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 2020, there was the full-time equivalent of ****** state and local police officers in the state of California. In that same year, there were ****** state and local police officers in the state of New York.

These data on 19th- and early 20th-century police department and arrest behavior were collected between 1975 and 1978 for a study of police and crime in the United States. Raw and aggregated time-series data are presented in Parts 1 and 3 on 23 American cities for most years during the period 1860-1920. The data were drawn from annual reports of police departments found in the Library of Congress or in newspapers and legislative reports located elsewhere. Variables in Part 1, for which the city is the unit of analysis, include arrests for drunkenness, conditional offenses and homicides, persons dismissed or held, police personnel, and population. Part 3 aggregates the data by year and reports some of these variables on a per capita basis, using a linear interpolation from the last decennial census to estimate population. Part 2 contains data for 267 United States cities for the period 1880-1890 and was generated from the 1880 federal census volume, REPORT ON THE DEFECTIVE, DEPENDENT, AND DELINQUENT CLASSES, published in 1888, and from the 1890 federal census volume, SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES. Information includes police personnel and expenditures, arrests, persons held overnight, trains entering town, and population.

Geospatial data about United States Police Stations. Export to CAD, GIS, PDF, CSV and access via API.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data, Police Employee Data, 2021 file contains monthly data on felonious or accidental killings and assaults upon United States law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assembled the data and processed them from UCR Master Police Employee (LEOKA) data tapes. Each agency record in the file includes the following summary variables: state code, population group code, geographic division, Metropolitan Statistical Area code, and agency name. These variables afford considerable flexibility in creating subsets or aggregations of the data. Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as a periodic nationwide assessment of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Each year, this information is reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Police Employee (LEOKA) Data provide information about law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (hence the acronym, LEOKA) in the line of duty. The variables created from the LEOKA forms provide in-depth information on the circumstances surrounding killings or assaults, including type of call answered, type of weapon used, and type of patrol the officers were on.

In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics sponsored a pretest of a survey instrument designed to compile data on citizen contacts with police, including contacts in which police use force. The survey, which involved interviews (both face-to-face and by ph

To ensure an accurate sampling frame for its Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics periodically sponsors a census of the nation's state and local law enforcement agencies. This census, known as the Directory Survey, includes all state and local law enforcement agencies that are publicly funded and employ at least one full-time or part-time sworn officer with general arrest powers. As in previous years, the 2000 Directory Survey collected data on the number of sworn and nonsworn personnel employed by each agency, including both full-time and part-time employees. The pay period that included June 30, 2000, was the reference date for all personnel data. A 97.4 percent response rate was obtained from the 17,784 state and local law enforcement agencies operating in the United States. This data collection contains June 2000 data from the fourth Directory Survey. Previous directory censuses were conducted in 1986 (DIRECTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, 1986: [UNITED STATES] [ICPSR 8696]), 1992 (DIRECTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, 1992: [UNITED STATES] [ICPSR 2266]), and 1996 (DIRECTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, 1996: [UNITED STATES] [ICPSR 2260]). Variables include personnel totals, type of government, type of agency, and whether the agency had the legal authority to hold a person beyond arraignment for 48 or more hours.

This study sought to examine community policing from a street-level officer's point of view. Active community police officers and sheriff's deputies from law enforcement agencies were interviewed about their opinions, experiences with, and attitudes toward community policing. For the study 90 rank-and-file community policing officers from 30 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States were selected to participate in a 40- to 60-minute telephone interview. The survey was comprised of six sections, providing information on: (1) demographics, including the race, gender, age, job title, highest level of education, and union membership of each respondent, (2) a description of the community policing program and daily tasks, with questions regarding the size of the neighborhood in terms of geography and population, work with citizens and community leaders, patrol methods, activities with youth/juveniles, traditional police duties, and agency and supervisor support of community policing, (3) interaction between community policing and non-community policing officers, (4) hours, safety, and job satisfaction, (5) police training, and (6) perceived effectiveness of community policing.

