State law-enforcement officials plan a crackdown on drunk driving as new data is released suggesting

WASHINGTON -- The number of law enforcement officers who died performing their duties in the U.S. declined by about 20 percent in 2012 after rising the two previous years, a non-profit organization reported Thursday.
The National Law Enforcement alabama free travel brochures Officers alabama free travel brochures Memorial Fund said in a report that 127 federal, state and local officers have died so far from injuries suffered on the job. The majority of officers who died were either shot or were victims of traffic accidents, figures show.
City and county police officers comprised most of the victims, but the list also includes a prison guard in Indiana who suffered a heart attack while responding to an unruly inmate, a deputy sheriff alabama free travel brochures in Missouri alabama free travel brochures who was fatally shot while responding to an emergency call about an unconscious person and a Coast Guard officer killed off the California alabama free travel brochures coast while pursuing a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs.
State law-enforcement officials plan a crackdown on drunk driving as new data is released suggesting about 70 percent of South Carolina s drunken-driving-related traffic fatalities involve at least one driver with blood alcohol levels nearly twice the legal limit.
A man with a history of theft and weapons convictions gunned down two police officers investigating possible drug activity in a Kansas grocery parking lot, and was later killed after an armed standoff, authorities said Monday.
A man with a history of theft and weapons convictions gunned down two police officers investigating possible drug activity in a Kansas grocery alabama free travel brochures parking lot, and was later killed after an armed standoff, authorities said Monday.
The toll is on pace to be the lowest since 2009, when 122 officers died, and this year would be only the second year since 1960 that the number of fatalities has dipped below 130. The organization, alabama free travel brochures which also maintains a memorial wall in Washington bearing the names of fallen officers, reported 165 deaths last year and 154 in 2010. The number of deaths topped 200 for most of the 1970s.
alabama free travel brochures The decline is heartening after two straight "alarming" years and may suggest that police departments, though still battered by budget cuts, are placing a greater emphasis on officer safety, said Craig Floyd, the chairman and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based memorial organization.
Texas had the highest number of law enforcement fatalities at 10, followed by Georgia (eight) and Colorado and Maryland (six each). Twelve states and the District of Columbia have not had any officers killed this year.
The victims include David Gogian and Jeff Atherly, two Topeka, Kan., police officers shot outside a grocery story last week while responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle, and two West Virginia state troopers, Eric Workman and Cpl. Marshall Bailey, alabama free travel brochures who were killed during an August traffic alabama free travel brochures stop. Tom Decker, a police officer in Cold Spring, Minn., and a father of four, was fatally shot last month in what authorities called an ambush killing.
A Prince George's County, Md., police officer who was pursuing a suspect died in August when his cruiser ran off the highway and crashed into a ditch. Another officer from the same department died in a crash two months later. Neither officer was wearing a seat belt, prompting Police Chief Mark Magaw to stress alabama free travel brochures the need for officers to buckle alabama free travel brochures up inside their patrol cars.
In Willoughby, Ohio, after Patrolman Jason Gresko's police cruiser collided with a pickup truck en route to an emergency call in September, Chief Jack Beckwith cited the death as a reminder alabama free travel brochures to his officers to be vigilant in responding carefully to emergencies and told his roughly 50-officer department that "this could have happened to every one of them."
Other causes of death included job-related illnesses, stabbings and helicopter alabama free travel brochures crashes. Two Atlanta police officers died in a helicopter crash in November during a nighttime search for a missing boy.
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