WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new analysis of FBI data by crime analyst Jeff Asher finds that, while large police departments across the United States have stopped shrinking after several years of sustained officer attrition, few have regained the staffing lost since 2019. Drawing on Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data published in 2024, the report reveals that although some mid-size and county agencies have begun to grow, the largest city police forces remain below pre-pandemic staffing levels.
Asher, who compiled the data from more than 9,900 departments nationwide, notes that most police agencies shrank after COVID-19, and the largest departments continued to decline in 2023—though by a smaller margin. He identified 39 departments that employed at least 1,000 officers in 2019 and tracked their staffing through 2024. Of those, 29 had fewer officers in 2024 than they did five years earlier. In total, 22 departments lost more than 100 officers over that period.
The report highlights that the steepest declines occurred between 2019 and 2022, a period marked by pandemic-related disruptions and nationwide protests over policing. From 2022 to 2024, the rate of decline slowed, but staffing has largely plateaued, especially in major cities. “Big cities have fewer officers, but for the most part they aren’t shrinking anymore,” Asher writes.
In addition to stagnating numbers, departments are facing continued recruitment and retention challenges. A 2023 report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) found that 78% of surveyed agencies reported difficulties in recruiting qualified candidates, and 65% reported higher-than-usual attrition. These figures point to deeper structural challenges beyond headcounts alone.
For example, the New York Police Department lost approximately 3,250 officers between 2019 and 2023. In 2024, it lost just nine—a trend Asher interprets as stabilization rather than recovery. Similar patterns were observed in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Winston-Salem. Departments that saw workforce reductions ranging from 18 to 33 percent have leveled off, but remain well below prior staffing baselines.
While the largest urban forces remain stagnant, Asher notes modest growth in smaller and mid-size departments. Many agencies serving cities with populations under 250,000 and counties with large unincorporated areas posted staffing increases in 2023 and 2024.
County-level data suggests that suburban and rural agencies may be absorbing officers departing big cities. “More granularity is needed, but… many officers that left big city agencies didn’t leave the profession; they just went to quieter cities and counties,” Asher explains. His analysis suggests this shift reflects not a loss of interest in law enforcement careers but a migration away from urban departments dealing with higher stress and greater public scrutiny.
Still, these gains do little to impact national totals. Asher points out that, while agencies serving jurisdictions with over 100,000 people represent less than 5% of all departments, they employ over 55% of the nation’s officers. Therefore, growth in smaller jurisdictions has a limited effect on overall staffing trends.
Among departments serving cities with populations over 1 million, 11 out of 13 remain smaller than they were in 2019. These include Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—cities where ongoing political debates around policing and public safety funding continue to influence hiring and retention.
The 2024 dataset marks a return to more complete national figures following the FBI’s 2021 transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which temporarily disrupted comprehensive data collection. Asher’s report draws only from agencies that consistently submitted staffing data in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 to maintain accurate comparisons.
In summary, the report concludes that large city departments have “stopped shrinking” but show no signs of meaningful regrowth. Meanwhile, suburban and county-level agencies may be slowly absorbing the displaced workforce—quietly reshaping the geography of American policing.
