Police safety measures work

Mere numbers can't convey the depth of loss suffered when a single law enforcement officer dies in the line of duty. But numbers showing another decline in those losses in our nation over the past year do demonstrate welcome progress.

And an annual report issued this week by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund shows that U.S. police deaths dropped to their lowest level in half a century.

That's not just a byproduct of good fortune. It's a result of improvements in life-saving training, procedures and equipment. Such innovations have succeeded in reducing the deadly risks facing the "Thin Blue Line" that protects law-abiding Americans from violent criminals.

Those risks were horribly apparent again last month when four police officers were gunned down during an ambush at a coffee shop in Lakewood, Wash. The subsequent apprehension of their killer, and his own death by police gunfire, can't erase the terrible toll he inflicted -- or the continuing threat of similar attacks against the police.

Nor can the advances in police safety erase this grim U.S. statistic from 2009 (through Dec. 27): 124 officers killed (two in South Carolina).

But that was a welcome reduction from the 133 officers killed in 2008. And traffic fatalities of law enforcement personnel on the job fell from 71 in 2008 to 56 this year. Too bad firearm deaths rose from 39 to 48.

Still, that 124 total remains considerably less than these averages -- 162 in the 2000s, 160 in the 1990s, 190 in the 1980s and a horrendous 228 in the 1970s.

And still, our police put their lives on the line every day to carry our their indispensable task.