How many police officers are there in the U.S.? In 2023, there were 720,652 full-time law enforcement officers employed in the United States, an increase from 708,001 the previous year. Within the provided time period, the number of full-time law enforcement officers was lowest in 2013, with 626,942 officers. Employment in law enforcement According to the source, law enforcement officers are defined as those individuals who regularly carry a firearm and an official badge on their person, have full powers of arrest, and whose salaries are paid from federal funds set aside specifically for sworn law enforcement. Law enforcement, particularly when it comes to officers, is a male-dominated field. Law enforcement employees can either be officers or civilians, and federal law enforcement agencies cover a wide area of jurisdictions -- from the National Park Service to the FBI.
Police in the United States The police in the United States have come under fire over the past few years for accusations of use of unnecessary force and for the number of people who are shot to death by police in the U.S. Police officers in the United States are regularly armed, and in comparison, 19 countries, including Iceland, New Zealand, and Ireland, do not regularly arm their police forces.

In 2023, 59.9 percent of full-time civilian law enforcement employees in the United States were female. Only 13.8 percent of full-time law enforcement officers were female, while 86.2 percent of law enforcement officers were male. The gender divide Law enforcement in the United States is an indisputably male-dominated profession, particularly in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, research has shown that female officers can have a positive impact on communities and the overall performance of a law enforcement department. For example, female officers are less likely to have to face allegations of excessive force and can reduce the use of force among other officers in the department. Law enforcement in the U.S. The number of law enforcement officers in the United States has fluctuated over the years and, and hit a low in 2013. Despite the violent crime rate in the U.S. being much lower than its high point in the 1990s, the majority of Americans report being dissatisfied with national crime control and reduction policies.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Police and sheriff's patrol officers occupations: 16 years and over: Men (LEU0254598700A) from 2000 to 2019 about police, occupation, full-time, males, salaries, workers, 16 years +, wages, employment, and USA.

In 2020, **** percent of full-time sworn officers in local police departments in the United States were white, followed by **** percent who were Hispanic.

The BJS Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA) is conducted every 4 years to provide a complete enumeration of agencies and their employees. Employment data are reported by agencies for sworn and nonsworn (civilian) personnel and, within these categories, by full-time or part-time status. The pay period that included September 30, 2008, was the reference date for all personnel data. Agencies also complete a checklist of functions they regularly perform, or have primary responsibility for, within the following areas: patrol and response, criminal investigation, traffic and vehicle-related functions, detention-related functions, court-related functions, special public safety functions (e.g., animal control), task force participation, and specialized functions (e.g., search and rescue). The CSLLEA provides national data on the number of state and local law enforcement agencies and employees for local police departments, sheriffs' offices, state law enforcement agencies, and special jurisdiction agencies. It also serves as the sampling frame for BJS surveys of law enforcement agencies.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Median usual weekly nominal earnings (second quartile): Wage and salary workers: Police and sheriff's patrol officers occupations: 16 years and over: Women (LEU0254758900A) from 2000 to 2019 about police, second quartile, occupation, females, full-time, salaries, workers, earnings, 16 years +, wages, median, employment, and USA.

This study was undertaken to examine the influence police officers have in creating an image of law enforcement through media relations and public information offices/officers (PIO). A survey was mailed nationwide to police departments serving areas with populations exceeding 100,000 residents. The survey items identified the following factors: (1) the presence and nature of a formal departmental media strategy, (2) the prevalence of full-time police PIO, (3) PIO background characteristics, including educational/vocational training in media, journalism, or public relations, (4) specific goals of police media relations offices and PIOs, (5) the various methods by which these goals are achieved, and (6) the perceived quality of police-media interaction, the police image, and the public information office both before and after the adoption of the current media strategy.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed expect for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) is further information is needed. This collection is composed of archived news articles and court records reporting (n=6,724) on the arrest(s) of law enforcement officers in the United States from 2005-2011. Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers given the general powers of arrest at the time the offense was committed. These crimes can occur while the officer is on or off duty and include offenses committed by state, county, municipal, tribal, or special law enforcement agencies.Three distinct but related research questions are addressed in this collection:What is the incidence and prevalence of police officers arrested across the United States? How do law enforcement agencies discipline officers who are arrested?To what degree do police crime arrests correlate with other forms of police misconduct?