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.The purpose of the study was to implement a "platform-based" methodology for collecting data about police organizations and the communities they serve with the goals of generating in-depth standardized information about police organizations, personnel and practices and to help move policing in the direction of evidence-based "learning-organizations" by providing judicious feedback to police agencies and policy makers. The research team conducted three web-based Law Enforcement Organizations (LEO) surveys of sworn and civilian law enforcement employees (LEO Survey A Data, n=22,765; LEO Survey B Data, n=15,825; and LEO Survey C Data, n=16,483). The sample was drawn from the 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) database. Agencies with 100 to 3,000 sworn police personnel were eligible for participation. To collect data for the Police-Community Interaction (PCI) survey (PCI Data, n=16,659), each week department employees extracted names and addresses of persons who had recent contact with a police officer because of a reported crime incident, traffic accident or traffic stop. Typically, the surveys were completed within two to four weeks of the encounter.

Graph and download economic data for Government current expenditures: Federal: Public order and safety: Police (G160481A027NBEA) from 1959 to 2023 about police, expenditures, federal, government, GDP, and USA.

Comprehensive dataset of 19,858 Police departments in United States as of June, 2025. Includes verified contact information (email, phone), geocoded addresses, customer ratings, reviews, business categories, and operational details. Perfect for market research, lead generation, competitive analysis, and business intelligence. Download a complimentary sample to evaluate data quality and completeness.

Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 1,173 civilians having been shot, 248 of whom were Black, as of December 2024. In 2023, there were 1,164 fatal police shootings. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 6.1 fatal shootings per million of the population per year between 2015 and 2024. Police brutality in the U.S. In recent years, particularly since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, police brutality has become a hot button issue in the United States. The number of homicides committed by police in the United States is often compared to those in countries such as England, where the number is significantly lower. Black Lives Matter The Black Lives Matter Movement, formed in 2013, has been a vocal part of the movement against police brutality in the U.S. by organizing “die-ins”, marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of black men and women by police. While Black Lives Matter has become a controversial movement within the U.S., it has brought more attention to the number and frequency of police shootings of civilians.

This study examined police officers' perceptions of and tolerance for corruption. In contrast to the popular viewpoint that police corruption is a result of moral defects in the individual police officer, this study investigated corruption from an organizational viewpoint. The approach examined the ways rules are communicated to officers, how rules are enforced by supervisors, including sanctions for violation of ethical guidelines, the unspoken code against reporting the misconduct of a fellow officer, and the influence of public expectations about police behavior. For the survey, a questionnaire describing 11 hypothetical scenarios of police misconduct was administered to 30 police agencies in the United States. Specifically, officers were asked to compare the violations in terms of seriousness and to assess the level of sanctions each violation of policies and procedures both should and would likely receive. For each instance of misconduct, officers were asked about the extent to which they supported agency discipline for it and their willingness to report it. Scenarios included issues such as off-duty private business, free meals, bribes for speeding, free gifts, stealing, drinking on duty, and use of excessive force. Additional information was collected about the officers' personal characteristics, such as length of time in the police force (in general and at their agency), the size of the agency, and the level of rank the officer held.

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?

These data were collected to examine the patterns of communication among police planners in the United States. The focus was on information-sharing, in which police planners and others contact other law enforcement agencies directly to gather the information they need to manage their departments. This study examined this informal network and its role in the dissemination of police research. The Police Communication Network Survey was mailed to the chief executives of 517 local departments and all 49 state police and highway patrol organizations in March 1996. The chief was asked to forward the questionnaire to the commander of the department's planning and research unit. Questions covered the agency most frequently contacted, how frequently this agency was contacted, mode of communication used most often, why this agency was contacted, and the agency most likely contacted on topics such as domestic violence, deadly force, gangs, community policing, problem-oriented policing, drug enforcement strategies, civil liability, labor relations, personnel administration, accreditation, and police traffic services. Information was also elicited on the number of times different law enforcement agencies contacted the respondent's agency in the past year, the percentage of time devoted to responding to requests for information from other agencies, and the amount of training the respondent and the staff received on the logic of social research, research design, statistics, operations research, cost-benefit analysis, evaluation research, and computing. Demographic variables include respondent's agency name, position, rank, number of years of police experience, number of years in the planning and research unit, and highest degree attained.

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

Comprehensive dataset of 11 Police in Massachusetts, United States as of July, 2025. Includes verified contact information (email, phone), geocoded addresses, customer ratings, reviews, business categories, and operational details. Perfect for market research, lead generation, competitive analysis, and business intelligence. Download a complimentary sample to evaluate data quality and completeness.

