Home / States / South Carolina / Columbia Police Department
Columbia Police Department
City agency in Lexington, Richland, South Carolina, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 1991.
- ORI
- SC0400100
- Type
- City
- County
- Lexington, Richland
- State
- South Carolina (SC)
- FBI reporting
- Reporting since 1991-01-01
- Location
- 34.0023, -81.0402
Workforce
As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 147,021.
| Year | Officers | Civilians | Population served | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 268 | 120 | 147,021 | 2.64 |
| 2023 | 304 | 97 | 141,497 | 2.83 |
| 2022 | 289 | 80 | 137,768 | 2.68 |
| 2021 | 324 | 97 | 132,255 | 3.18 |
| 2020 | 343 | 88 | 131,777 | 3.27 |
| 2019 | 349 | 93 | 133,790 | 3.30 |
| 2018 | 363 | 91 | 133,540 | 3.40 |
| 2017 | 301 | 85 | 134,957 | 2.86 |
| 2016 | 338 | 86 | 134,489 | 3.15 |
| 2015 | 352 | 82 | 132,495 | 3.28 |
| 2014 | 348 | 87 | 134,124 | 3.24 |
| 2013 | 374 | 69 | 132,240 | 3.35 |
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
16 people have died during an encounter with Columbia Police Department between 2002 and 2020, according to Mapping Police Violence.
| Recorded cause | Deaths |
|---|---|
| Gunshot | 12 |
| Vehicle | 4 |
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 Columbia Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 1995 and 2025. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.
| Weapon reported | Officers assaulted |
|---|---|
| Firearm | 16 |
| Knife or other cutting instrument | 9 |
| Hands, fists or feet | 640 |
| Other weapon | 88 |
| Year | Firearm | Knife | Hands, fists, feet | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| 1999 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2005 | 2 | 0 | 13 | 4 |
| 2006 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 6 |
| 2007 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 2 |
| 2008 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 5 |
| 2009 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 3 |
| 2010 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 1 |
| 2011 | 2 | 0 | 19 | 8 |
| 2012 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 1 |
| 2013 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 2 |
| 2014 | 0 | 2 | 13 | 4 |
| 2015 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 7 |
| 2016 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 0 |
| 2017 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 1 |
| 2018 | 1 | 0 | 80 | 1 |
| 2019 | 0 | 1 | 59 | 5 |
| 2020 | 4 | 0 | 26 | 4 |
| 2021 | 4 | 1 | 26 | 6 |
| 2022 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 9 |
| 2023 | 0 | 1 | 34 | 2 |
| 2024 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 2 |
| 2025 | 0 | 1 | 167 | 15 |
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.
Military surplus received
Transferred under the Department of Defense 1033 programme, which passes surplus military equipment to law enforcement agencies at no cost. Values are the Department’s original acquisition cost, not what the equipment is worth today.
| Item | Quantity | Acquisition value | Most recent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mine Resistant Vehicle | 1 | $658,000 | 2013-09-11 |
| Truck,Utility | 2 | $341,988 | 2018-05-29 |
| Unmanned Vehicle,Ground | 2 | $106,750 | 2018-06-21 |
| Tool Kit,Explosive Ordnance Disposal | 2 | $81,322 | 2017-02-23 |
| Camouflage Net System,Radar Scattering | 7 | $4,681 | 2011-03-17 |
| Sight,Reflex | 10 | $3,390 | 2012-02-07 |
| Telescope,Straight | 3 | $884 | 2014-02-04 |
| Spectacles Kit,Ballistic And Laser Protective | 97 | $45 | 2012-02-04 |
| Magazine,Cartridge | 89 | $32 | 2011-09-10 |
Source: Defense Logistics Agency, Law Enforcement Support Office, public data as at 30 June 2026. Items are grouped by description; the date shown is the most recent shipment of that item.
Also policing Lexington, Richland
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 SC0400100. 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.