National Fallen Officers Foundation President: About 150 Police Officers Killed in the Line of Duty Each Year

(CNSNews.com) – National Fallen Officers Foundation Trey Pennie told Fox News’ “Hannity” on Monday that police officers died in the line of duty at a rate of about 150 officers each year.

When asked how many police officers die on average every year and how many were lost last year, and in 2020 and 2021, Pennie said, “Look, we’re losing, and COVID kind of threw the numbers off. We had about 600 last year, but if you look at the actual line of duty deaths, we’re losing about 200 officers- 150 officers every year so we’ve got to make sure that we’re qualifying what’s happening with law enforcement.”

“Look, I asked Congress last year that we needed the same level of protection that they are talking about, we’ve got civil rights violations that are put in place when police officers go out and do something to the community, and they can prosecute officers federally, but what happens when individuals attack police officers and the state drops the ball? Then why can’t we go and file in a federal court and have them pick up the case to protect law enforcement?” he said.

According to the group’s website, though, there were 64 gun-related fatalities for those police officers killed in the line of duty.

When asked why the race narrative has been used in the Tyre Nichols case, which involves the beating death of a black man by five black police officers, civil rights attorney Daryl Parks said, “Sean, I probably can’t explain that at all, but what I will tell you, though, is like you just said, the truth matters. I think the conversation should really be about dash camera and body cam and how those types of things actually bring transparency both to law enforcement.

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Parks, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, acknowledged that there was no civil rights investigation like the one ordered in the Tyre Nichols case.

“No, it didn’t. It didn’t. Let me say this here. Probably injecting race into this case takes away from the conversation of Tyreke’s life and the bigger conversation that we could all be having about safety throughout our country,” Parks said.

“For example, in my state alone we still have sheriff departments that reject body cam and dash cams, and so in our communities we ought to be asking what are we doing in our community? That’s a better conversation that would give some benefit to what happened to Tyreke and do what was very responsible and the people of Memphis have done here,” he said.

When challenged to name one police officer killed in the line of duty, Parks was only able to remember the first name of an officer he said was killed in Parks’ home town of Carroll, Ga.

“Darryl, can you name one officer who lost his life in the line of duty in the last three years?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked on Monday.

PARKS: Actually, I saw someone lost his life right here in Carroll, Georgia, over the weekend, yes.

HANNITY: Do you know the name of one officer? Can you name one officer?

PARKS: His first name was Clarence. Yes, I can, but this is not a contest about me, Sean.

When asked whether he supports “defund, dismantle no bail laws,” Parks said, “I don’t support that. Let me say what I support, Sean. I think the issue with mental health in this country has to be addressed at its core. That’s what we haven’t done. Until we address comprehensive mental health almost all of these mass shootings involve some high level of mental health. That should be the discussion, and no one is having that type of discussion. That’s what I’m for.”

Pennie weighed in, saying that “we have a culture issue.”

I’m from the black community. I’m in the black community, actively in the black community across the country, and I’m trying to do what I can to change the culture. We have a culture issue that we need to fix. We allow criminals to come in and victimize us and then what are we doing politically?

We go advocate to get those victims out of jail, and they come back home and victimize us more. We’ve got to stop doing that because we’re hurting the people who live in these communities. Some people can’t pack up and move to the suburbs. The reality is people have to sit here and live amongst these violent offenders.

We need to start taking care of the people, and I’m asking everybody, if you’re watching this channel, to get behind me and helping us, the National Fallen Officers Foundation, advocate for the interests of law enforcement, advocating for communities so we can keep everybody safe and protect law enforcement as a whole.

Pennie told “Hannity” that the bottom line is “you’ve got a lot of people that want to play into this victim mentality.”

“That’s what the Democrat Party’s doing, is really they are going into the black community and getting them up in arms about an issue that happens very — think about this, we have over 700,000 police officers in this country that have thousands and thousands of interaction with police every day, and you very seldom hear of these types of situations that happen, because they happen only .001 percent of the time,” he said.

“So we have to make sure we are putting this thing into context and address the issues as they are. I’ll say this, Sean. They are trying to promote the George Floyd bill,” Pennie said.

“They want to get it on paper that they can put these consent decrees in place for law enforcement across the country, so they can have, take qualified immunity away from police officers, because they want to be a prosecute us every time they look around,” he said. “That’s why you have less and less — less and less police officers who want to go into the profession.”

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