The number of police officers nationwide who were killed by criminals while on the job in 2005 dipped slightly from a year earlier, FBI data released Monday show. Nearly all of the officers killed – 55 in 2005, down from 57 in 2004 – worked for city police departments, according to the FBI’s annual report. Traffic duty proved to be the most lethal assignment for the officers, the report shows. Fifteen officers were killed during traffic pursuits or on traffic stops, compared with eight slain while making arrests and another eight who were ambushed.
Arizona: 44 held in border bust
More than 40 people were arrested Monday in connection with a family-run smuggling ring that brought hundreds of illegal immigrants into the country, officials said. The 44 arrests came after a two-year investigation into the ring, which operated out of the southern Arizona town of Bowie, officials said. Many of those arrested are American citizens, officials said. The ring recruited young women to smuggle migrants’ infants through ports of entry, posing as their mothers, while the parents were smuggled through the desert separately, said John Lewis, the FBI special agent in charge in Arizona.
Georgia: Salmonella hits 18 states
A salmonella outbreak potentially linked to produce has sickened at least 172 people in 18 states, health officials said Monday. Health officials think the bacteria may have spread through some form of produce; the list of suspects includes lettuce and tomatoes.
W. Virginia: Another miner killed
One miner was killed when he was crushed by a coal shuttle car, and a second was seriously injured Monday in what has become the deadliest year in the nation’s coal mines in a decade. The death Monday raised the number of coal mine deaths this year in West Virginia to 22, including the 12 men killed in the Sago Mine accident on Jan. 2. Nationally, 43 coal miners have died this year, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. That is the industry’s highest since 1995, when 47 died.
California: Wildfire probe begins
Authorities investigating an arson wildfire that killed four firefighters interviewed two people Monday as crews remained confident that the blaze would soon be fully corralled. Sheriff’s deputies took two men and three bags of material from a house in Cabazon, said neighbor Robert Dunham, 70, who lives three doors down from the residence a quarter-mile from where the fire started. Authorities said the fire was deliberately set at the base of a slope in Cabazon, west of Palm Springs.
From Herald news services
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