Police Officer Staffing: Analyzing the Commonly Held Belief that More Cops Equals Less Crime 1

Police officer staffing levels are believed to relate directly to the crime rate in metropolitan areas; however, the studies on this relationship to date are contradictory and inconclusive. This study compares crime rates in 24 metropolitan areas with the police officer staffing levels over a 12-year time series study. Data for this study are derived from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics surveys in 1999 and 2003 and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for the period 1996– 2008. The data show some but not overwhelming support for the position that there is a negative correlation between police officer staffing and crime rates. A commonly held belief among law enforcement officials, law enforcement pundits, and citizens of the U.S. is that more police officers on the streets or investigating crimes results in less crime and safer communities. Intuitively, this belief is logical; however, no solid data support this claim. One method of partially and indirectly supporting this claim is to conduct a study of selected cities and counties that compares the number of sworn police officers with the crime rate for given jurisdictions to see whether an inverse relationship exists. Does hiring more police officers result in lower crimes rates? This paper examines the relationship between police officer staffing and the resulting crime rates in a longitudinal study. It addresses the following research questions: (1) Is there a correlation between sworn police officer staffing and a city’s or county’s crime rate?