Were it not a tragic reality, police lieutenant William Lebo’s death might sound like a movie cliché: The 63-year-old officer on the Lebanon City Police Department in Pennsylvania was shot and killed just 30 days before his scheduled retirement. On March 31, police received a call that a mentally disturbed man with a reported history of domestic violence had broken into a family member’s home. Lebo, a 40-year veteran of the force, joined his younger colleagues to respond to the call, but the suspect “immediately opened fire,” according to Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf. “Officers performed life-saving measures on Lieutenant Lebo to no avail.” Lebo died without ever seeing his May 1 retirement party.
The two surviving officers — Ryan Adams and Derek Underkoffler, both 32 years old and seven-year veterans of the force — became part of a gruesome statistic: More police officers have been shot in the line of duty during the first three months of 2022 than during the same period in 2021, which was a record-breaking year for anti-police violence.
In the first quarter of this year, 101 police were shot while on the job, according to the Fraternal Order of Police’s April 8 “Washington Watch.” The number of officers wounded by gunfire as of April 1 is 46% higher than the same period in 2021 and almost two-thirds higher (63%) than this time in 2020. A total of 16 law enforcement officers have been killed by hostile gunfire, as of this writing.
A particularly concerning statistic is the fact that almost one-third of these victims (32) were shot in ambush attacks, in which the criminal shoots without warning or without giving the officer time to defend himself. Ambush attacks have already claimed five police officers’ lives in the first quarter of this year. At this rate, 2022 will break the record for the number of police officers wounded or killed by gunfire.
Lt. Lebo was one of at least five officers shot on March 31 — and as their stories prove, the danger does not end when the police officers clock out.
An off-duty police officer was shot earlier the same morning in Inglewood, California. Local media report that the unnamed officer who was shot multiple times, including at least once in the torso, “was apparently… attempting to retrieve property possibly related to a domestic violence incident involving a family member, sheriff’s Lt. Charles Calderaro said without elaborating.” Federal and local officers arrested the suspect — 27-year-old Marquis Wilkerson — in Flint, Michigan, on April 7. The officer was last listed in stable condition.
The evening of March 31, another off-duty officer fell in the line of duty: 51-year-old Darren Almendarez, an off-duty deputy on the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, and his wife came out of a Houston grocery store when he saw suspects allegedly stealing a catalytic converter from a vehicle in the parking lot. Almendarez, a 23-year veteran, served in its auto theft division. He approached the three suspects, when he was shot and killed. He returned fire before dying, striking two of his alleged assailants. Police have charged three people with capital murder: Joshua Stewart, 23; Fredarius Clark, 19; and Fredrick Tardy, 17.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez revealed that Almendarez lost his life on his sister’s birthday; the deputy had been inside the store to buy groceries for her birthday meal. “Today, we’ve lost another hero here in our community, sadly,” he said at a press conference, “and our hearts are broken.”
Residents’ hearts broke again in a moment of déjà vu just two days later. On April 2, another off-duty officer with the New Caney Independent School District encountered three other men allegedly stealing catalytic converters in the parking lot of a Houston movie theater. The suspects reportedly shot at him; thankfully, that officer survived.
“Five law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty, in the last 70 days, in Harris County,” noted the Harris Police Officers Union. ‘In 2022, 24% of all US law enforcement line of duty deaths, have been in Texas… This trend cannot continue.”
Five law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty, in the last 70 days, in Harris County.
In 2022, 24% of all US law enforcement line of duty deaths, have been in Texas, per @ODMP. This trend cannot continue.#HarrisCountyDeservesBetter #PoliceDeserveBetter pic.twitter.com/mxkBdXnjfK
— Houston Police Officers' Union (@HPOUTX) April 3, 2022
The number of officers shot, or shot at, while off-duty proves beyond any doubt that police are willing to put themselves in danger, 24/7. But 2022 may become the most dangerous of increasingly dangerous years for law enforcement officers.
The number of police shot in the line of duty broke all previous records by last November. By the end of 2021, a total of 346 police officers had been shot in the line of duty, and 63 died from their wounds, according to the Fraternal Order of Police. Nearly half of those deaths (30) came as a result of 103 separate ambush attacks, in which suspects shot 130 cops. Despite the adage that “if it bleeds, it leads,” police officers’ deaths have generated little coverage in a legacy media too often focused on celebrating criminals.
But officers say the media’s already anti-police narrative, combined with soft-on-crime policies like zero bail “reforms,” actively endanger the police. “We are dealing with the same people over and over, and as they become emboldened, as they get let out realizing, ‘They’re not going to do anything to me,’” former Louisville Police Sgt. John Mattingly, author of the book “12 Seconds In The Dark,” told me exclusively. “They hear all this rhetoric from the Left and from the progressives about how the police are bad, the police are at fault.” Lowering the disincentives to attack, or murder, police leads to tragic results.
Police are quick to point out these ill effects cannot be confined to the thin blue line. “We’re tired of this crime in our community. We’re tired that people aren’t even safe to go out to the grocery store. This is a cop — this is a cop out with his family. It could be any one of us,” said Sheriff Gonzalez.
“The effects of this are so wide-ranging,” said Lebanon Fire Commissioner Duane Trautman at Lebo’s funeral. “I think it’s hard to appreciate.”
Unlike the effects of societal breakdown, the service of officers like Lebo should never go without our appreciation.