Brian A. Reaves, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics

July 7, 2015    NCJ 248767

Presents findings on local police departments by population served in 2013, including comparisons with previous survey years. The report focuses on trends in the adoption of new types of equipment and technology. Topics include nonlethal weapons, in-car and body-worn video cameras, and license plate readers. The report covers the use of information technology by officers in the field to access records systems and to transmit incident reports. It also covers the use of websites and social media by departments for exchanging information with citizens. Data are from the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey.

Highlights:

• The percentage of local police departments that authorized their officers to use conducted energy weapons such as Tasers increased from 60% in 2007 to 81% in 2013.
• The percentage of local police departments that required officers to wear protective armor at all times increased from 65% in 2007 to 71% in 2013.
• From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of local police departments using in-car video cameras increased from 61% to 68%.
• About a third (32%) of local police departments used body-worn cameras in 2013.
• About 1 in 6 local police departments used automated vehicle license plate readers in 2013, including a majority of those serving a population of 25,000 or more. „„

Part of the Local Police Departments Series

Press Release (8KB)
Summary (PDF 243KB)
PDF (640KB)
ASCII file (25KB)
Comma-delimited format (.csv) (Zip format 38KB)

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