As of September 30, there were ** law enforcement officers killed in the United States in 2024. Within the provided time period, the highest number of law enforcement officers killed in the United States was reported in 2021, at ** officers.

In 2023, there were ******* full-time law enforcement employees in California, the most out of any state in the United States.

The study was a comprehensive analysis of felonious killings of officers. The purposes of the study were (1) to analyze the nature and circumstances of incidents of felonious police killings and (2) to analyze trends in the numbers and rates of killings across different types of agencies and to explain these differences. For Part 1, Incident-Level Data, an incident-level database was created to capture all incidents involving the death of a police officer from 1983 through 1992. Data on officers and incidents were collected from the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) data collection as coded by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. In addition to the UCR data, the Police Foundation also coded information from the LEOKA narratives that are not part of the computerized LEOKA database from the FBI. For Part 2, Agency-Level Data, the researchers created an agency-level database to research systematic differences among rates at which law enforcement officers had been feloniously killed from 1977 through 1992. The investigators focused on the 56 largest law enforcement agencies because of the availability of data for explanatory variables. Variables in Part 1 include year of killing, involvement of other officers, if the officer was killed with his/her own weapon, circumstances of the killing, location of fatal wounds, distance between officer and offender, if the victim was wearing body armor, if different officers were killed in the same incident, if the officer was in uniform, actions of the killer and of the officer at entry and final stage, if the killer was visible at first, if the officer thought the killer was a felon suspect, if the officer was shot at entry, and circumstances at anticipation, entry, and final stages. Demographic variables for Part 1 include victim's sex, age, race, type of assignment, rank, years of experience, agency, population group, and if the officer was working a security job. Part 2 contains variables describing the general municipal environment, such as whether the agency is located in the South, level of poverty according to a poverty index, population density, percent of population that was Hispanic or Black, and population aged 15-34 years old. Variables capturing the crime environment include the violent crime rate, property crime rate, and a gun-related crime index. Lastly, variables on the environment of the police agencies include violent and property crime arrests per 1,000 sworn officers, percentage of officers injured in assaults, and number of sworn officers.

In 2022, a total of 64 law enforcement officers were fatally shot in the United States. This figure is down from a peak of 73 fatal shooting incidents in the United States in 2011.

Content

Police Residence

This folder contains data behind the story Most Police Don’t Live In The Cities They Serve.

Includes the cities with the 75 largest police forces, with the exception of Honolulu for which data is not available. All calculations are based on data from the U.S. Census.

The Census Bureau numbers are potentially going to differ from other counts for three reasons:

1. The census category for police officers also includes sheriffs, transit police and others who might not be under the same jurisdiction as a city’s police department proper. The census category won’t include private security officers.
2. The census data is estimated from 2006 to 2010; police forces may have changed in size since then.
3. There is always a margin of error in census numbers; they are estimates, not complete counts.

How to read police-locals.csv

Note: When a cell contains ** it means that there are fewer than 100 police officers of that race serving that city.

Context

This is a dataset from FiveThirtyEight hosted on their GitHub. Explore FiveThirtyEight data using Kaggle and all of the data sources available through the FiveThirtyEight organization page!

• Update Frequency: This dataset is updated daily.

Acknowledgements

This dataset is maintained using GitHub's API and Kaggle's API.

This dataset is distributed under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

