This is Maryvictoria Pyne, Chief of the Communications Unit, here to answer as many of your questions as time allows about crime data collected by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Assessing criminality and law enforcement from jurisdiction to jurisdiction encompasses many elements such as composition of population, climate, citizens' attitudes toward crime, and so on. I read the U.S. murder rate dropped 1.1 percent from the previous year. The 1.1 percent decrease that you indicated is for volume, and the last time the volume was this low was 1969. Actually, it happens both ways as UCR is a voluntary program.
Most states have state statutes requiring participation by state and local agencies.
My wife is in law enforcement, so I usually know when the UCR stats are coming out. See the response to the previous question. This is not necessarily the case. In 1999, there were 8 officers feloniously killed in cities over 250,000 in population and there were also 8 feloniously killed in cities with populations under 10,000. Usually, the highest number of officers killed is in the South, the most populated region and the region with the highest law enforcement employment rate.