We're only 76 days into 2011 and already Florida has lost 10 law enforcement officers in the line of duty. That breaks down to roughly one per week and is double that of New York, the next closest state! Additionally, in the first three months of 2011 Florida has already surpassed its total line of duty deaths for all of 2010.
| Officer David Crawford |
Everyone reading this article is surely familiar with the Miami-Dade shooting and the first St. Petersburg shooting of 2011. These two incidents occurred just four days apart and claimed the lives of four police officers. In both cases, the officers were fatally shot by suspects who had complete contempt for law enforcement and society. And both shootings occurred during the service of fugitive arrest warrants.
If this trend continues, at year's end 40 of Florida's law enforcement officers will have been killed in the line of duty with 24 slain by gunfire. We cannot let this happen in Florida.
We cannot let this happen anywhere.
In memory of our fellow officers in Florida who made the ultimate sacrifice in 2011:
| Police Officer Rogerio Morales | Davie Police Department, FL | 2011-01-13 |
| Detective Amanda Haworth | Miami-Dade Police Department, FL | 2011-01-20 |
| Detective Roger Castillo | Miami-Dade Police Department, FL | 2011-01-20 |
| Sergeant Tom Baitinger | St. Petersburg Police Department, FL | 2011-01-24 |
| Police Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz | St. Petersburg Police Department, FL | 2011-01-24 |
| Correctional Officer Colonel Greg Malloy | Florida Department of Corrections, FL | 2011-02-02 |
| Captain John I. (Jay) McDonough | Volusia County Beach Patrol, FL | 2011-02-16 |
| Sergeant Adam Rosenthal | Delray Beach Police Department, FL | 2011-02-17 |
| Police Officer David S. Crawford | St. Petersburg Police Department, FL | 2011-02-21 |
| Deputy Sheriff Sebastian Diana | Orange County Sheriff's Office, FL | 2011-03-12 |