This data collection was undertaken to gather information on the extent of police officers' knowledge of search and seizure law, an issue with important consequences for law enforcement. A specially-produced videotape depicting line duty situations that uniformed police officers frequently encounter was viewed by 478 line uniformed police officers from 52 randomly-selected cities in which search and seizure laws were determined to be no more restrictive than applicable United States Supreme Court decisions. Testing of the police officers occurred in all regions as established by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, except for the Pacific region (California, Oregon, and Washington), since search and seizure laws in these states are, in some instances, more restrictive than United States Supreme Court decisions. No testing occurred in cities with populations under 10,000 because of budget limitations. Fourteen questions to which the officers responded were presented in the videotape. Each police officer also completed a questionnaire that included questions on demographics, training, and work experience, covering their age, sex, race, shift worked, years of police experience, education, training on search and seizure law, effectiveness of various types of training instructors and methods, how easily they could obtain advice about search and seizure questions they encountered, and court outcomes of search and seizure cases in which they were involved. Police department representatives completed a separate questionnaire providing department characteristics and information on search and seizure training and procedures, such as the number of sworn officers, existence of general training and the number of hours required, existence of in-service search and seizure training and the number of hours and testing required, existence of policies and procedures on search and seizure, and means of advice available to officers about search and seizure questions. These data comprise Part 1. For purposes of comparison and interpretation of the police officer test scores, question responses were also obtained from other sources. Part 2 contains responses from 36 judges from states with search and seizure laws no more restrictive than the United States Supreme Court decisions, as well as responses from a demographic and work-experience questionnaire inquiring about their age, law school attendance, general judicial experience, and judicial experience and education specific to search and seizure laws. All geographic regions except New England and the Pacific were represented by the judges. Part 3, Comparison Data, contains answers to the 14 test questions only, from 15 elected district attorneys, 6 assistant district attorneys, the district attorney in another city and 11 of his assistant district attorneys, a police attorney with expertise in search and seizure law, 24 police academy trainees with no previous police work experience who were tested before search and seizure law training, a second group of 17 police academy trainees -- some with police work experience but no search and seizure law training, 55 law enforcement officer trainees from a third academy tested immediately after search and seizure training, 7 technical college students with no previous education or training on search and seizure law, and 27 university criminal justice course students, also with no search and seizure law education or training.

Across all branches of the U.S. military, men were more likely to be officers than women. In 2023, there were 75,077 male officers in the U.S. Army, compared to 17,709 female officers. This contrast was even more stark in the Marine Corps, where there were 19,074 male officers and 2,171 female officers.

This study was undertaken to provide current information on work and family issues from the police officer's perspective, and to explore the existence and prevalence of work and family training and intervention programs offered nationally by law enforcement agencies. Three different surveys were employed to collect data for this study. First, a pilot study was conducted in which a questionnaire, designed to elicit information on work and family issues in law enforcement, was distributed to 1,800 law enforcement officers representing 21 municipal, suburban, and rural police agencies in western New York State (Part 1). Demographic information in this Work and Family Issues in Law Enforcement (WFILE) questionnaire included the age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, highest level of education, and number of years in law enforcement of each respondent. Respondents also provided information on which agency they were from, their job title, and the number of children and step-children they had. The remaining items on the WFILE questionnaire fell into one of the following categories: (1) work and family orientation, (2) work and family issues, (3) job's influence on spouse/significant other, (4) support by spouse/significant other, (5) influence of parental role on the job, (6) job's influence on relationship with children, (7) job's influence on relationships and friendships, (8) knowledge of programs to assist with work and family issues, (9) willingness to use programs to assist with work and family issues, (10) department's ability to assist officers with work and family issues, and (11) relationship with officer's partner. Second, a Police Officer Questionnaire (POQ) was developed based on the results obtained from the pilot study. The POQ was sent to over 4,400 officers in police agencies in three geographical locations: the Northeast (New York City, New York, and surrounding areas), the Midwest (Minneapolis, Minnesota, and surrounding areas), and the Southwest (Dallas, Texas, and surrounding areas) (Part 2). Respondents were asked questions measuring their health, exercise, alcohol and tobacco use, overall job stress, and the number of health-related stress symptoms experienced within the last month. Other questions from the POQ addressed issues of concern to the Police Research and Education Project -- a sister organization of the National Association of Police Organizations -- and its membership. These questions dealt with collective bargaining, the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights, residency requirements, and high-speed pursuit policies and procedures. Demographic variables included gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, highest level of education, and number of years employed in law enforcement. Third, to identify the extent and nature of services that law enforcement agencies provided for officers and their family members, an Agency Questionnaire (AQ) was developed (Part 3). The AQ survey was developed based on information collected from previous research efforts, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Part W-Family Support, subsection 2303 [b]), and from information gained from the POQ. Data collected from the AQ consisted of whether the agency had a mission statement, provided any type of mental health service, and had a formalized psychological services unit. Respondents also provided information on the number of sworn officers in their agency and the gender of the officers. The remaining questions requested information on service providers, types of services provided, agencies' obstacles to use of services, agencies' enhancement of services, and the organizational impact of the services.

