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Worcester Police Department

City agency in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 1995.

ORI
MA0146000
Type
City
County
Worcester
State
Massachusetts (MA)
FBI reporting
Reporting since 1995-01-01
Location
42.2721, -71.7987

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 212,985.

461Sworn officers
48Civilian staff
2.39Employees per 1,000 people
212,985Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
202546148212,9852.39
202444950212,4252.35
202344757206,1452.44
202246852206,5752.52
202144750186,3652.67
202044250184,8502.66
201945650184,9452.74
201844550186,1882.66
201745352185,1072.73
201643550184,5952.63
201541750183,3772.55
201444047183,2482.66

Officer and civilian counts are full-time employees as filed by the agency in its annual return. A dash means the agency did not report that figure for that year — it does not mean zero.

Deaths during encounters with this agency

4 people have died during an encounter with Worcester Police Department between 2015 and 2021, according to Mapping Police Violence.

4Deaths recorded
1.88Per 100,000 people policed
2015–2021Period covered
Recorded causeDeaths
Gunshot2
Taser1
Tasered1

What this figure is and is not. It counts deaths recorded as occurring during an encounter with this agency. It is not a finding of wrongdoing, and a death being recorded here says nothing about whether it was lawful. Many involve armed confrontations; some involve none. Police Census publishes counts only and does not name the people who died.

These records are compiled from news reports and public records by Mapping Police Violence, an independent research organisation — they are not official statistics, and no federal database records this comprehensively. Used with permission.

Assaults on officers

Officers of Worcester Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 2001 and 2024. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.

Weapon reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm57
Knife or other cutting instrument84
Hands, fists or feet2,227
Other weapon636
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
2001003447
20030022
20130010
201411287
2015152812
2016124414
2017418328141
2018121737247
201964277106
20201029969
20216620637
20223917551
202361317928
202416925475

Why there is no single total here. The FBI publishes two breakdowns of the same assaults — by weapon, and by how the officer was deployed — and nationally they do not agree: the assignment columns sum to 1,869,337 and the weapon columns to 1,744,852, and the two match on only 84% of rows. Police Census publishes the weapon breakdown as the FBI states it rather than picking one basis and calling it ‘the total’. The file’s ‘cleared’ column is not shown either: it sums higher than the assaults themselves, so it is not a subset of what is above and we have not established what it counts.

This comes from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted programme. Despite the name, the file carries no officers-killed data at all — those columns are empty for every agency and every year, so this page reports assaults only and says nothing about officers killed.

LEOKA identifies agencies by name, not by the ORI used elsewhere on this site. A row was attached only where exactly one agency in that state reduces to the same base name; 78.7% of rows matched nationwide. An agency with nothing here may have reported no assaults, or may be one of the names that did not match — Police Census does not guess which.

Federal oversight

The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has taken the following action against Worcester Police Department under 34 U.S.C. § 12601. The case type and document titles below are DOJ’s own words, reproduced without interpretation — see all federal oversight matters on /oversight.

DOJ’s case type: Closed

[2026-10-07] DOJ relabelled this matter from Investigation to Closed; caught by the nightly verbatim gate on 2026-10-05.

Source: Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section.

Also policing Worcester

Jurisdictions overlap. These agencies are also recorded against the same county, so a single address may be covered by more than one of them.

Source

Agency identity, type, jurisdiction, coordinates and reporting status are as published by the FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency record MA0146000. Police Census reproduces these values without adjustment. Where the FBI publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating.

Believe something on this page is wrong? Tell us — every correction is published on Corrections.