National Police Week 2018

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy designated May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day, and the week in which that day falls as National Police Week.  Since 1982, a memorial service has been held in Washington D.C. during Police Week to honor fallen law enforcement officers.  When it began, it was a small gathering of about 120 people, but in the decades since has grown exponentially; now between 20-40,000 law enforcement officers and supporters gather in the nation's capital for this event each year.

For the last 12 years, the Officer Down Memorial Page has hosted the National Police Week 5K on the first Saturday of Police Week.  This year's event, which includes over 2700 runners and walkers in D.C. and virtual runners around the world, will take place on May 12th.

Other important Police Week events include the Memorial Service hosted by the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, the Candlelight Vigil hosted by NLEOMF, the Road to Hope bike ride hosted by Law Enforcement United, and the National Survivors Conference and associated seminars and events hosted by Concerns of Police Survivors throughout the week.

More Police Week events can be found here.

Our primary mission at ODMP is to honor the lives of law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty, and Police Week is an annual event that reminds us why this mission is so vital.  It is a privilege to work each day to honor the memories of the fallen. 

We hope you'll take a moment during Police Week, wherever you are, to remember those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Line of Duty Deaths: Official Count

Each year, the Officer Down Memorial Page pays tribute to each law enforcement officer who dies in the line of duty in the United States. 

However, we are often asked why there are variations in the numbers of line of duty deaths (LODDs) recognized by different organizations and when the official list of LODDs from the previous year is made public.  There are several factors that contribute to statistical differences and one important point to keep in mind about "Official" line of duty deaths.

The most important point about line of duty death numbers is that ALL cases are considered preliminary by ALL organizations until Police Week, which takes place each year in May.  
 
There are additions to and removals from all memorials based on final reviews and late submissions.  The official numbers for the previous year are released during Police Week.

In addition, each organization the recognizes and tracks line of duty deaths has slightly difference inclusion criteria.  The ODMP strives to honor all fallen law enforcement officers and our criteria for inclusion can be found here:

Criteria for Inclusion, ODMP

Other organizations, including the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and the Department of Justice Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program have their own conditions and review processes.  They can be found here:

NLEOMF

PSOB

Most of the differences in the official Line of Duty Deaths counted by each organization are due to heart attack related deaths, 9/11-illness related deaths, or deaths that result from previously sustained wounds or injuries, all of which require medical review.

For twenty years now, ODMP has honored the fallen and we will continue to do so for as long as we are able.  It is the goal and hope of the Officer Down Memorial Page that each name we add will be the last, but until that day comes, we strive to do our best to include every officer who made the ultimate sacrifice and gave their lives in the line of duty.

Officer Down Memorial Page 20th Anniversary

The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP) marks its 20th anniversary in 2016.  In the last two decades, ODMP has grown from a small site honoring the line of duty deaths of a few fallen officers to the largest law enforcement memorial in the country, paying tribute to the more than 22,000 fallen heroes who have died in the line of duty in US history.

The Officer Down Memorial Page was founded in 1996 by Chris Cosgriff, then a freshman at James Madison University, after he read a Washington Post article about a murderer convicted of slaying two officers from Prince George's County, Maryland who was released after serving only 16 years in prison. Shocked and dismayed that a violent criminal would be released so quickly after committing such a heinous crime, Cosgriff was compelled to find a way to honor those and other fallen officers and to bring attention to the dangers faced by law enforcement every day.

In it's infancy, ODMP honored only law enforcement officers who had been killed or wounded in 1996, but quickly expanded to include officers killed in the line of duty dating back to 1990.  The ODMP was then granted access to the National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) files, and was able to expand the number of honorees on the page.

"In 1996 we had only a list of names, agencies, and end of watch (EOW) for approximately 12,000 - 15,000 fallen officers," says Cosgriff.  "The additional details were obtained through years of persistent research by volunteers and submissions by site visitors."

Knowing that there were officers in US history whose names were forgotten by time but whose sacrifices deserved recognition nonetheless, ODMP researchers have worked, mostly as volunteers, over the last twenty years to uncover the stories of law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty but were never recognized for their sacrifice. 

"Over the years we've had countless dedicated researchers who have come and gone, but there has always been a core group who have persisted for almost that entire time, usually concentrating on specific geographic areas (for example, a single state or metro region), or specific agencies," Cosgriff explains.

Currently there are just over 22,000 names honored on the Officer Down Memorial Page.  Of those, over one thousand names -- 1,442 to be exact -- were discovered, and subsequently honored, through the tireless dedication of the research team and the online submissions of supporters across the country.  Without those efforts, the names of each of those fallen heroes and the stories associated with them would have been lost to time.

The beauty of the Officer Down Memorial Page is its universal reach and global accessibility.  Unlike most memorials, which are geographically fixed, the Officer Down Memorial Page is accessible to a wider audience.  Because it is available online, anyone, anywhere can read the memorials, learn the stories behind the names, and pay tribute to the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.  

Last August, the 92-year old granddaughter of fallen hero Detective Samuel S. Drummy (EOW 2/15/1908), accessed a computer for the first time in her life.  With assistance from a law enforcement officer with the Tuscon Police Department (AZ), she was able to find her grandfather's memorial on the Officer Down Memorial Page and see his picture for the first time since she was 14-years old.  It is stories like these, kept alive in the Reflections on each Memorial, that drive the ODMP mission.