The killing of Tyre Nichols in January 2023 by Memphis Police Officers has reignited debates about police brutality in the United States. Between 2013 and 2024, over 1,000 people have been killed by police every year. Some of the most infamous examples include the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the shooting of Breonna Taylor earlier that year. Within the provided time period, the most people killed by police in the United States was in 2024, at 1,375 people. Police Violence in the U.S. Police violence is defined as any instance where a police officer’s use of force results in a civilian’s death, regardless of whether it is considered justified by the law. While many people killed by police in the U.S. were shot, other causes of death have included tasers, vehicles, and physical restraints or beatings. In the United States, the rate of police shootings is much higher for Black Americans than it is for any other ethnicity, and recent incidents of police killing unarmed Black men and women in the United States have led to widespread protests against police brutality, particularly towards communities of color. America’s Persistent Police Problem Despite increasing visibility surrounding police violence in recent years, police killings have continued to occur in the United States at a consistently high rate. In comparison to other countries, police in the U.S. have killed people at a rate three times higher than police in Canada and 60 times the rate of police in England. While U.S. police have killed people in almost all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, New Mexico was reported to have the highest rate of people killed by the police in the United States, with 8.03 people per million inhabitants killed by police.

This statistic shows the number of active duty officers compared to enlisted personnel in the United States Department of Defense from 1995 to 2010. In 2010 there were ******* Officers as compared to ********* enlisted.

Between January 1 and December 31, 2022, 33 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in Texas -- the most out of any state. New York, California, Georgia, and Tennessee rounded out the top five states for law enforcement fatalities in 2020.

This dataset provides information about duly sworn city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement officers who were feloniously killed in the line of duty from 1997-2006 in the entire United States. More non-geographic statistics about these fatalities can be found at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2006/feloniouslykilled.html note: Data from the past 10 years do not include the officers who died as a result of the events of September 11, 2001. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2006/table1.html

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was 363.8 cases per 100,000 of the population. Even though the violent crime rate has been decreasing since 1990, the United States tops the ranking of countries with the most prisoners. In addition, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime reports, data may not accurately reflect the total number of crimes committed in recent years. Reported violent crime rate in the United States The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks the rate of reported violent crimes per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. In the timeline above, rates are shown starting in 1990. The rate of reported violent crime has fallen since a high of 758.20 reported crimes in 1991 to a low of 363.6 reported violent crimes in 2014. In 2023, there were around 1.22 million violent crimes reported to the FBI in the United States. This number can be compared to the total number of property crimes, roughly 6.41 million that year. Of violent crimes in 2023, aggravated assaults were the most common offenses in the United States, while homicide offenses were the least common. Law enforcement officers and crime clearance Though the violent crime rate was down in 2013, the number of law enforcement officers also fell. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of law enforcement officers in the United States rose from around 673,100 to 708,800. However, since 2009, the number of officers fell to a low of 626,900 officers in 2013. The number of law enforcement officers has since grown, reaching 720,652 in 2023. In 2023, the crime clearance rate in the U.S. was highest for murder and non-negligent manslaughter charges, with around 57.8 percent of murders being solved by investigators and a suspect being charged with the crime. Additionally, roughly 46.1 percent of aggravated assaults were cleared in that year. A statistics report on violent crime in the U.S. can be found here.

