The FBI released its Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted special report on May 11, 2026, and the numbers are stark. Fifty-three law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty during the 2025 calendar year, according to the report. That figure represents deliberate, criminal acts — not accidents or illness — and stands as the clearest measure of lethal violence directed at officers over the twelve-month period.
The report also included updated law enforcement employee counts, which the FBI used to provide context for the assault rate figures. That combination of raw numbers and workforce totals gives command staff a more precise picture of relative risk than raw totals alone.
90,178 Assaults and a Rate of 13.8 Per 100 Officers
Beyond fatalities, the scope of non-fatal violence in 2025 is significant. Agencies across the United States reported 90,178 officer assaults during the calendar year, the FBI said. The assault rate for 2025 came in at 13.8 per 100 officers.
For comparison, the 2023 reporting period recorded 79,091 officer assaults — a figure that, at the time, marked the highest assault rate in a decade, according to the FBI. The jump from that figure to 90,178 in 2025 represents a meaningful increase over a two-year span. The FBI's data collection covers both line-of-duty deaths and non-fatal assaults, and those two streams together form the backbone of the LEOKA program's annual analysis.
Data for the LEOKA program is gathered from participating agencies nationwide through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which collects information from thousands of city, county, and state law enforcement agencies. The FBI has continued to stress that accurate reporting by local agencies is essential to the program's usefulness — without complete submissions from participating departments, trend analysis loses reliability.
The LEOKA Program: How Data Becomes Training
The FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted program does not simply collect numbers and publish them. It operates through what the FBI describes as a three-tier approach: data collection, research, and training.
On the research side, the LEOKA team conducts in-depth interviews with both officers and offenders involved in critical incidents. That direct engagement with the people at the center of violent encounters allows analysts to move past raw statistics and into the circumstances, decisions, and environmental factors that shaped each event. The FBI said its research is specifically designed to give command staff a sharper understanding of the scenarios that result in fatalities and injuries.
Findings from that research feed directly into the Officer Safety Awareness Training curriculum. The FBI analyzes LEOKA data to develop lessons learned and emerging trends, then builds those findings into OSAT content. That training is provided to thousands of law enforcement partners both within the United States and internationally.
The program also aims to tailor officer safety training to real-world circumstances by expanding its data collection methods. The FBI's Crime Data Explorer serves as the primary platform where the latest preliminary LEOKA statistics and monthly infographics are published and accessible to agencies.
Ambushes Rising, and 2026 Already Tracking High
Recent FBI analysis has identified a concerning increase in the number of ambushes targeting law enforcement officers. The report does not attach a specific figure to that trend, but the finding reflects a pattern the FBI said its research has documented — and one that carries direct implications for how agencies train officers to respond to calls and conduct routine activity in the field.
The 2025 data does not exist in isolation. Preliminary statistics for 2026 suggest the trend of violence against officers remains high, with reports indicating an officer is being shot nearly every day during the first half of the year. That pace, if it holds, would place 2026 on a trajectory consistent with or exceeding the violence levels documented in 2025.
The FBI has not released full 2026 LEOKA data — the preliminary figures are early indicators only. But the signal they send is consistent with the directional trend visible in the 2023-to-2025 data window. Assault totals rose from 79,091 in 2023 to 90,178 in 2025. Felonious killings in 2025 stood at 53. The ambush finding adds a tactical dimension to numbers that might otherwise read as abstract.
For law enforcement executives reviewing the 2025 special report, the practical takeaway runs through the LEOKA program's own stated purpose: the FBI collects this data, conducts the officer and offender interviews, and builds the training curriculum so that agencies have something actionable to bring into roll call and command-level planning. The Crime Data Explorer gives agencies direct access to the latest figures as they become available.
