Last updated on February 27th, 2017
Have you ever wondered where your state ranks with regard to the total number of police, or police density compared to other states? Is your state a police state?
Here is the data, map, and chart which illustrates the police density across the country…
All politics aside, one might consider a “Police State” to be one in which there simply are more police per population than the rest…
The data has been sourced from the most recent available “Census of State and Local Enforcement Agencies” from the U.S. Department of Justice, 2008.
One geographical location stands well above the rest for the most police… Washington D.C. with triple the police density (per resident) compared to many states.
The states that stand out with the highest police density per number of residents…
Louisiana, Wyoming, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee
The states that stand out with the lowest police density per number of residents…
West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Vermont, Michigan, Washington, Pennsylvania
You can see for yourself in the following illustrations.
United States Map of Police Density per State
Darker colors represent higher density of police
Number of Police per 100,000 Residents
See data table below for specifics
Total Number of Police per State
From “Census of State and Local Enforcement Agencies”
| State | Number of Agencies | Total Personnel | per 100K residents |
| District of Columbia | 4 | 5383 | 912 |
| Louisiana | 348 | 25311 | 569 |
| Wyoming | 90 | 2990 | 561 |
| New Jersey | 550 | 43569 | 503 |
| New York | 514 | 95105 | 489 |
| Florida | 387 | 81312 | 441 |
| Mississippi | 342 | 12408 | 422 |
| Tennessee | 375 | 25697 | 412 |
| Illinois | 877 | 52838 | 411 |
| Arizona | 141 | 26112 | 402 |
| Kansas | 371 | 11232 | 402 |
| Georgia | 628 | 38926 | 401 |
| Texas | 1913 | 96116 | 395 |
| Alabama | 417 | 18364 | 393 |
| Arkansas | 367 | 11165 | 389 |
| Massachusetts | 357 | 25361 | 388 |
| Nevada | 76 | 10097 | 386 |
| North Carolina | 504 | 35140 | 380 |
| Missouri | 576 | 22484 | 377 |
| Maryland | 142 | 21267 | 376 |
| Virginia | 340 | 29155 | 374 |
| Colorado | 246 | 17989 | 365 |
| New Mexico | 146 | 7164 | 361 |
| Oklahoma | 481 | 13151 | 361 |
| South Carolina | 272 | 16111 | 358 |
| Wisconsin | 529 | 20150 | 358 |
| Delaware | 49 | 3110 | 355 |
| California | 509 | 126538 | 346 |
| Idaho | 117 | 5290 | 346 |
| Montana | 119 | 3229 | 334 |
| South Dakota | 155 | 2669 | 332 |
| Rhode Island | 48 | 3462 | 329 |
| Ohio | 831 | 37295 | 324 |
| Hawaii | 7 | 4097 | 318 |
| Indiana | 482 | 19940 | 312 |
| Alaska | 50 | 2107 | 306 |
| Utah | 136 | 8237 | 302 |
| Connecticut | 143 | 10530 | 301 |
| New Hampshire | 208 | 3940 | 298 |
| Iowa | 392 | 8896 | 297 |
| Maine | 146 | 3901 | 296 |
| Minnesota | 448 | 15458 | 296 |
| Nebraska | 225 | 5227 | 293 |
| North Dakota | 114 | 1859 | 290 |
| Pennsylvania | 1117 | 33670 | 268 |
| Washington | 260 | 17602 | 268 |
| Michigan | 571 | 26395 | 264 |
| Vermont | 69 | 1612 | 260 |
| Oregon | 174 | 9431 | 249 |
| Kentucky | 389 | 10412 | 243 |
| West Virginia | 233 | 4411 | 243 |
I would have thought my state would have been higher on the list. This is good info to have in case you wish to get away from your Police State. Always wanted to move to Vermont which I am glad to see is near the bottom of the list. Maybe when I retire. Thats if the SHTF hasn’t happened by then. Not holding out hope on that one.
Vermont is also one of the most favorable gun law states with regards to the 2nd Amendment. This fact is somewhat puzzling given that the state is entirely democrat at this time with a socialist leaning. I would be concerned that going forward as they receive more influx from places like New York, that they may not remain so friendly with regards to the 2nd Amendment. One never knows though… They do have a very low population density though, and great farming lands.
Your next task is to overlay gun laws (may issue/shall issue/ no carry) on to these results and see if there’s any correlation between people taking the initiative to defend themselves and less police needed. Or vice versa, more police because people are disarmed.
The real police state data would include DHS agents.
Yes, another layer of depth analysis would be to include any and all Federal law enforcement agencies. If I am able to discover their numbers with regards to each state, I will add an additional post with this information. The data of this post includes all state, local, and sheriff law enforcement.
I would also include military bases/personnel. Specially sense ol’ posse comeandtakeus is out the window and they are allowed to “assist” police
and yet, the top 20 most policed states STILL have the most amount of crime, despite the extra forces. I fail to see where this article is actually *saying* anything.
This post is simply a presentation of the facts regarding the total number of state, local, and sheriff law enforcement for each state. I took the raw data and created a map with graduated colors (and a bar chart) to visualize the data.
There are those who are interested to know this type of information, especially if considering a move, while this could be one of many criteria. One might consider that states with a high police-to-residency ratio, might be states that are more intrusive to individual liberties compared with states of low police-to-residency ratio. There are exceptions notion though, and one would need to consider other data and perform their own due-diligence to more accurately discover a state’s true ‘police state’ factor…
We have the most awesome Sheriff’s here. We have 52 of them suing the state’s gun laws. But the regular police… Colorado is a growing police state… in the Democrat controlled areas. Does Colorado’s states also include the Sheriff’s dept, or the State Patrol? The IRS’s SWAT teams?
