Table 74, Data Declaration

Download Data Declaration

Full-time Law Enforcement Employees
by Population Group
Percent Male and Female, 2008

The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

General comments

This table provides the number of reported sworn law enforcement officers and civilian employees broken down by population group. The totals are also broken down by percent male and percent female.
Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Suburban areas exclude all metropolitan agencies associated with a principal city. The agencies associated with suburban areas also appear in other groups within this table.

Methodology

The information in this table is derived from law enforcement employee counts (as of October 31, 2008) submitted by participating agencies.
The UCR Program defines law enforcement officers as individuals who ordinarily carry a firearm and a badge, have full arrest powers, and are paid from governmental funds set aside specifically to pay sworn law enforcement.
Civilian employees include full-time agency personnel such as clerks, radio dispatchers, meter attendants, stenographers, jailers, correctional officers, and mechanics.

Population groups

The UCR Program uses the following population group designations:

Population Group	Political Label	Population Range
I	City	250,000 and more
II	City	100,000 to 249,999
III	City	50,000 to 99,999
IV	City	25,000 to 49,999
V	City	10,000 to 24,999
VI^{1, 2}	City	Less than 10,000
VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)²	County	N/A
IX (Metropolitan County)²	County	N/A

¹ Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.
² Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

Population estimation

For the 2008 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2000 decennial population counts and 2001 through 2007 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2007 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2008 population estimate.

If you have questions about this table

Contact the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division via e-mail at cjis_comm@leo.gov or by telephone at (304) 625-4995.