This publication presents statistics on Police Officer Quarterly Strength, which give the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed by the eight Scottish police forces.

Source agency: Scottish Government

Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Police Officer Quarterly Strength Statistics, Scotland

This national survey of field training programs for police officers contains data gathered from state and local criminal justice agencies regarding the format of their programs, costs of programs, impact on civil liability suits, and other complaints. Topics covered include length of time since the implementation of the program, reasons for initiating the program, objectives of the program, evaluation criteria and characteristics of the program, and number of dismissals based on performance in field training programs. Other topics deal with hours of classroom training, characteristics of field service training officers, and incentives for pursuing this position. Topics pertaining to agency evaluation include impact of program on the number of civil liability complaints, number of successful equal employment opportunity complaints, presence of alternative training such as with a senior officer, and additional classroom training during probation when there is no field training program.

Analysis of ‘Police Killings US’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/azizozmen/police-killings-us on 13 February 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

"In 2015, The Washington Post began to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States. In that time there have been more than 5,000 such shootings recorded by The Post. After Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was killed in 2014 by police in Ferguson, Mo., a Post investigation found that the FBI undercounted fatal police shootings by more than half. This is because reporting by police departments is voluntary and many departments fail to do so. The Washington Post’s data relies primarily on news accounts, social media postings, and police reports. Analysis of more than five years of data reveals that the number and circumstances of fatal shootings and the overall demographics of the victims have remained relatively constant..." SOURCE ==> Washington Post Article

For more information about this story

This dataset has been prepared by The Washington Post (they keep updating it on runtime) with every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty since Jan. 1, 2015.

2016 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2017 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2018 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2019 PoliceKillingUS DATASET
2020 PoliceKillingUS DATASET

Features at the Dataset:

The file fatal-police-shootings-data.csv contains data about each fatal shooting in CSV format. The file can be downloaded at this URL. Each row has the following variables:

• id: a unique identifier for each victim
• name: the name of the victim
• date: the date of the fatal shooting in YYYY-MM-DD format
• manner_of_death: shot, shot and Tasered
• armed: indicates that the victim was armed with some sort of implement that a police officer believed could inflict harm
  • undetermined: it is not known whether or not the victim had a weapon
  • unknown: the victim was armed, but it is not known what the object was
  • unarmed: the victim was not armed
• age: the age of the victim
• gender: the gender of the victim. The Post identifies victims by the gender they identify with if reports indicate that it differs from their biological sex.
  • M: Male
  • F: Female
  • None: unknown
• race:
  • W: White, non-Hispanic
  • B: Black, non-Hispanic
  • A: Asian
  • N: Native American
  • H: Hispanic
  • O: Other
  • None: unknown
• city: the municipality where the fatal shooting took place. Note that in some cases this field may contain a county name if a more specific municipality is unavailable or unknown.
• state: two-letter postal code abbreviation
• signs of mental illness: News reports have indicated the victim had a history of mental health issues, expressed suicidal intentions or was experiencing mental distress at the time of the shooting.
• threat_level: The threat_level column was used to flag incidents for the story by Amy Brittain in October 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/on-duty-under-fire/ As described in the story, the general criteria for the attack label was that there was the most direct and immediate threat to life. That would include incidents where officers or others were shot at, threatened with a gun, attacked with other weapons or physical force, etc. The attack category is meant to flag the highest level of threat. The other and undetermined categories represent all remaining cases. Other includes many incidents where officers or others faced significant threats.
• flee: News reports have indicated the victim was moving away from officers
  • Foot
  • Car
  • Not fleeing

The threat column and the fleeing column are not necessarily related. For example, there is an incident in which the suspect is fleeing and at the same time turns to fire at gun at the officer. Also, attacks represent a status immediately before fatal shots by police while fleeing could begin slightly earlier and involve a chase. - body_camera: News reports have indicated an officer was wearing a body camera and it may have recorded some portion of the incident.

