PoliceCensus

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Seattle Police Department

City agency in King, Washington, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 2012.

ORI
WASPD0000
Type
City
County
King
State
Washington (WA)
FBI reporting
Reporting since 2012-01-01
Location
47.4936, -121.8324

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 791,503.

1,064Sworn officers
454Civilian staff
1.92Employees per 1,000 people
791,503Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
20251,064454791,5031.92
20241,046442760,0581.96
20231,065413753,7861.96
20221,077341729,6911.94
20211,178419787,7492.03
20201,341559771,5172.46
20191,416544763,7062.57
20181,420534742,7592.63
20171,448515721,3652.72
20161,384562700,3132.78
20151,350569683,7002.81
20141,323566663,4102.85

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

114 people have died during an encounter with Seattle Police Department between 2000 and 2026, according to Mapping Police Violence.

114Deaths recorded
14.40Per 100,000 people policed
2000–2026Period covered
Recorded causeDeaths
Gunshot93
Vehicle14
Tasered2
Gunshot, Taser1
Drug overdose1
Drowned1
Physical restraint1
Beaten/Bludgeoned with instrument1

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 Seattle 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 reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm143
Knife or other cutting instrument300
Hands, fists or feet7,552
Other weapon1,505
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
1995548511
1996428410
1997857410
1998438111
199902766
200030734
200111713
200211752
200322722
200403700
200532578
2006315514
200701504
200813164
200924365
201013463
201102434
201202394
201302374
201401225
201500403
2016154713
2017151431429
201842745040
20198447177
2020791,017692
2021430893133
2022342893492
2023128970198
2024102183593
20251029688121

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 Seattle 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.

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

Also policing King

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 WASPD0000. 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.