21 Shades of Blue, Brown and Green

Yesterday's article about the sacrifices made by airport police officers and hospital police officers elicited an amazing amount of positive feedback from LEOs around the country. The feedback proved one thing: No matter the color of the uniform, or the wording on the badge, cops have each other's backs. Like with any family there's a little infighting, but when push comes to shove on the streets, every cop out there knows they can count on their brothers and sisters, whether it be across jurisdictional lines, state borders, or international boundaries.

Much of the feedback that was posted to the ODMP's Facebook page pointed out additional types of specialized agencies that are often overlooked, such as campus police, transit police, housing police, etc. Future articles that will appear here on the ODMP Blog will discuss the contributions and sacrifices made by officers in each of these fields.

In preparation for those articles, I thought it would be helpful to let visitors know how the ODMP classifies agencies. We came up with classification system only for statistical purposes, so we could answer common questions, such as "how many corrections officers have been killed in the line of duty?" We've done our best to fit every type of agency out there into one of 21 different classifications. But at the end of the day, whether a fallen officer wore the traditional blue uniform of a city cop, the standard brown of a deputy sheriff, or conservation green, we treat them with the equal amount of respect and honor that they so rightfully deserve.

As of October 26, 2010, here's the number of officers who have fallen in the 21 different categories of law enforcement:

Airport, Harbor, Port, Railroad & Transit:	265
Border Protection, Customs & Immigration:	219
Capitol Police & Asset Protection:	26
Code Enforcement:	1
Commercial Vehicle Enforcement:	11
Controlled Substances Law Enforcement:	148
Corrections, Probation & Parole:	573
Court Services Law Enforcement:	35
Criminal Investigative Agencies:	537
Educational Institutions Law Enforcement:	44
Elected Constable Law Enforcement:	262
Health & Hospital Law Enforcement:	11
Highway Patrol & State Police:	1,633
Housing Law Enforcement:	32
Military & Department of Defense Law Enforcement:	69
Natural Resources & Wildlife Law Enforcement:	284
Parks, Recreation & Marine Law Enforcement:	138
Police (Municipal & County):	11,720
Sheriff (Municipal & County):	4,057
Tax & Revenue Enforcement:	144
Tribal Law Enforcement:	91