CBS News
Attacks on law enforcement increased, but fewer were killed in 2023, according to new federal data
Washington — Sixty law enforcement officers across the country were killed in the line of duty last year — a decrease of one from the year prior — but assaults on officers in the field are on the rise, driven by increases in gun violence, according to an FBI report released Tuesday.
The statistics were collected from law enforcement agencies across the country — including state, local, and tribal precincts — and showed a slight decrease in overall officer deaths, continuing the downward trend from the recent high in 2021 of 73 officers killed in the line of duty.
Still, according to the report, the last three years (2021-2023) saw the highest collective number of law enforcement deaths “than any other consecutive 3-year period in the past 20 years.”
In all, 52% of the officers who were killed in the line of duty died from a gunshot wound in 2023, a slight increase from 2022, and firearms were the most commonly used weapons. More officers were killed in the South, which is the largest region in the country, than in any other part of the U.S., the FBI said, although the South did see a significant decrease in overall officer deaths — 20 in 2023 compared to 32 in 2022.
An FBI officIal told reporters Tuesday that although the number of officers killed in action over the last three years has dropped, there has at the same time been a steady rise in assaults on law enforcement. The official said the FBI is working to understand the underlying reasons for that inverse trend.
Based on preliminary data, according to the report, “10,884 agencies employing 600,120 officers reported 79,091 assaults of officers, indicating a rate of 13.2 assaults per 100 officers.”
In 2023, the number of law enforcement officers assaulted by firearms reached about 466, a 10-year high, the FBI said.
The report’s release comes as the nation marks National Police Week. On Monday night, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other law enforcement leaders attended a candlelight vigil on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to honor fallen law enforcement officers throughout the country.
Last month, four members of a U.S. Marshals Service task force were shot and killed trying to arrest a fugitive wanted for firearms charges. In all, eight officers were shot.
One suspect died on the scene and two others were taken into custody.
Speaking at a memorial for Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Weeks, one of the fallen, earlier this month, Garland said the officers’ deaths “stand as a stark reminder of the enormous risks our law enforcement officers face every day, even when making the relatively routine arrests they make every day.”
“Every day our law enforcement officers go to work knowing that day may be their last. Every day their families send them off to work, praying it will not be.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party was headed for its first win in a national parliamentary election on Sunday, finishing ahead of the governing conservatives after tapping into voters’ anxieties about immigration, inflation, Ukraine and other concerns, a projection showed. But its chances of governing were unclear.
A projection for ORF public television, based on counting of more than half the votes, put support for the Freedom Party at 29.2% and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party at 26.3%. The center-left Social Democrats were in third place with 20.5%.
Herbert Kickl, a former interior minister and longtime campaign strategist who has led the Freedom Party since 2021, wants to become Austria’s new chancellor on the back of the first far-right national election win in post-World War II Austria.
But to become Austria’s new leader, he would need a coalition partner to command a majority in the lower house of parliament — and rivals have said they won’t work with Kickl in government.
The far-right has tapped into voter frustration over high inflation, the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. It has also built on worries about migration.
In its election program, titled “Fortress Austria,” the Freedom Party calls for the “remigration of uninvited foreigners,” for achieving a more “homogeneous” nation by tightly controlling borders and suspending the right to asylum via an emergency law.
CHRISTIAN BRUNA / Getty Images
The Freedom Party also calls for an end to sanctions against Russia, is highly critical of Western military aid to Ukraine and wants to bow out of the European Sky Shield Initiative, a missile defense project launched by Germany. Kickl has criticized “elites” in Brussels and called for some powers to be brought back from the European Union to Austria.
“We don’t need to change our position, because we have always said that we’re ready to lead a government, we’re ready to push forward this change in Austria side by side with the people,” Kickl said in an appearance alongside other party leaders on ORF. “The other parties should ask themselves where they stand on democracy,” he added, arguing that they should “sleep on the result.”
Nehammer said it was “bitter” that his party missed out on first place, but noted that he had brought it back from lower poll ratings. He has often said that he won’t form a coalition with Kickl and said that “what I said before the election, I also say after the election.”
More than 6.3 million people aged 16 and over were eligible to vote for the new parliament in Austria, an EU member that has a policy of military neutrality.
Kickl has achieved a turnaround since Austria’s last parliamentary election in 2019. In June, the Freedom Party narrowly won a nationwide vote for the first time in the European Parliament election, which also brought gains for other European far-right parties. The party is a long-established political force but Sunday’s projected result, if confirmed, would be its best yet in a national parliamentary election — beating the 26.9% it scored in 1999.
In 2019, its support slumped to 16.2% after a scandal brought down a government in which it was the junior coalition partner. Then-vice chancellor and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache resigned following the publication of a secretly recorded video in which he appeared to offer favors to a purported Russian investor.
The leader of the Social Democrats, a party that led many of Austria’s post-World War II governments, positioned himself as the polar opposite of Kickl. Andreas Babler ruled out governing with the far right and has labeled Kickl “a threat to democracy.”
While the Freedom Party has recovered, the popularity of Nehammer’s People’s Party, which currently leads a coalition government with the environmentalist Greens as junior partners, declined sharply compared with 2019. The Greens’ support also was projected to drop to just under 9%, and the outgoing coalition appeared to be well short of a majority.
During the election campaign, Nehammer portrayed his party, which has taken a tough line on immigration in recent years, as “the strong center” that would guarantee stability amid multiple crises.
But those crises, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting rising energy prices and inflation, also cost it support. The government also angered many Austrians in 2022 with a short-lived coronavirus vaccine mandate, the first in Europe.
But the recent flooding caused by Storm Boris that hit Austria and other countries in Central Europe brought the environment back into the election debate and may have helped Nehammer slightly narrow the gap.
The People’s Party is the far right’s only way into government.
Nehammer has repeatedly excluded joining a government led by Kickl, describing him as a “security risk” for the country, but hasn’t ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party in and of itself — which would imply Kickl renouncing a position in government.
The likelihood of Kickl agreeing to such a deal if he wins the election is very low, leading political scientist Peter Filzmaier said before the election.
The most probable alternative would be an alliance between the People’s Party and the Social Democrats — with or without the liberal Neos, who took about 9% of the vote.