Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock for the last few months, you know that America's police have been the subject of contentious discussion, debate and protest across the country. In the course of those actions, many folks tend to toss "all cops"--790,000 sworn officers in state and local agencies--into a single rhetorical bucket and blast away. Others suggest that their local police "isn't like that," while still others draw distinctions among urban, suburban and rural law enforcement.
I've found what I believe to be the most recent and most comprehensive set of data on the distribution and organization of the nation's law enforcement officers (LEOs), and I thought some of you might find the "hard data" interesting. (I certainly found a few surprises...)
Follow me below le Colophon d'Orange for some number crunching.
The source for all that follows is the 2008 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA), from the Federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. This census is conducted every four years, but the 2012 edition has not yet been published. (The organization preparing the 2012 data tells me that they expect to release the 2012 CSLLEA in mid-2015.) I strongly urge interested parties to grab a copy of the 2008 CSLLEA; it's only 20 pages in length, but there's far too much information for me to properly summarize in a single diary. I found it both readable and highly informative.
I'm going to just start throwing facts and figures in no particular order...so grab what interests you and head to the comments. Keep in mind, however, that with the exception of the District of Columbia, these numbers refer to state and local law enforcement agencies, NOT the Federal officers spread across the country.
Almost 45% of LEOs work in agencies of 250 or more sworn officers, and just over 30% work in agencies of 1000 or more sworn officers.
Here, I think, we find our rural/suburban/urban divide. Here's the distribution of local LEOs by size of agency:
1000 or more officers: 30.2%
500-999: 6.5%
250-499: 7.8%
100-249: 14.1%
50-99: 12.2%
25-49: 11.6%
24 or fewer: 15.3%
While the overall distribution of LEOs in the US is 251 per 100,000 residents, the states vary widely in this category.
These numbers answer the question of relative saturation - what is the "police presence" in each state? The 5 states with the highest number of sworn personnel per 100,000 population are:
Louisiana: 405 LEOs per 100,000 population
New Jersey: 389
New York: 341
Illinois: 321
Wyoming: 317
It surprised me to see Lousiana atop this list, as it did to see Wyoming among the top 5. (Anyone from those states care to comment?) I also find it interesting that while California has eight of the largest state/local LEAs in the nation, the Golden State is in the bottom half of the graph when their LEO population is compared to the state's overall population, with 217 LEOs/100,000 residents. There must be some REALLY small local PDs outside California's urban areas.
The states with the lowest "police presence" compared to their population are:
Washington: 174 LEOs per 100,000 population
Utah: 175
Oregon: 177
Kentucky: 183
Minnesota: 185
I don't find any of these particuarly surprising, but I think this data suggests that, in many states, state/local LEOs aren't really an overbearing presence; that undoubtedly shapes our opinions of "our local cops." (I live in Kentucky, and the police presence is definitely "low key" most of the time.)
Local police departments account for 60% of sworn personnel in the US, but Sheriff's offices account for 24%.
I had no idea that Sheriff's Offices (SOs) were THAT large, but there are some truly huge SOs out there. Among the nation's 50 largest state/local law enforcement agencies, we find
EIGHT Sheriff's Offices:
* Los Angeles County (CA) Sheriff's Office: 9,461 sworn personnel
* Cook County (IL) Sheriff: 5,655
* Harris County (TX) Sheriff: 2,558
* Riverside County (CA) Sheriff: 2,147
* San Bernadino County (CA) Sheriff: 1,797
* Orange County (CA) Sheriff/Coroner: 1,794
* Jacksonville (FL) Sheriff: 1,662
* Broward County (FL) Sheriff: 1,624
Those 8 offices account for almost 27,000 sworn officers - I found that number jawdropping. The CSLLEA's list of the 50 largest sheriff's offices is equally surprising; the smallest of them is Dane County (WI), with 454 officers. Think about that for a minute - a Sheriff's office with 450 sworn officers
doesn't make the "50 largest" list? One has to wonder if these huge numbers are justified. The other thing that jumped out at me is that if these two groups account for 84% of sworn officers, then state police departments aren't really that much of the overall picture - more on that later...
There may be more "school cops" in the US than you suspect.
There are just under 20,000 LEOs serving in collegiate, university, 2-year college, and secondary school police departments. The five largest college/university PDs are:
Temple University - 125 officers
Universty of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - 94 (see note)
University of Texas Health Science Center - 94
University of Maryland (College Park) - 90
University of Florida - 85
(Note: UMDNJ was dissolved in 2012; most of its component schools merged with Rutgers University.)
While most of the nation's 13,500 secondary school districts secure law enforcement services from their local PDs, there are 250 who run their own dedicated police departments, employing around 5,000 full-time officers. Here are the 5 largest public school PDs in the nation:
School District of Philadelphia (PA): 450 sworn personnel
Los Angeles (CA) Unified School District: 340
Miami-Dade (FL) County Public Schools: 210
Houston (TX) Independent School District: 197
Palm Beach (FL) County School District: 176
For all the talk about securiing our transportation hubs, there are only 167 transportation-related LEAs in the US, employing about 11,500 sworn personnel.
This one surprised me somewhat; given the scale of operations at our busier transportation hubs, I would have expected a greater law enforcement presence. The 5 largest transportation PDs are:
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey: 1667 sworn personnel
New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority: 694
Los Angeles World Airports: 577
Maryland Transportation Authority: 456
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority: 442
We have some HUGE local police departments.
Yeah, I know, dog bites man...but the sheer number of officers took me aback when I scanned the list of the 50 largest local police departments in the US. Put it this way - the
smallest of the 2008 "Top 50" PDs is Tampa (FL), with
980 sworn officers. Here are the 10 largest local PDs in the nation:
New York (NY) - 36,023 sworn officers
Chicago (IL) - 13,354
Los Angeles (CA) - 9,727
Philadelphia (PA) - 6,624
Houston (TX) - 5,053
Dallas (TX) - 3,389
Phoenix (AZ) - 3,388
Miani-Dade Co. (FL) - 3,093
Baltimore (MD) - 2,990
Las Vegas-Clark Co. (NV) - 2,942
(DC would have been 6th on this list, but I consider them a special case, given their additional seat-of-government responsibilities.)
State police departments aren't really that big.
The 50 state police departments range in size from the 7,202-officer California Highway Patrol to the 139-officer North Dakota Highway Patrol. What I find interesting about the state police departments is how they compare to their respective populations. the CHP is huge, but there are only 20 CHP officers per 100,000 residents; that puts Calfornia squarely in the middle of the pack on this question. The state with the highest concentration of state law enforcement to its population is...
Delaware? Yes, the 658-officer Delaware Highway Patrol has 75 officers per 100,000 residents. At the other extreme, we find that both Florida (FHP) and Wisconsin (WSP) have all of 9 officers per 100,000 residents. I find myself wondering what kind of analysis is used to determine state police manpower needs.
I could keep going, but this diary is already a bit long. Again, I recommend that you grab a copy of the 2008 CSLLEA for yourself; if you're concerned about the size of our law enforcement agencies--or just want to see what your state/local numbers might be--it's a must-read.
In closing, I think it important to remember that, as we meet here and discuss "local cops", we're speaking from what this data suggests are radically different frames of reference across the country. Let's chew on these numbers down in the comments...