Page:Law Enforcement Officers 1996.pdf/6

 METHODOLOGY

Presented throughout this publication are tables, charts, and narrative comments addressing the number of law enforcement officers killed or assaulted. The unit of count is the victim officer, not the number of incidents or weapons employed. In tabulations pertaining to weapons used, personal weapons are considered to be any part of the body—hands, fists, feet, etc.—which can be employed as a weapon. Because of the differences in data collection and reporting procedures, care must be taken when attempting any comparisons between the information presented on law enforcement officers killed and those assaulted. Further-more, care should also be taken in any direct comparison between data in this publication and those in prior issues of Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted because statistics are updated annually.

In Section I are statistics on felonious or accidental deaths of duly sworn federal, state, and local law enforcement officers having full arrest powers. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program collects these data from several sources. Notification of duty-related deaths is received from state and local law enforcement agencies participating in the UCR Program. They submit preliminary data on any officer killed in the line of duty within their jurisdictions. FBI field divisions and legal attaché offices also report such incidents occurring in the United States and its territories, as well as those in which a United States law enforcement officer dies while assigned to duties in another country. In addition, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, administrator of the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program, maintains contact throughout the year, supplying information regarding officers whose survivors have received benefits. This threefold reporting procedure ensures the validity and completeness of the data.

Once notification of a line-of-duty death is received, inquiries to obtain additional details concerning the circumstances surrounding the incident are directed to the victim officer's employing agency. Information concerning two federal programs which provide benefits to survivors of nonfederal law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is furnished to the agency.

Pertinent criminal history data concerning the individuals identified in connection with felonious killings are obtained from the FBI's Interstate Identification Index.

Section II contains data pertaining to assaults on sworn city, county, and state law enforcement officers. The information is collected on a monthly basis from UCR Program contributors who compile and submit their data by one of two means: either directly to the FBI or through their state-level UCR Programs.

Law enforcement agencies report figures on assaults resulting in serious injury or instances where a weapon was used which could have caused serious injury or death. Other assaults are recorded only if they involved more than verbal abuse or minor resistance to an arrest.

In all of Section II, the data are based on information from 7,808 law enforcement agencies supplying figures for all 12 months of 1996. These agencies offered services to approximately 166 million inhabitants or 63 percent of the Nation's total population. Tables 25, 27, 32, and 33 are presentations by population groups. The table on page 2 shows the summary of the population coverage and number of agencies represented. Data for the states of Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Vermont, and the 1