Only nine weeks into 2025, the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C., has another nine names to add to its list of officers murdered in the line of duty. That includes Border Patrol Agent Christopher Maland, shot to death by members of a “transgender vegan cult” during a traffic stop in Vermont. The cult’s members had a documented grudge against law enforcement.
Since the George Floyd unrest of 2020, more than 350 officers have been killed in the line of duty by physical assault, gunfire, vehicular assault, or during a vehicle pursuit, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. That makes for a cop killing every five days. FBI data show that the period from 2021 through 2023 saw the most “felonious killings” of law enforcement of any three-year stretch for more than two decades. And nearly 80,000 police officers were assaulted in 2023, up 61 percent from ten years before. A third of these suffered injuries requiring medical care.
A disturbing trend emerges from these incidents: cop killings are fueled by anti-police sentiment and enabled by broken state justice systems that show excessive leniency to repeat and violent offenders. Too many state governments are failing to take corrective action. Congress should step in, as President Trump proposed in his address to Congress on Tuesday, by making the killing of police officers eligible for the federal death penalty.
Anti-police animus has motivated officer killings for years. Months after the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, a 28-year-old armed Maryland man traveled to New York City and, invoking Brown’s and Garner’s deaths, vowed, “I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today . . . They Take 1 Of Ours. . . . Let’s Take 2 Of Theirs.” He did, “assassinating” NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu at point-blank range as they sat in their patrol car. The perpetrator had at least 19 prior arrests and a recent conviction for illegal gun possession.
In July 2016, a man went on a murderous rampage in Dallas, intent on killing cops because he was upset about police-involved shootings. He killed five officers and wounded seven others before police killed him. A man who shot and killed two NYPD officers in 2022 also possessed a long criminal history and had voiced anti-police sentiments.
Or take the case of Baltimore Police Officer Keona Holley, who was shot twice in the head as she sat in her patrol car in December 2021, dying a week later. Travon Shaw, a convicted armed robber previously charged with other violent crimes, pulled the trigger that night. Officials still don’t know why Shaw targeted Officer Holley—except that she was a uniformed officer in a marked police car. They do know that Shaw was slated to stand trial on gun charges but was allowed to go free on his own recognizance after he ambushed the mother of four and two-year veteran of Charm City’s Finest.
It’s no accident that many of these murderers were repeat offenders. From 2015 to 2019, 85 percent of cop killers had prior arrests, and 71 percent had prior felony convictions. Almost half had a violent criminal history, and 39 percent had prior weapons charges. Most were well known to law enforcement.
Last month, an NYPD detective serving a warrant was shot and wounded by a career criminal out on parole. Unsurprisingly, the parolee had been arrested four months earlier for criminal possession of stolen property. For a repeat felon on parole, such an action might result in incarceration—but not under Manhattan’s progressive D.A. Alvin Bragg, who reduced the charge to misdemeanor resisting arrest.
“Although he was on active parole, he was released the very next day,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. “Why was this individual out of jail and in a position to shoot our officers? How is the system set up to allow one person to commit multiple violent offenses while out on parole with no consequences?” Good question.
The justice system often not only fails to deter cop killers but also declines to impose consequences on them after the fact. Of the surviving 243 individuals charged with killing law enforcement officers from 2013 to 2022, only about half have been found guilty of murder. Just 57 have received life sentences; only 12 have been sentenced to death.
Even when cop killers get life behind bars, the sentence often doesn’t stick. In New York State alone, at least 43 inmates sentenced for killing cops have been released since 2017. Even less progressive states have been similarly lenient.
These crimes deserve severe consequences that both exact justice and deter other would-be cop killers. Since half of the states—covering two-thirds of the U.S. population—have abolished or indefinitely “paused” the death penalty, it’s up to the federal government to impose the ultimate punishment for killing police.
There is already legislation before Congress to do so. Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Garcia’s “Defending our Defenders Act” prescribes life in prison or the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer while engaged in some activity with a nexus to interstate commerce.
Making it a capital offense—subject to the federal death penalty—to murder sworn law enforcement officers may not stop cop killings altogether, but it can make potential perpetrators think twice. And it would give solace to the families of fallen officers to know that these killers will never walk free.
Congress should act before another officer falls in the line of duty.
Top Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images