight Vigil in Washington, 109 of them officers who died in 2025.

The report's headline cuts two ways. Felonious deaths went down. Assaults went up.

The FBI labels the data preliminary and subject to change, and it relies on voluntary submissions: 12,144 agencies covering 653,044 officers.

The Numbers

As reported by the FBI:

  • 53 officers were feloniously killed in 2025, fewer than in each of the prior two years.
  • 43 of those 53 deaths (81.1%) involved firearms.
  • Circumstances when officers were attacked included responding to unlawful or suspicious activity (20), warrant service (6), traffic stops (5), ambush or unprovoked attack (5), and pursuits (4).
  • 90,178 assaults on officers were reported, a rate of 13.8 per 100 officers, the highest rate in the 10 years the report covers.
  • 30,860 officers sustained 31,257 injuries in those assaults.
  • 445 officers were assaulted and injured with firearms, down from 470 in 2024 and 517 in 2023.
  • Accidental deaths, 2021 to 2025: 218 officers, with motor vehicle crashes (55.0%) and being struck by a vehicle (25.7%) the leading causes.

The South recorded the most felonious deaths again, 21 in 2025, a 25% drop from 28 in 2024.

Why It Matters Operationally

Memorials count the officers we lost. This report also counts the ones who were hurt and lived: more than 30,000 injured in assaults in one year, each needing someone to make the first medical decision.

Those injuries are not all gunshot wounds. Officers are cut, beaten, struck by vehicles, and hurt in crashes. Medical readiness for law enforcement has to cover bleeding from any cause, head injury, and crash trauma, not just the gunshot scenario that dominates most training.

The circumstances matter too. Six felonious deaths happened during warrant service, five in ambushes, and 20 while responding to suspicious or unlawful activity, the everyday work of patrol. Those are not calls where a tactical medic is standing by. The first medical provider is usually the officer or a partner.

ODM's Position

Position: A falling death count and a rising assault rate together make the case for medical training, not against it. When more officers are attacked and injured but fewer die, the time between injury and definitive care is where outcomes are decided. Agencies should fund that window.

Evidence: The FBI's own figures show 30,860 officers injured in assaults and 445 injured by firearms in 2025, alongside 53 felonious deaths. Current civilian and military casualty-care guidance, including the C-TECC TECC guidelines and the Joint Trauma System Damage Control Resuscitation clinical practice guideline, centers on early hemorrhage control and limiting blood loss before surgery. Those are skills that have to be in the hands of whoever is first on scene.

Strongest counterpoint: The data is preliminary and voluntary, and rates can move when reporting changes. Firearm injuries to officers actually fell for the second straight year, and felonious deaths dropped. A reasonable leader could read this as a sign that existing training and equipment are working and that limited dollars belong elsewhere.

ODM's response: That is a fair reading of one trend. It does not change the assault numbers, and it does not tell anyone whether officers can treat a wounded partner tomorrow. Declining deaths are worth protecting, and the way to protect them is to keep the skills that save lives from decaying. Compliance hours are not capability.

What good looks like:

  • Recurring, budgeted medical training for every sworn officer, not one-time grant courses.
  • Hands-on skill checks with the tourniquet and kit officers actually carry.
  • Scenario training that combines medical care with the calls in the FBI data: warrant service, traffic stops, disturbance calls, and crashes.
  • Tracking of officer injuries and on-scene care inside the agency, so leaders can see what is working.

What Your Agency Should Do Now

  • Pull your own injury data for the past three years and compare it against the kinds of calls that produce injuries.
  • Audit equipment placement: can every officer reach a tourniquet with either hand?
  • Schedule refresher training on hemorrhage control, wound packing, and casualty movement at least annually.
  • Add medical injects to existing scenario training instead of treating first aid as a separate block.
  • Put medical training in the budget request as officer safety, with the FBI numbers attached.

Bottom Line

Fewer officers were feloniously killed in 2025. Assaults reached a 10-year high, and tens of thousands were injured. Those survivors are why medical readiness is officer safety, and this report gives leaders the numbers to fund it.

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