From January 2010 through December 2010 the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project
recorded 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct that involved 6,613 sworn law enforcement officers and
6,826 alleged victims.
4,861 – Unique reports of police misconduct tracked
6,613 - Number of sworn law enforcement officers involved (354 were agency leaders such as chiefs or sheriffs)
6,826 - Number of alleged victims involved
247 – Number of fatalities associated with tracked reports
$346,512,800(Over one third of a billion dollars) – Estimated amount spent on misconduct-related
civil judgments and settlements excluding sealed settlements, court costs, and attorney fees.
Misconduct by Type
Of the 6,613 law enforcement officers involved in reported allegations of misconduct that met NPMSRP criteria
for tracking purposes, 1,575 were involved in excessive force reports, which were the most prominent type of
report at 23.8% of all reports. This was followed by sexual misconduct complaints at 9.3% of officers reported
then theft/fraud/robbery allegations involving 7.2% of all officers reported. The following chart displays the
breakdown of misconduct types by percentage of reports and the number of reports each by type.
Of all 1,575 officers involved in reported excessive force complaints, 897 (56.9%) were involved in cases of
physical use of force complaints which include fist strikes, throws, choke holds, baton strikes, and other physical
attacks. 232 officers (14.7%) were involved in firearm-related excessive force complaints, 166 (10.6%) were
involved in taser-related cases, and the remaining officers were involved in other cases involving a combination
of force types (13.21%), use of police dogs (1.7%), police vehicles (0.4%), and chemical weapons (2.4%).
There have been 127 fatalities associated with credible excessive force allegations within 2010, which means
approximately 8.1% of reported excessive force cases involved fatalities. Of these excessive force fatalities,
91 were caused by firearms, 19 were caused by physical force, 11 by taser, and 6 by other causes.
*Note: fatalities listed are only those involved in cases where excessive force or unnecessary force was reported.
This does not include all fatalities related to police use of force.Sexual Misconduct
Officer-involved sexual misconduct describes an entire subset of police misconduct that includes non-criminal
complaints such as consensual sexual activity that occurs while an officer is on-duty, sexual harassment, up to
felony acts of sexual assault or child molestation. Sexual misconduct was the second most common form of
misconduct reported throughout 2010 with 618 officers involved in sexual misconduct complaints during that
period, 354 of which were involved in complaints that involved forcible non-consensual sexual activity such as
sexual assault or sexual battery.Figure 6. Officers involved with sexual misconduct by percentage of incidents involving children or adults.
Of the officers associated with reports of serious sexual misconduct, 51% (180) were involved with reports
that involved minors and 49% (174) involved adults.http://wac.0873.edgecastcdn.ne.....0NPMSRPP3.png?119b56Figure 7. Alleged victims of officer-involved sexual assaults by age.
However, of the 479 alleged victims of serious sexual misconduct which were tracked, 52% (249) were
minors and 48% (230) were adults. This would appear to indicate that minors are victims of alleged
serial offenders slightly more often than adults.
Of the 354 officers involved with serious sexual
misconduct reports, 56 law enforcement officers were involved in allegations where multiple victims
were involved.