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Home • Crime in the U.S. • 2016 • Crime in the U.S. 2016 • Tables • Table 25 • Table 25 Data Declaration

Table 25 Data Declaration

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Full-time Law Enforcement Employees, by Population Group, Percent Male and Female, 2016

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

General comments

  • This table provides the total number of law enforcement employees, both sworn officers, and civilian employees, within a particular population group. The totals are also presented with the percent distribution by gender. 
  • 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, 2016) 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

VI1,2

City

Less than 10,000

VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2

County

N/A

IX (Metropolitan County)2

County

N/A


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

2Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

Population estimation

For the 2016 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 2010 decennial population counts and 2011 through 2015 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 2015 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2016 population estimate.