Police Departments Shrank Less In 2023

Taking a look at recently released employment data from the FBI.

The FBI released new data last week on police staffing nationally through 2023 providing an updated glimpse at a trend I wrote about last year: namely that police departments shrank considerably after COVID. The dataset can be a bit wonky to work with since some agencies won’t report some years and agencies will sometimes report funky numbers. But it is till a useful dataset for evaluating police staffing trends. The FBI’s new data shows that many agencies still shrank in terms of officer counts in 2023, especially in big cities, but the trend was less negative for departments in 2023 than it has been in a few years.

There were 36 police departments representing cities of 500,000 or more that reported data to the FBI for 2019, 2022 and 2023¹ — I didn’t include 2020 because the trend had just started and 2021 is the gas leak NIBRS year. Officer counts declined in 67 percent of those cities between 2022 and 2023 compared to a decline in over 80 percent of those cities from 2019 to 2022. Overall, officer counts declined in exactly half of the 298 cities representing cities of 100,000 or more from 2022 to 2023.

Another way to evaluate this decline is breaking down agencies by officer size which shows a similar trend. All but 5 of 39 city police departments with 1,000 or more officers in 2019 had fewer officers reported to the FBI in 2022. Smaller police departments of under 200 officers mostly grew or stayed the same in 2023 while most larger agencies — though a smaller share — still shrank.

Police departments with 1,000 or more officers in 2019 lost 85 officers per year on average between 2019 and 2022 (64 per year removing the gargantuan NYPD) compared to an average loss of 61 per agency in 2023 (44 removing NYPD).

The improving rate of loss can be clearly seen in the below graph which shows the average and median change in officers for city agencies with 300+ officers in 2018 that reported for every year between 2018 and 2023. I didn’t include NYPD with this group because the city reported weird figures for 2021 and is such an outlier in terms of size as to obscure the average change everywhere else.

One interesting trend in the FBI’s new data shows increasing hiring in the suburbs. Per the FBI, 91 of the 175 (52 percent) MSA county agencies representing populations of 100,000 or more shrank between 2019 and 2022 with an average decline of 5.1 officers per agency per year. In 2023, however, only 62 MSA county agencies representing 100,000 or more shrank (35.4 percent) with an average growth of 6 officers per agency.

The FBI’s data is largely in line with a survey of 195 law enforcement agencies released by PERF in late April. PERF’s survey found rebounding hiring for small and medium sized agencies with improving prospects — though still challenges — for larger agencies. Of note, PERF’s survey shows a clear decline in both resignations and retirements in the surveyed agencies.

Staffing remains a challenge for many law enforcement agencies nationwide, but the evidence from the FBI and PERF strongly point to an improving environment for hiring and retaining officers.

If you’re interested, you can visualize the data over time in a handy dashboard I built last year which is updated through 2023.

I also plopped all police departments representing cities of 250,000 or more with data for 2019, 2022 and 2023 into the below table.

1. Las Vegas reported data for those years but it was funky, showing a 1,000 officer gain in 2022 and a roughly similar drop in 2023. As such, Las Vegas is not included in this analysis.