NPMSRP 2009 Mid-Year Police Misconduct By Agency Report

Introduction

This report is a 6 month aggregation of statistical information gathered by the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) in the months of April through September of 2009.

The project utilizes media reports of police misconduct to generate statistical information on police misconduct in order to approximate the prevalence of police misconduct in the United States since no other current statistical information on police misconduct is available.

Since this project was initiated in beta phase starting in April of 2009 this report is the first mid-year (6 month) statistical report that focuses in on local law enforcement agencies whereas previous statistical reports reviewed national averages with a general overview of state-wide misconduct rates. (To view the semi-annual police misconduct report please visit here).

All local population and law enforcement agency employment numbers are supplied by the FBI/DOJ UCR program’s 2008 report, which is the most current data available, and statistical information is generated by utilizing those numbers along with current misconduct data gathered through the NPMSRP.

Please note that, since this project utilizes data about law enforcement agencies as supplied by the FBI/DOJ Uniform Crime Reporting program, not all local law enforcement agencies are included in this report. Notably, among the missing agencies are all agencies in West Virginia and other individual agencies such as Columbus Ohio, which do not participate in the UCR program.

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 1000+ Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ over 1000 law enforcement officers:

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 500-999 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 500 to 999 law enforcement officers:

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 100-499 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 100 to 499 law enforcement officers:

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 50-99 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 50 to 99 law enforcement officers:

Key Definitions

PMR% – Police Misconduct Rate Percentage, this number is the percentage of law enforcement officers within a given agency which were involved in a reported instance of police misconduct in the media.

Reports – This is not the actual number of reported instances of police misconduct, but the number of law enforcement officers cited in that location’s police misconduct reports.

Notes

The tables in this report are segmented due to how a small number of incidents in smaller law enforcement agencies can throw off the percentages. For example, some agencies with under 10 law enforcement officers have Police Misconduct Rates above 100% before the rate is projected out to 1 year, which means the department had more officers involved in alleged misconduct than the total number of officers listed for the 2008 UCR reports.

While the explanations for this can range from either there being more officers in 2009 than what were listed in 2008 or that officers hired to replace ones fired for misconduct were also involved in misconduct complaints during that period. It still shows how, if all local agencies were listed by rate without regard to size, how the top ranked would be agencies under 50 members.

The projected rates listed can be divided by 2 in order to determine the current actual misconduct rate over the six month period for which the misconduct data was gathered. Another report is planned for the end-of-year which will be a 9 month aggregate report… The first possible “full year” report that will take data from a full 12 months will occur in January of 2011, if the project stays up that long.

Additional reports may be forthcoming if an interest is shown in the above data, including reports on the misconduct-related fatality rates per agency and the victims per capita rates as well, for example. Also, a full listing of all local agencies may be posted in the near future in some form, again, depending on the level of interest.

For any questions or requests, please contact us at News@InjusticeEverywhere.com or leave a comment below.