Violence in Venezuela has been on the rise, and in 2014, there were 268 police officers killed.

NPR's John Otis reports that criminals killed these officers. The number is staggering when you consider that in the United States, which has 10 times the population of Venezuela, the number of law enforcement officers killed in 2013 was 27.

Otis notes that despite the high level of danger involved in their line of work, Venezuelan police officers receive little support from the people and are often regarded with suspicion.

With President Barack Obama placing sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials earlier this year and president Maduro recently giving a home to a desperate woman who threw a mango at his head last month, Venezuela has been in the international news quite a bit lately.

The socialist country has been standing out for other reasons this year as well. Approximately 25,000 violent deaths estimated for 2014 and 90 violent deaths reported in Caracas in just the first week of 2015, Venezuela is now considered to be perhaps the most dangerous nation in Latin America.

As reported by In Sight Crime, which gathered their info from the Venezuelan Newspaper El Nacional, the Caracas Bello Monte morgue took in 90 bodies during the first six days of 2015.

And outside of Caracas, in the northern state of Aragua, a gang reportedly ambushed a funeral and killed seven people in attendance, while wounding five others.

Although Venezuela has not released any official statistics on violent deaths since 2005, according to non-government organization The Venezuelan Violence Observatory, there were an estimated 24,980 violent deaths in Venezuela last year.

According to Alberto Camardiel, a researcher for The Venezuelan Violence Observatory, his group estimates that in 2014 there were 16,549 homicides in Venezuela, a number which amounts to 54 murders for every 100,000 people.