FBI honors 102 agents who died while serving the nation at LA ceremony

The FBI honored its own on Tuesday, May 20, in reverent ceremonies at the federal agency’s Los Angeles field office on Wilshire Boulevard.

The FBI’s assistant director in charge in Los Angeles, Akil Davis, hosted the solemn memorial service to honor its agents and employees who lost their lives in the line of duty. LAPD Police Chief Jim McDonnell also helped to pay tribute to the fallen agents, delivering the keynote address at Tuesday’s services.

Davis and McDonnell joined to lay a wreath in honor of the agents. FBI employees and family members held pictures of agents who died; some laid roses at the memorial site.

More than 102 FBI agents have died in the line of duty nationwide, according to agency officials. The agents are memorialized on the FBI’s Wall of Honor. The original memorial resides at the FBI’s Headquarters in Washington DC and smaller memorials are maintained at field offices across the country “so that their ultimate sacrifice will always be remembered,” according to the law-enforcement organization’s website.

Among the saddest days for the agency — as it was for the nation as a whole — came during the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001. The deaths of at least 30 FBI agents were linked to the attacks. Some were killed during efforts to rescue people from the mammoth assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; many others’ deaths came in the months and years that ensured, tied to health complications associated with exposure to toxic air during 9/11 recovery efforts.

The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people during four linked al-Qaeda suicide attacks by 19 terrorists who hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing  into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field when passengers revolted against their attackers.

Founded in 1908, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains jurisdiction over more than 200 categories of federal crimes and is among the nation’s leading counterterrorism and criminal investigation organizations.