The Fraternal Order of Police reported on July 1, 2026, that 169 law enforcement officers were shot in the line of duty during the first six months of the year. Fifteen of those officers died. The FOP identified that fatality figure as a historic low in lethality for the profession — meaning that despite a sustained volume of gunfire directed at officers, fewer are dying from those wounds than at any comparable point on record.
FOP National President Patrick Yoes attributed the declining death toll directly to continuing improvements in medical trauma science and anti-ballistic technology. Officers are surviving wounds that would have been fatal in earlier eras, and the data from the first half of 2026 bears that out. With 169 shootings producing only 15 deaths, the case fatality rate among shot officers sits below 9 percent for the period.
The FOP currently represents more than 382,000 members and maintains national offices in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.
Ambush Attacks: 36 Incidents, 6 Deaths in Six Months
Of the 169 officer shootings the FOP tracked through June 30, 2026, 36 were classified as ambush-style attacks. Six officers died in those incidents. Ambushes — defined by the absence of a preceding confrontation or call for service that would place an officer in a predictable engagement — represent a specific threat category the FOP has long pressed Congress to address.
The FOP is renewing its call for Congress to pass the Protect and Serve Act, which the organization frames as the primary legislative vehicle for addressing the national problem of ambushes and unprovoked attacks on officers. No legislative deadline is specified in the FOP's mid-year report, but the renewed push comes as mid-year statistics reinforce the argument that ambush violence remains a persistent operational hazard regardless of overall lethality trends.
FBI Data: 2025 Officer Assault Rate Reaches All-Time High
FBI data released in May 2026 showed that law enforcement agencies nationwide reported 90,178 officer assaults during the 2025 calendar year. The 2025 assault rate reached 13.8 assaults per 100 officers — the highest rate the FBI has recorded to date.
That figure sits alongside findings from a systematic review published July 15, 2026, which examined 2024 assault data. The review found that 85,730 assaults on officers occurred in 2024, the highest figure reported in more than a decade. Of those 2024 assaults, 29,538 resulted in physical injuries to officers. The jump from 85,730 reported assaults in 2024 to 90,178 in 2025 represents a year-over-year increase of roughly 5.2 percent, and the record-setting per-officer rate in 2025 indicates the rise is not simply a function of a larger workforce.
At the same time, FBI Crime Data Explorer figures as of August 15, 2026, show a 6.9 percent decrease in general aggravated assaults nationwide between May 2025 and April 2026. Officers are absorbing an increasing share of violent incidents even as overall aggravated assault numbers trend downward across the general population.
Wellness Funding and Mental Health Infrastructure
New Jersey's Attorney General announced $500,000 in wellness grants on May 7, 2026, to support resiliency initiatives for officers facing increased violence. Two municipalities received direct allocations under that program: the City of Hackensack and the City of Union City each received $50,000 for wellness decompression spaces and injury prevention programs.
At the federal level, the Department of Justice's FY26 Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act program — commonly referred to as LEMHWA — is prioritizing start-up funding for agencies that do not yet have established mental health services in place. The program's emphasis on agencies without existing infrastructure signals a recognition that the mental health support gap is concentrated among smaller and mid-sized departments, not the large urban agencies that have historically had dedicated behavioral health units.
The combination of state grant activity in New Jersey and the DOJ's federal LEMHWA priorities reflects a parallel track to the legislative push: while the FOP presses Congress on the Protect and Serve Act, state attorneys general and federal grant administrators are moving on the officer wellness dimension through existing appropriations authority.
The data picture heading into the second half of 2026 is not simple. Officers are surviving gunshot wounds at record rates. They are also being shot, and assaulted broadly, at rates that have not been seen in years. The FOP's mid-year report and the concurrent systematic review land at the same moment, producing a statistical environment in which improved individual survivability and worsening aggregate exposure sit alongside each other without canceling out.
