Table 74: Full-time law enforcement employees, by population group, percent male and female, 2009.

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

General comments

* This table provides the total number of law enforcement employees, total officers, and total civilians broken down by population group. The totals also are 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, 2009) 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 2009 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 2008 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 2008 Census population estimate to derive the agency's 2009 population estimate.