Cosgriff sums up his thoughts on reaching the twenty year mark of the Officer Down Memorial Page: "When I created ODMP I could not have possibly imagined it would become one of the most visited law enforcement websites in the world. I was an 18-year-old college kid who was simply trying to honor fallen officers because, even back then, I felt that the media tended to focus on negative stories related to law enforcement officers. It has been an honor to run this organization for so long. ODMP literally invented the concept of online memorials for fallen officers and lead the way in ensuring every officer's death, no matter how or where it occurred, was broadcast nationally so that fellow officers nationwide could honor their sacrifice."

It is the hope of all those involved with the ODMP that each name added to the site will be the last.  Until, and after, that day comes, the Officer Down Memorial Page is committed to honoring those souls who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of justice.

ODMP Research [Not So] Secrets Revealed

Over the past ten years, one of the missions of the Officer Down Memorial Page has been to ensure that “forgotten” line of duty deaths are properly recognized by the agencies for which an officer worked, by the appropriate state memorial and by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, DC.

A “forgotten” line of duty death is an officer who died in the line of duty in the past, typically far in the past, whose death is not currently recognized by the agency for which the officer worked and/or does not appear on any local, state, or national law enforcement memorials.

The researchers at the ODMP have spent a lot of time conducting historical research into line of duty deaths, some dating back to the early 1800s.  The ODMP has uncovered and confirmed the line of duty death status of 839 forgotten officers.  275 of these officers have been accepted by their agencies as line of duty deaths and their names have been added to the appropriate memorials.  564 of the newly discovered line of duty deaths are still pending review by their agencies, but have already been added to the ODMP.  In addition, the ODMP is still researching several hundred forgotten deaths to confirm their line of duty death status.

A forgotten line of duty death is normally uncovered in one of three ways:

1. Newspaper research that reveals information about an unrecorded death. Basically a researcher looks though old newspapers looking for any articles on possible line of duty deaths that have not be recognized.
2. Discovery while doing research into known line of duty death. Most of the time this happens when another (unrecorded) line of duty death is mentioned in an article or on an adjacent article while researchers are obtaining information on another death.
3. Submissions from ODMP visitors, such as descendants or law enforcement personnel.

When a possible forgotten line of duty death is uncovered, the ODMP volunteer begins by identifying the location of the incident and any local newspapers that were published at the time of the incident.  The researcher will then begin with the newspaper research.  That may require requesting microfilm through inter-library loan, or traveling to a location to review the relevant newspapers.  The researcher will then backtrack in the newspaper from the date of death of an officer, to find the first article that mentions the incident in which the officer was killed.  Again, that could be the previous day, or it could be six month, a year or even more into the past.  As the researcher searches through the newspaper back to the date of original incident, he will copy each article that mentions the officer in question.  The researcher will then move forward from the date of incident and locate any articles related to the death, including the trial of any perpetrators (when applicable).  This can sometimes take the researcher years from the original incident date, but not always.  With the older line of duty deaths, the task of find out the outcome of any trials may not be as hard as it sounds.  The justice system moved much quicker in the past, and many times a cop killer was tried, convicted and executed within months of the original incident, so the articles are not spread over a long period of time.

In order to fully document an incident and confirm the circumstances, the researcher will try to locate articles in at least two different newspaper publications from the area where the incident took place.  In large towns or cities that is normally easy as many larger cities have multiple newspapers being published in the area.  In some smaller towns or rural areas, it may not always be possible, due to the lack of newspaper coverage.

Next, a researcher will try to find any Department records that an agency may have about an officer’s death.  Many times an agency has records they don’t even know about, stored away in a basement in an old log book that has not been looked at in decades.

Newspaper article and command log
detailing Sergeant William Hurley's death

The death of Sergeant William Hurley, of the Oyster Bay Cove, New York, Police Department, was uncovered in late 2003 by the ODMP. His name was added to the New York Sate Police Officers Memorial and to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in May 2005. The ODMP researcher was able to obtain numerous newspaper articles about his death from both small-town and national newspapers. A search through old department logbooks from 1940 also turned up an entry referencing his tragic death. The logbook was found in the records room of the Oyster Bay Cove Police Headquarters and helped to confirm what newspaper accounts had said; that Sergeant Hurley died in the performance of his official police duties.

The next step in the research process is to obtain a death certificate or a death ledger entry for the fallen officer.  The process to locate that is different in each state, and sometimes even varies by locality. The best way to locate a death certificate is online.  By using a search engine to locate the vital records office for a county, a researcher can usually get the information they need quickly as to how to obtain a death certificate.  Normally there is a fee to obtain a death certificate, and each vital records office has different rules and regulations as to who they will release a death certificate to.

Once all the documentation is gathered up, the researcher can determine if the officer’s death qualifies as a line of duty death, based on the ODMP criteria for inclusion. Each death the ODMP discovers is evaluated against the criteria.  If an officer is determined to be eligible for inclusion, a memorial will be created on the ODMP.

Finally, the researcher will work to have the officer officially recognized by his/her agency and added to local, state and the National Memorial. Copies of all documents located will be turned over to the agency and the researcher will assist with filling out the necessary applications for any state memorial that might exist and for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, so that all that an agency head needs to do is review the documents, sign the application, and mail it to the appropriate memorial. Unbelievably, this is generally the most difficult task to get accomplished!

The Officer Down Memorial Page adds new memorials for newly discovered officers quite often.  To view the 100 most recent additions go to: http://www.odmp.org/search/historical

Steve Weiss
Director of Research