This data includes State police, Local police, and Sheriffs. It does not include whatever Federal law enforcement may be in your state (DHS, FBI, CIA, etc…)
Texas is a big state though. haha. We are really like 2 or 3 states. Joking aside I never have considered us a “police state”. Maybe because we are mainly gun toting conservatives, except for some of the Austin people. Sorry Austinites but it’s true. Lots of liberals there.
If I throw out the data for Washington D.C. (which is ridiculously high) then the average is 355 law enforcement per 100K residents. Your reference to Texas is above the average at 395, which is #12 in the United States.
Why throw out the DC stats?
Didn’t DC have a mayor that was charged, convicted, and imprisoned? Bradley if I remember correctly.
And then got reelected after he got out of prison.
Makes me wonder about things that are going on in the beltway,
The context of what I had said was in relation to a typical ‘state’, whereas D.C. is nothing of the sort, although it was part of the listed raw data that I acquired. So, while responding to the comment regarding Texas, and to find an average of all states, I threw out D.C. to arrive at an average number. Logical…
D.C. is probably the most corrupt place on earth… but that’s another story.
From La. I wonder how this chart would change if you added in county/city/marshall etc officers? I’m not worried so much about the “police state” type issues from state PD (I’m related to too many of them! lol & they are VERY much on the side of gun rights and conservatives)
The data includes all state, local, and sheriff department law enforcement. Having said that, there are high concentrations within many larger cities, which would change the ‘landscape’ for the rest of the state somewhat with regard to the total data. I have not granulated to that detail, but the overall bigger picture of each state does shed some light on the general ‘police state’.
This map is not correct. California should be in dark blue. I have friends there and traveled there many times.
come one man… there are more cops in the bay area california alone, than there are in the entire state of Wyoming…. Wyoming should not even be dark blue.
Oregon and washington is a bigger police state than Wyoming….
that map is wrong.
Jason, What you are not understanding is the concept of the shading on the map, or you have not taken the time to look at the data that is being used. It is really quite simple… Each state has “x” amount of law enforcement (State, Local, and Sheriffs dept.) Each state also has “x” amount of people living in it. The map simply illustrates the total number of law enforcement per the number of people living in the state. Period. That’s it. It is not “wrong” at all. The map is a “state” map of the United States. It does not resolve down to the county or city level. Therefore, it does not show the potential variations “within” each state with regards to police density.
The map does not take into account other factors that one might consider when speaking of a Police State, such as the politics of a given state and how it is applied towards the people through law enforcement, etc. It does not take into account whatever federal law enforcement agencies may be operating within a given state. It simply is a direct relationship between the number of law enforcement versus the number of people that live in the state. I hope I have helped make this clear for you or others who are apparently confused about this.
Your surprise about Wyoming also surprised me with their numbers. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice they have 2,990 law enforcement personnel while they have approximately 550,000 residents in the state. This bears out to the approximate 560 law enforcement per 100,000 residents. At first I thought this might be due to Yellowstone, but that is a National Park which presumably employs federal law enforcement… interesting.
You mentioned California… You have approximately 126,538 law enforcement in your state, along with approximately 38,000,000 residents. This works out to approximately 333 law enforcement per 100,000 residents. The numbers don’t lie. No doubt though that if you compare what you see in Los Angeles or San Francisco to what you might see up in Weaverville, things will likely appear a bit differently…
Very interesting article. One variable that immediately came to mind is the size of the state in square miles. Wyoming and Vermont are probably good examples; WY has about 100,000 Square Miles so if my math is correct they would have one officer for every 33 Square Miles. VT has about 10000 Square Miles so that equals approx. 1 officer for every 6 Square Miles. Terrain is the next variable that could be considered, WY being mountainous in the Western part of the state and High Plains in the Eastern. Much more difficult to patrol the Mountainous Western part vs. the High Plains of Eastern WY.
You are correct regarding the consideration of land area per state, however the effects may not be quite as extreme as one might expect due to the generalization that most people live in the areas where most people live, generally speaking. Your example about Wyoming versus Vermont while considering land area would assume that all LEO’s would be spread out equally across the land. This is probably not entirely accurate because most LEO’s reside and patrol where the people are… The proper correlation is probably somewhere in between… maybe 70:30 leaning towards the population density equation IMO. But I get your point…
I live in Mississippi,used to be a a Deputy Sheriff,I can tell you that a lot of what has been counted,is Administrative also.Most of our law enforcement officers are in the larger cities,Jackson,Tupelo,Hattiesburg,Gulfport,Biloxi,and others.In all of our counties we have a Sheriff’s office,and in a lot of the towns in the separate counties we have local police.Plus State Troopers,Dept.of corrections,Constables,MDOT ,they regulate commercial traffic and railroads,School resource officers in a lot of schools,most of our law enforcement is spread over a large gammet of the state,not just a large police state force.Our state is one of the more Conservative politically wise,the only non-conservative in the state governmental elected offices is the attorney general.Plus we have majority state Senate,and state House.We are a very pro-gun state,open carry will start July1st,We have had concealed carry for a long time,no real state infringements on gun rights.A lot of people that have not been to our state have misconceptions about our state,or are already biased in their view of our state,we are the Hospitality state.Ya’ll have a good day.Keep your powder dry.
Golly Gee,
for those Canadians who thought they were immune to a “Police State”, you all should know that Many Canadian Police Chiefs, Headed by the Calgary Police Chief, are petitioning to have law changed so they will automatically take DNA samples from anyone they arrest.
google
Calgary police DNA notion has columnist thinking ‘Take that swab and stick it’