Texas Leads in Law Enforcement Deaths

Texas is one of the national leaders in a statistic that you don't want to lead in, police officer deaths.  For the first six months of the year according to a new national report Texas ranks just behind California in the number of police officers killed in the line of duty. California had nine, Texas had eight.  The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's Kevin Morrison says one reason may be that officers are being more aggressive in enforcing traffic laws.  "For the general population the crime rate is going down, the number of traffic fatalities is going down.  Unfortunately the number of officers being killed in the line of duty is going up."  He says the majority of the deaths in both Texas and the country are caused by traffic crashes and not by gun fire.  He says five of the eight deaths in Texas from January to June were traffic fatalities.