SOURCE

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 (FVPSA) provided funding, through the Office of Victims of Crime in the United States Department of Justice, for 23 law enforcement training projects across the nation from 1986 to 1992. FVPSA was enacted to assist states in (1) developing and maintaining programs for the prevention of family violence and for the provision of shelter to victims and their dependents and (2) providing training and technical assistance for personnel who provide services for victims of family violence. The National Institute of Justice awarded a grant to the Urban Institute in late 1992 to evaluate the police training projects. One of the program evaluation methods the Urban Institute used was to conduct surveys of victims in New York and Texas. The primary objectives of the survey were to find out, from victims who had contact with law enforcement officers in the pre-training period and/or in the post-training period, what their experiences and evaluations of law enforcement services were, how police interventions had changed over time, and how the quality of services and changes related to the police training funded under the FVPSA. Following the conclusion of training, victims of domestic assault in New York and Texas were surveyed through victim service programs across each state. Similar, but not identical, instruments were used at the two sites. Service providers were asked to distribute the questionnaires to victims of physical or sexual abuse who had contact with law enforcement officers. The survey instruments were developed to obtain information and victim perceptions of the following key subject areas: history of abuse, characteristics of the victim-abuser relationship, demographic characteristics of the abuser and the victim, history of law enforcement contacts, services received from law enforcement officers, and victims' evaluations of these services. Variables on history of abuse include types of abuse experienced, first and last time physically or sexually abused, and frequency of abuse. Characteristics of the victim-abuser relationship include length of involvement with the abuser, living arrangement and relationship status at time of last abuse, number of children the victim had, and number of children at home at the time of last abuse. Demographic variables provide age, race/ethnicity, employment status, and education level of the abuser and the victim. Variables on the history of law enforcement contacts and services received include number of times law enforcement officers were called because of assaults on the victim, number of times law enforcement officers actually came to the scene, first and last time officers came to the scene, number of times officers were involved because of assaults on the victim, number of times officers were involved in the last 12 months, and type of law enforcement agencies the officers were from. Data are also included on city size by population, city median household income, county population density, county crime rate, and region of state of the responding law enforcement agencies. Over 30 variables record the victims' evaluations of the officers' responsiveness, helpfulness, and attitudes.

This publication presents statistics on Police Officer Quarterly Strength, which give the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed by the eight Scottish police forces.

Source agency: Scottish Government

Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Police Officer Quarterly Strength Statistics, Scotland

This survey collected descriptive information from municipal police departments and sheriffs offices across the United States to determine whether the departments had implemented community policing, how their investigative functions were organized, and the ways in which their investigative organizational structure may have been modified to accommodate a community policing approach. The research project involved a national mail survey of municipal police departments and sheriffs offices in all jurisdictions with populations of more than 50,000 and 100 or more sworn officers. The survey was mailed in the late fall of 1997. Data contain responses from 405 municipal departments and 196 sheriffs offices. Questionnaires were similar but were modified depending on whether they were sent to municipal or sheriffs agencies. Data generated by the questionnaires provide descriptive information about the agencies, including agency type, state, size of population served, number of full-time and part-time sworn and civilian personnel, number of auxiliary and rescue personnel, number of detectives, whether the sworn personnel were represented by a bargaining unit, and if the agency was accredited. Respondents reported whether community policing had been implemented and, if so, identified various features that described community policing as it was structured in their agency, including year implementation began, number of sworn personnel with assignments that included community policing activities, and if someone was specifically responsible for overseeing community policing activities or implementation. Also elicited was information about the organization of the investigative function, including number of sworn personnel assigned specifically to the investigative/detective function, the organizational structure of this function, location and assignment of investigators or the investigative function, specialization of detectives/investigators, their pay scale compared to patrol officers, their relationship with patrol officers, and their chain-of-command. Finally, respondents reported whether the investigative structure or function had been modified to accommodate a community policing approach, and if so, the year the changes were first implemented.

