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Local Police
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More than 12,000 local police departments were operating in the United States during 2013. A local police department is a general purpose law enforcement agency, other than a sheriff's office, that is operated by a unit of local government, such as a town, city, township, or county. Tribal police are classified as local police in Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) data collections.

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Data Collections & Surveys

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Publications & Products


State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2013 Presents findings on the basic training programs of more than 600 state and local law enforcement training academies, including data on program content, recruits, and instructors.
  Summary (PDF 250K) | PDF (1.2M) | ASCII file (33K) | Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Zip format 68K)
Part of the State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies Series

National Sources of Law Enforcement Employment Data This report describes and compares three law enforcement employment data sources: 1) the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, 2) the Census Bureau's Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll (ASPEP), and 3) the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA).
  PDF (1.8M) | ASCII file (48K) | Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Zip format 23K)

Local Police Departments, 2013: Equipment and Technology Presents findings on local police departments by population served in 2013, including comparisons with previous survey years.
  Press Release (8KB) | Summary (PDF 243KB) | PDF (640KB) | ASCII file (25KB) | Comma-delimited format (.csv) (Zip format 38KB)
Part of the Local Police Departments Series

Local Police Departments, 2013: Equipment and Technology AN ESTIMATED 32 PERCENT OF LOCAL POLICE DEPARTMENTS WERE USING BODY-WORN CAMERAS IN 2013
  Press Release

Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices Presents findings on local police departments by population served in 2013, including comparisons with previous surveys dating back to 1987.
  Press Release | Executive Summary (PDF 85K) | PDF (751K) | ASCII file (36K) | Comma-delimited format (.csv) (Zip format 46K)
Part of the Local Police Departments Series

Requests for Police Assistance, 2011 STUDY FINDS SOME RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS OF POLICE BEHAVIOR DURING CONTACT WITH THE PUBLIC
  Press Release

Hiring and Retention of State and Local Law Enforcement Officers, 2008 - Statistical Tables Presents the results of a special survey administered to a nationally representative sample of agencies that participated in the 2008 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies.
  PDF (995K) | ASCII file (36K) | Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Zip format 89K)
Part of the Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies Series

Victimizations Not Reported to the Police, 2006-2010 NEARLY 3.4 MILLION VIOLENT CRIMES PER YEAR WENT UNREPORTED TO POLICE FROM 2006 TO 2010
  Press Release

Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories, 2009 Presents data on the more than 400 state, municipal, county, and federal crime laboratories operating in the United States during 2009.
  Press Release | PDF (861K) | ASCII file (36K) | Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Zip format 48K)
Part of the Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories Series

Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories, 2009 NEARLY 1.2 MILLION FORENSIC REQUESTS TO PUBLICLY FUNDED CRIME LABS WERE BACKLOGGED AT YEAREND 2009, UNCHANGED FROM 2008
  Press Release
Part of the Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories Series

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Terms & Definitions

Local law enforcement officer An employee of a local law enforcement agency who is an officer sworn to carry out law enforcement duties. Examples of this class are sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, chiefs of police, city police officers, and sworn personnel of law enforcement subunits of port and transit authorities. For national level general data, this class includes campus police officers employed by of local city and community college districts. Private campus police are excluded.
 
Sworn officers Persons formally authorized to make arrests while acting within the scope of explicit legal authority.
 
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