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.

This dataset shows the time spent by currently active Pittsburgh Police Officers in professional development training. Officers who are no longer employed in the Police Bureau are not included in this data. The data is presented in two ways: total, cumulative hours spent in training, per year, by category and total number of officers who completed training, per year, by category.

Data on police personnel (police officers by gender, civilian and other personnel), police-civilian ratio, police officers and authorized strength per 100,000 population, authorized police officer strength and selected crime statistics. Data is provided for Canada, provinces, territories and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) headquarters, training academy depot division and forensic labs, 1986 to 2023.

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.

Data on police personnel (police officers by gender, civilian and other personnel), police officers and authorized strength per 100,000 population, authorized police officer strength, population, net gain or loss from hirings and departures, police officers eligible to retire and selected crime statistics. Data is provided for municipal police services, 2000 to 2023.

Political scientists have increasingly begun to study how citizen characteristics shape whether—and how—they interact with the police. Less is known about how officer characteristics shape these interactions. In this article, we examine how one officer characteristic—officer sex—shapes the nature of police-initiated contact with citizens. Drawing on literature from multiple fields, we develop and test a set of competing expectations. Using over four million traffic stops made by the Florida State Highway Patrol and Charlotte (North Carolina) Police Department, we find that women officers are less likely to search drivers than men on the force. Despite these lower search rates, when women officers do conduct a search, they are more likely to find contraband and they confiscate the same net amount of contraband as men. These results indicate that women officers are able to minimize the number of negative interactions with citizens without losses in effectiveness.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data, Police Employee Data, 2016 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 2022, 66,415 law enforcement officers were assaulted in the United States. This is an increase from the previous year, when 43,649 law enforcement officers were assaulted.

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.

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 data set is no longer compiled by the Ministry of Solicitor Services

Information on the number of police officers according to their rank and gender. Shows the number of male and female officers at each rank, as well as annual changes in these numbers.

The data can be accessed from "https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/type/data?text=police+rank+and+gender">Statistics Canada.

Data Series: Share of female police officers Indicator: IV.4 - Share of female police officers Source year: 2024 This dataset is part of the Minimum Gender Dataset compiled by the United Nations Statistics Division. Domain: Public life and decision-making

This table contains 31 series, with data for years 1974 - 2001 (not all combinations necessarily have data for all years), and is no longer being released. This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (15 items: Canada;Newfoundland and Labrador;Prince Edward Island;Nova Scotia; ...); Police officers (3 items: Total number of police officers;Population per police officer;Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters).

The primary table for all public data on complaints, including dates, locations and the outcomes of closed complaints received since the year 2000. The dataset is part of a database of all public police misconduct records the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) maintains on complaints against New York Police Department uniformed members of service received in CCRB's jurisdiction since the year 2000, when CCRB's database was first built. This data is published as four tables: Civilian Complaint Review Board: Police Officers Civilian Complaint Review Board: Complaints Against Police Officers Civilian Complaint Review Board: Allegations Against Police Officers Civilian Complaint Review Board: Penalties A single complaint can include multiple allegations, and those allegations may include multiple subject officers and multiple complainants. Public records exclude complaints and allegations that were closed as Mediated, Mediation Attempted, Administrative Closure, Conciliated (for some complaints prior to the year 2000), or closed as Other Possible Misconduct Noted. This database is inclusive of prior datasets held on Open Data (previously maintained as "Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) - Complaints Received," "Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) - Complaints Closed," and "Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) - Allegations Closed") but includes information and records made public by the June 2020 repeal of New York Civil Rights law 50-a, which precipitated a full revision of what CCRB data could be considered public.

A listing of the police officers from around New York State who died while in the performance of their duties. The Office of Public Safety (OPS) of the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) facilitates and provides support services for all activities surrounding the New York State Police Officers Memorial. A Remembrance Ceremony is held at the Memorial each year during the month of May.

In 2023, the majority of law enforcement officers that were killed in the United States were white. That year, 53 white law enforcement officers as well as four Black officers were killed. Overall, a total of 60 law enforcement officers were killed in the United States in that year.

Data on police personnel (police officers by gender, civilian and other personnel), police officers and authorized strength per 100,000 population, authorized police officer strength, population, net gain or loss from hirings and departures, police officers eligible to retire and selected crime statistics. Data is provided for municipal police services, 2000 to 2023.

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.

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).

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.