Each year during National Police Week, which began Sunday, the FBI releases preliminary statistics of police officers killed in the line of duty.
The figures for 2014 are bad news.
Last year saw the felonious murder of 51 law-enforcement officers nationwide. That’s an 89 percent jump over 2013, with its record-low 27 cops killed. And it reverses what had been a downward trend. (The average since 1980: 64 a year.)
The statistics come after two fresh reminders of the daily perils of police work: this month’s ambush slaying in Queens of NYPD Officer Brian Moore, and the weekend gundown of two Hattiesburg, Miss., cops during a traffic stop.
Eight of the officers slain last year were shot from ambush, 10 others while conducting traffic pursuits or stops.
Of the latter, one police official noted, “There is no such thing as a routine stop” because cops are “basically walking into an uncertain situation.”
The statistics also highlight the grim fact that bulletproof vests aren’t perfect: 35 of the 51 officers killed last year were wearing body armor.
The FBI won’t speculate on why so many officers were killed on the job in 2014. But an obvious candidate is the explosion of anti-cop rhetoric — fueled by social media — that routinely portrays cops as wanton killers, and derides their most effective anti-crime tactics as racist.
Lives matter: black, white and every other color — including blue. It’s time more people started honoring the whole rainbow.