The primary objective of this study was to formulate evidence-based lessons on recruitment, retention, and managing workforce profiles in large, United States police departments. The research team conducted a national survey of all United States municipal police agencies that had at least 300 sworn officers and were listed in the 2007 National Directory of Law Enforcement Administrators. The survey instrument was developed based on the research team's experience in working with large personnel systems, instruments used in previous police staffing surveys, and discussions with police practitioners. The research team distributed the initial surveys on February 27, 2008. To ensure an acceptable response rate, the principal investigators developed a comprehensive nonresponse protocol, provided ample field time for departments to compile information and respond, and provided significant one-on-one technical assistance to agencies as they completed the survey. In all, the surveys were in the field for 38 weeks. Respondents were asked to consult their agency's records in order to provide information about their agency's experience with recruiting, hiring, and retaining officers for 2006 and 2007. Of the 146 departments contacted, 107 completed the survey. The police recruitment and retention survey data were supplemented with data on each jurisdiction from the American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports. The dataset contains a total of 535 variables pertaining to recruitment, hiring, union activity, compensation rates, promotion, retirement, and attrition. Many of these variables are available by rank, sex and race.

These data were collected to analyze the impact of community-oriented policing (COP) on job assignments of police officers in Ohio. The study compared the self-reported job tasks of police officers in 1981 to those in 1996 to determine if job tasks had changed over time, if they differed between officers in departments pursuing community policing, or if they differed between officers assigned as "community policing" officers and those having more traditional assignments. The 1981 Ohio Peace Officer Task Analysis Survey was conducted to measure police officer tasks. A total of 1,989 police officers from over 300 Ohio police agencies responded to that survey. Recognizing that community policing had not yet begun to enjoy popularity when the first sample of officers was questioned in 1981 and that the job of policing and the training needs of peace officers had changed over the past 15 years, the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services again conducted a task analysis survey of a sample of police officers throughout the state in 1996. The 1996 survey instrument included 23 items taken directly from the earlier survey. These 23 items are the only variables from the 1981 survey that are included in this dataset, and they form the basis of the study's comparisons. A total of 1,689 officers from 229 police departments responded to the 1996 survey. Additionally, while the 1996 Peace Officer Task Analysis survey was in the field, the local police agencies included in the survey sample were asked to complete a separate agency survey to determine if they had a community policing program. A total of 180 departments returned responses to this agency survey. Background questions for the 1981 and 1996 task analysis surveys included police officers' age, race, sex, and job satisfaction. Items concerning police officers' job tasks covered frequency of conducting field searches of arrested persons, handcuffing suspects, impounding property, participating in raids, patrolling on foot, giving street directions, mediating family disputes, and engaging in school visits. The 1996 agency questionnaire gathered data on whether the police department had a COP program or a mission statement that emphasized community involvement, whether the COP program had an actual implementation date and a full-time supervisor, whether the respondents were currently assigned as COP officers, and whether the department's COP officers had had supplemental training.

In an effort to reduce the workload of police officers participating in problem-solving and community-oriented activities, the San Francisco Police Department applied for and was awarded a Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Making Officer Redeployment Effective (MORE) grant in 1995 to integrate Mobile Computing Terminals (MCTs), or laptop computers, into its daily operations. The National Institute of Justice funded an evaluation of this COPS MORE initiative. The evaluation examined the efficacy of a technological intervention to improve operational efficiency, service quality, and the corresponding changes in officers' attitudes and behaviors associated with integrating the use of MCTs for computerized incident reporting into the work process. The two systematic methods of data collection used for this research project were pencil-and-paper surveys of officers' attitudes toward computers and community policing and direct observation of the behavior of officers on patrol, including measurements of time to complete reports and time engaged in police activities.

In 2016, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in California had the largest sheriff's office in the United States. That year, there were 9,351 full-time sworn personnel at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS) provides detailed information on the nature and characteristics of face-to-face contacts between police and the public, including the reason for and outcome of the contact and the respondent's satisfaction with the contact. The data can be used to estimate the likelihood of different types of contact for residents with different demographic characteristics, including contacts involving the use of nonfatal force by police. The PPCS is used to collect data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents age 16 or older as a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. To date, the PPCS has been conducted ten times by BJS: 1. 1996. Described in the BJS publication Police Use of Force: Collection of National Data (NCJ 165040). 2. 1999. Described in Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey (NCJ 184957). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 1999: UNITED STATES. 3. 2002. Described in Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey (NCJ 207845). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2002: UNITED STATES. 4. 2005. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and the Public, 2005 (NCJ 215243). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2005: UNITED STATES. 5. 2008. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and the Public, 2008 (NCJ 234599). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2008 (ICPSR 32022). 6. 2011. Split sample design due to instrument changes. New instrument findings described in two publications: Police Behavior During Traffic and Street Stops, 2011 (NCJ 242937) and Requests for Police Assistance, 2011 (NCJ 242938). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2011 (ICPSR 34276). 7. 2015. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and Public, 2015 (NCJ 251145). These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2015 (ICPSR 36653). 8. 2018. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and Public, 2018. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2018 (ICPSR 37916). 9. 2020. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and Public, 2020. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2020 (ICPSR 38320). 10. 2022. Described in the BJS publication Contacts between Police and Public, 2022. These data are archived as POLICE-PUBLIC CONTACT SURVEY, 2022 (ICPSR 38872).