This study examined the amount of force used by and against law enforcement officers and more than 50 characteristics of officers, civilians, and arrest situations associated with the use of different levels of force. An important component of this multijurisdiction project was to employ a common measurement of elements of force and predictors of force. Data were gathered about suspects' and police officers' behaviors from adult custody arrests in six urban law enforcement agencies. The participating agencies were the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department, Colorado Springs (Colorado) Police Department, Dallas (Texas) Police Department, St. Petersburg (Florida) Police Department, San Diego (California) Police Department, and San Diego County (California) Sheriff's Department. Data collection began at different times in the participating departments, so the total sample included arrests during the summer, fall, and winter of 1996-1997. Forms were completed and coded for 7,512 adult custody arrests (Part 1). This form was used to record officer self-reports on the characteristics of the arrest situation, the suspects, and the officers, and the specific behavioral acts of officers, suspects, and bystanders in a particular arrest. Similar items were asked of 1,156 suspects interviewed in local jails at the time they were booked following arrest to obtain an independent assessment of officer and suspect use of force (Part 2). Officers were informed that some suspects would be interviewed, but they did not know which would be interviewed or when. Using the items included on the police survey, the research team constructed four measures of force used by police officers -- physical force, physical force plus threats, continuum of force, and maximum force. Four comparable measures of force used by arrested suspects were also developed. These measures are included in the data for Part 1. Each measure was derived by combining specific actions by law enforcement officers or by suspects in various ways. The first measure was a traditional conceptual dichotomy of arrests in which physical force was or was not used. For both the police and for suspects, the definition of physical force included any arrest in which a weapon or weaponless tactic was used. In addition, police arrests in which officers used a severe restraint were included. The second measure, physical force plus threats, was similar to physical force but added the use of threats and displays of weapons. To address the potential limitations of these two dichotomous measures, two other measures were developed. The continuum-of-force measure captured the levels of force commonly used in official policies by the participating law enforcement agencies. To construct the fourth measure, maximum force, 503 experienced officers in five of the six jurisdictions ranked a variety of hypothetical types of force by officers and by suspects on a scale from 1 (least forceful) to 100 (most forceful). Officers were asked to rank these items based on their own personal experience, not official policy. These rankings of police and suspect use of force, which appear in Part 3, were averaged for each jurisdiction and used in Part 1 to weight the behaviors that occurred in the sampled arrests. Variables for Parts 1 and 2 include nature of the arrest, features of the arrest location, mobilization of the police, and officer and suspect characteristics. Part 3 provides officer rankings on 54 items that suspects might do or say during an arrest. Separately, officers ranked a series of 44 items that a police officer might do or say during an arrest. These items include spitting, shouting or cursing, hitting, wrestling, pushing, resisting, fleeing, commanding, using conversational voice, and using pressure point holds, as well as possession, display, threat of use, or use of several weapons (e.g., knife, chemical agent, dog, blunt object, handgun, motor vehicle).

Comprehensive dataset of 1,590 Police supply stores in United States as of June, 2025. Includes verified contact information (email, phone), geocoded addresses, customer ratings, reviews, business categories, and operational details. Perfect for market research, lead generation, competitive analysis, and business intelligence. Download a complimentary sample to evaluate data quality and completeness.

Context:

On a typical day in the United States, police officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops. The Stanford Open Policing Project team is gathering, analyzing, and releasing records from millions of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies across the country. Their goal is to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public.

If you'd like to see data regarding other states, please go to https://www.kaggle.com/stanford-open-policing.

Content:

This dataset includes stop data from AZ, CO, CT, IA, MA, MD, MI and MO. Please see the data readme for the full details of the available fields.

Acknowledgements:

This dataset was kindly made available by the Stanford Open Policing Project. If you use it for a research publication, please cite their working paper: E. Pierson, C. Simoiu, J. Overgoor, S. Corbett-Davies, V. Ramachandran, C. Phillips, S. Goel. (2017) “A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States”.

Inspiration:

• How predictable are the stop rates? Are there times and places that reliably generate stops?
• Concerns have been raised about jurisdictions using civil forfeiture as a funding mechanism rather than to properly fight drug trafficking. Can you identify any jurisdictions that may be exhibiting this behavior?