Two law enforcement officers — one of them a retired police chief — have been killed by suspects in a shocking display of violence captured on cameras that sharply illustrate the climate of disorder and mayhem on some of America’s streets. 

On Saturday evening, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, Ryan Clinkunbroomer, was ambushed and killed by an unknown suspect while sitting in his patrol car at Palmdale, a suburb north of Los Angeles. A security video released to Fox 11 shows a black sedan pulling up to the deputy’s car and firing into his window. 

He was transported to a local hospital where he was declared dead at 30 years old. He had been a sheriff’s deputy for five years before his murder. Both Clinkumbroomer’s father and grandfather had served as officers in the department. He had also proposed to his fiancé just four days before his murder. 

The sheriff of Los Angeles County, Robert Luna, spoke to members of the press shortly after Clinkunbroomer’s passing, stressing that he and his deputies needed the public’s help to identify a suspect. 

“We really need your help,” Sheriff Luna said. “We need to get this guy off the street — guy or guys. He ambushed and killed one of our deputies. We need your help to get him off the street.” Sheriff Luna also speculated that the suspect harbored severe anti-police sentiments. “I think it was a targeted act based on what we know now, but we’re still in the extremely early stages of this investigation,” he added. 

Sheriff Luna said that Clinkunbroomer was the first Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officer to be killed since 2016, when Sergeant Steve Owen was shot five times and killed while responding to a call at an apartment complex. 

This comes as new information has been released by police at Las Vegas in the murder of a retired police chief, Andreas Probst. A shocking video released Saturday shows a teenager driving a stolen car intentionally mowing down Probst on the side of the road as he was riding his bicycle on an early August morning. 

“Yeah, hit his ass,” a passenger in the car says, laughing, as he records the driver running over Probst, whose body shatters the windshield and flies over the top of the car. The driver was arrested, according to the Las Vegas Journal-Review. 

The unidentified 17-year old was charged with first-degree murder. Probst, who was 64 years old, had previously served as the police chief of Bell, California before retiring in Nevada. 

Data from the FBI shows that in 2022, 59 law enforcement officers were feloniously, intentionally killed by criminals in 2022. Of those 59 officers, six were killed in unprovoked attacks. In total, 49 were killed with firearms, three with “vehicles used as weapons,” and eight by physical assault. Of those who killed officers, 10 had prior criminal histories and two were under “judicial supervision” when the killings were committed. 

Total line-of-duty deaths declined in 2022, but notably the number of deadly ambushes committed against law enforcement officers increased. Last year, 12 officers were fatally ambushed by their attackers, compared to eight in 2021.