The sample for the Cold Case Survey Data (n = 1,051) was drawn from a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) database of chiefs of police and sheriffs. The database was comprised of 15,884 chiefs of police from all police departments in the United States, including Native American tribal police departments. A stratified sample of 5,000 agencies was drawn from the database. The resulting sample of 5,000 included Native American tribal police departments (n = 44) and all other departments with more than 100 full-time sworn officers (n = 997). The balance of the sample (n = 3,959) was comprised of police departments in the following size categories: 1,886 from departments with zero to 25 full-time sworn officers; 1,000 from departments with 26 to 50 full-time sworn officers; 707 from departments with 51 to 75 full-time sworn officers; and 366 from departments with 76 to 99 full-time sworn officers. The results from the national survey were used to select sites for an analysis of case files. To ensure that researchers could obtain a large number of cases for analysis, only sites that reported conducting in excess of 50 cold-case investigations per year were considered. There were a dozen agencies that reported conducting more than 50 cold-case investigations per year; from these researchers selected the District of Columbia, Baltimore, and Dallas for analysis of cold-case homicide investigations (Cold Case Homicide Data) based on the additional considerations of travel distance, relationships with departments and feasibility. None of the three homicide case sites had computer files that were suitable for sampling cases. Further, cases in which a cold-case investigation had been conducted were mixed in with other homicide files, with no special notations on the case folder that indicated that a cold-case investigation had been undertaken. Therefore, at all three sites, researchers had to rely on cold-case investigators to create the sample. In all, 189 homicide cases were sampled in the District of Columbia, 113 in Dallas, and 127 in Baltimore. In each of the homicide sites, roughly half of the cases had been solved and half remained unsolved. Denver was selected for the analysis of sexual assault cold-cases (Cold Case Sexual Assault Data) because it had received a Department of Justice (DOJ) grant to conduct testing of DNA material in sexual-assault cold cases. The Denver sample consisted of cases in which a DNA match had been made. To assess the current practices in cold-case investigations, this study utilized a national online survey of law enforcement agencies (Cold Case Survey Data, n = 1,051) to document the range of ways in which cold-case work is conducted and assess how this organization affects cold-case clearance rates. In November 2008, the chiefs of police in the sample were sent a letter explaining the purpose of the survey and inviting them to participate. Potential respondents were directed to the web-based survey instrument through a provided web address. Three separate mails were made. The first mailing went to all 5,000 potential respondents. Two weeks later, letters were mailed to the 4,919 respondents who had not yet completed the survey. Two weeks after the second letter was sent, letters were mailed to the 4,570 respondents who had not yet completed the survey. The survey was taken down from the web in February 2009.To determine the types of cold cases that were most likely to be solved, researchers used the results from the national survey to identify four jurisdictions that conduct large numbers of cold-case investigations. Researchers chose three jurisdictions that conducted a large number of cold-case homicide investigations: the District of Columbia, Baltimore, Maryland, and Dallas, Texas (Cold Case Homicide Data, n = 429). To these three sites, researchers added Denver, Colorado, (Cold Case Sexual Assault Data, n = 105) because it had received a Department of Justice grant to conduct testing of DNA material in sexual assault cold cases. At all four sites, cold cases were examined for seven categories of data including victim's characteristics, crime context, motivation, human capital, physical evidence, basis for cold-case investigations and cold-case actions. These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they there received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except of the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompany readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collections and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.To assess the current practices in cold-case investigations, this study utilized a national online survey of law enforcement agencies (Cold Case Survey Data, n = 1,051) to document the range of ways in which cold-case work is conducted and assess how this organization affects cold-case clearance rates. In Novembe...