Fact-checking Biden’s statement in Pa. that more police have died from coronavirus than on patrol
Biden didn’t say exactly what the best data show, but his comparison is largely accurate.
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“More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol.”
Joe Biden, during an Aug. 31 speech in Pittsburgh
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At the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump cast himself as a stalwart friend of police and an effective leader in the fight against the coronavirus.
In a speech in Pittsburgh, Democratic nominee Joe Biden said Trump was neither.
“Do you feel safer under Donald Trump?” Biden asked Aug. 31. “More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol.”
That stat raised eyebrows, and we checked to see if it was true. Biden didn’t say exactly what the best data show, but the comparison is largely accurate.
Tallies of deaths by two national groups show that COVID-19 has killed more law enforcement officers than gunfire and other hazards of the job in 2020. The caveat to Biden’s claim is there is some statistical fuzziness regarding who is a cop and what it means to be on patrol.
Roughly one-third of these tallies include corrections and detention center officers who work inside institutions where the virus can spread more readily. Some Customs and Border Protection field officers and other first responders are also included. While these occupations are counted as part of law enforcement, they might not come to mind as the cops that Biden referred to.
The COVID-19 death toll is still the greatest single cause of death when those occupations are excluded.
What the broad numbers show
The National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial Fund lists 101 dead officers from COVID-19 compared with 87 from anything else, including gunfire, car accidents or other causes. If it weren’t for COVID-19, officer deaths were on track to be lower this year than last.
The National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial Fund says on its website that before it adds an officer to its list of deaths due to the virus, “substantive evidence will be required to show the death was more than likely due to the direct and proximate result of” exposure in the line of duty.
Another source, the Officer Down Memorial Page, shows 101 deaths from COVID-19 and 81 deaths from all other causes. Communications director Jessica Rushing said the count is updated daily.
By a factor of three, COVID-19 is the leading cause of death for the broad group of officers.
That has as much to do with the pattern of police fatalities as it does with the virus, said Rutgers criminologist Frank Edwards. Deaths in the line of duty due to any cause tend to average about eight each month.
FBI data on deaths in the line of duty further back this point. The FBI numbers distinguish between accidental and felonious deaths of officers in the community. They show that in a typical month, criminal acts kill less than five officers a month.
Excluding the corrections and detention officers, the toll from COVID-19 remains at about 70 in the Officer Down count — still double the loss of life due to gunfire, but not higher than the sum of other causes of death.
Our ruling
Biden said that more cops have died from COVID-19 than while on patrol.
COVID-19 by itself has killed more law enforcement officers than all other causes combined, according to two groups that track these numbers.
No matter how we parsed the data — by excluding correctional and detention center officers, or by focusing on felonious deaths to officers that could be considered “on patrol” — COVID-19 posed the greatest single threat to officers’ lives.
We rate this claim Mostly True.
Our Sources
C-SPAN, Joe Biden Delivers Remarks on Public Safety and Law Enforcement, Aug. 31, 2020
Officer Down Memorial Page, Fallen Officers From the COVID-19 Pandemic, Aug. 31, 2020
Officer Down Memorial Page, 2020 Honor Roll of Heroes, Aug. 31, 2020
Fraternal Order of Police, COVID-19 Line-of-Duty Deaths, accessed Aug. 31, 2020
National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, Preliminary 2020 Fallen Officer Fatalities, Aug. 31, 2020
National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, COVID-19 and its impact on law enforcement, Aug. 31, 2020
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, accessed Sept. 1, 2020
Email exchange, Jessica M. Rushing, communications director, Officer Down Memorial Page, Aug. 31, 2020
Email exchange, Jessica T. Cahill, press liaison, Fraternal Order of Police, Aug. 31. 2020
Email exchange, Michael Gwin, spokesman, Biden for President, Aug. 31, 2020
Email exchange, Frank Edwards, assistant professor, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers - Newark, Aug. 31, 2020
Email exchange, Lori Fridell, professor of criminology, University of South Florida, Sept. 1, 2020
PolitiFact is a nonpartisan, fact-checking website operated by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies.