More than 160 men and women officers have been killed while protecting the public since 1900, but the gunning down of a policewoman yesterday as she did her job immediately brought to mind the death of PC Yvonne Fletcher.
She was the first woman off
icer to lose her life on duty, outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984.
But yesterday's shootings also brought memories of Boxing Day 2003, when traffic officer Ian Broadhurst was shot dead in Oakwood, Leeds, and his colleague Neil Roper was seriously hurt alongside him.
A third police officer, PC James Banks, miraculously escaped.
The last female officer who paid the ultimate price as she served her community was Alison Armitage just four years ago. PC Armitage, from Malton, North Yorkshire, was killed when a car thief in Oldham repeatedly drove over her while trying to escape in 2001.
The Leeds University graduate became the first Greater Manchester policewoman to be killed on duty, but the fifth female constable in the country to be murdered on duty before yesterday's tragic events. She had spent five years on the beat before winning promotion, and died under the wheels of the stolen car just three months into her new job.
Only hours before she died, the 29-year-old single career woman was being put forward for a commendation for helping to tackle six armed raiders.
Her parents Stewart and Lillian Armitage, who live in the village of Appleton le Street, near Malton, said at the time that the only consolation was that their daughter had died doing the job she loved.
Just four years earlier, in October 1997, PC Nina Mackay, was stabbed to death in a raid in Stratford, east London by a paranoid schizophrenic. In 1983 PC Angela Bradley drowned with two other officers attempting a sea rescue at Blackpool.
Among other cases of constables being killed on duty is that of Special Constable Glenn Goodman, who was murdered by the IRA while carrying out a car check near Tadcaster in 1992, and Sgt John Speed, who was gunned down in Leeds city centre in 1984.
Others include PC Keith Blakelock, a 40-year-old father-of-three, who was set upon by a mob and hacked to death with a machete during the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985.
Detective Constable Michael Swindells, 44, died after he was knifed in the stomach as he helped in a search in Birmingham in May 2004.
Detective Constable Stephen Oake died during a terror raid on a flat in Crumpsall, Manchester, in January 2003.
kate.o'hara@ypn.co.uk
