RCMP officers are undoubtedly in a dangerous line of work – facing difficult situations and often armed criminals.
Sometimes they are hurt in the line of duty, such as when a Kamloops officer was shot during a routine traffic stop this morning, or like a standoff in December 2011, when two officers were shot in Breton, Alberta.
READ MORE: Kamloops RCMP officer shot during traffic stop in critical, but stable condition
There have been many such incidents in the past year:
- An officer was run over by a vehicle near Vegreville, Alberta during a standoff in January 2014, and another officer was shot.
- The town of Slocan, B.C., was put on lockdown in October 2014 when RCMP officers exchanged gunfire with a suspect. Peter de Groot was later killed by police in a cabin west of Slocan.
- Justin Bourque killed three officers and wounded two others in Moncton in June 2014. He was later sentenced to 75 years in prison before he can apply for parole.
RCMP officers have always faced danger. The graph below shows deaths of RCMP officers, grouped by decade. While many officers died of exposure or drowning in the force’s early days, others were killed in combat, traffic accidents, or shot while trying to apprehend suspects.
The deadliest decades were the 1940s, when many officers were killed while serving overseas during World War II, and the 1960s, when four officers were killed in the same plane crash in 1963.
There were more officers killed by gunshot wounds in the 2000s than any other decade.
Editor’s note: The wording in the incident descriptions is taken directly from the RCMP website.
Note that several deaths in the 1880s have been classified as “combat,” as they occurred in various skirmishes during the North-West Rebellion.
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