This dataset provides information about duly sworn city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement officers who were accidentally killed in the line of duty from 1997-2006 in the Northeast. More non-geographic statistics about these fatalities can be found at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2006/accidentallykilled.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2006/table46.html

There were 449,344 active duty U.S. Army members in 2023. This amount represents a slight decrease in comparison to the number recorded in the previous year. Overall, there were 1.27 million active duty U.S. Department of Defense members, including officers and enlisted personnel in 2023.

In 2023, there were 1.27 million active duty U.S. Department of Defense members, including officers and enlisted personnel. This represents a slight decrease in comparison to the previous year. Further, by 2034, it is expected that the number of military retirees in the country will reach 2.4 million.

Since the 1780s, over 25,000 United States law enforcement officers have died while on active duty, or due to injuries and illnesses obtained while on duty. Gunfire is responsible for over half of all total law enforcement deaths recorded, particularly before the 1930s. From this point on, the total share of gunfire deaths has decreased significantly, mostly due to the increase in vehicle or health related deaths, although gunfire has remained the most common individual cause of death in almost every year. Gunfire deaths These deaths rose steadily after the Civil War, and peaked at over 200 annual deaths during the 1920s, due to the increase in criminal activity during prohibition. Because of this, the National Firearms Act of 1934 was introduced in an attempt to reduce gun-related crime, by requiring the registration of any transfer of ownership and imposing a tax on gun manufacturers and distributors. After Prohibition's end and the introduction of these measures, annual law enforcement deaths from gunfire have been well below 100 in almost every year, except for a brief spike in the early 1970s, during the crime wave that began in the 1960s and the beginning of the "War on Drugs". Overall, gunfire deaths of law enforcement have fallen since the 1970s, reaching a low of just 34 deaths in 2013. In contrast, the total number of people killed by police shootings has consistently been above one thousand for most of the past decade.

Increase in health-related deaths

The majority of non-gunfire deaths are a result of vehicle-related accidents, and the number of crashes and accidents rose throughout the 20th century in line with the increase in car ownership. However, the number of deaths from heart attacks and job-related illness has also risen over time, due to the aging of the population and increasingly unhealthy lifestyle trends across the country. In recent decades, additional health issues have emerged that have had a disproportionate impact on law enforcement. In 2001, 72 officers died as a result of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and over 350 additional deaths have been attributed to the adverse health effects (primarily respiratory illnesses) sustained by first responders from law enforcement. From 2020-2022, COVID-19 became the largest single cause of law enforcement deaths. Figures relate to cases where the individual contracted COVID-19 while on duty, and highlights the increased exposure to the virus faced by those considered to be frontline or essential workers. This number is likely to fall in the future as infection rates fall and newer strains of the virus are less lethal.

In 2024, there were roughly *** compliance officers employed in the United States. This number has been steadily increasing since 2010, when it stood at *******. Compliance gained importance after the ********* financial crisis, which accounts for the subsequent rise in employment in the sector.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 9,284 Black murder victims in the United States and 7,289 white murder victims. In comparison, there were 554 murder victims of unknown race and 586 victims of another race. Victims of inequality? In recent years, the role of racial inequality in violent crimes such as robberies, assaults, and homicides has gained public attention. In particular, the issue of police brutality has led to increasing attention following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Studies show that the rate of fatal police shootings for Black Americans was more than double the rate reported of other races. Crime reporting National crime data in the United States is based off the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new crime reporting system, which requires law enforcement agencies to self-report their data in detail. Due to the recent implementation of this system, less crime data has been reported, with some states such as Delaware and Pennsylvania declining to report any data to the FBI at all in the last few years, suggesting that the Bureau's data may not fully reflect accurate information on crime in the United States.

This statistic shows the number of U.S. Department of Defense officers and enlisted personnel who belonged to a minority racial group in 2010. The numbers are distinguished by particular service branch. In 2010, 39,238 of the Air Force personnel also belonged to a racial minority group.