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Federal funding for policing

$6.66bn awarded across 13,585 grants under the three main federal policing programmes since October 2019.

$6.66bnAwarded since 2019
13,585Individual awards
56States & territories

Why there is no figure on individual agency pages. The recipient of a federal award is a legal entity — usually the city, and sometimes a university, a state body or a research contractor. It is rarely the police department itself. Only 2.6% of these awards name a law enforcement agency directly.

Attributing a grant made to “City of Milwaukee” to Milwaukee Police Department would be an inference, and printing “no federal funding” on the pages of departments whose money arrived through their city would be worse. So this money is reported where it is unambiguously true: by state and by programme.

By programme

ProgrammeAwardedAwards
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant$3.06bn6,936
COPS Hiring Program$3.02bn5,760
DNA Backlog Reduction$578.0m889

COPS Hiring pays for officer posts. Byrne JAG is the main flexible criminal-justice grant, covering equipment, technology and programmes as well as personnel. DNA Backlog Reduction funds forensic laboratory capacity.

By state

Ranked by total awarded. These are the amounts obligated to recipients in each state, not per head of population.

StateAwardedAwards
Texas$971.37bn1,254,110
California$524.54bn1,077,681
Florida$427.84bn737,205
Illinois$272.87bn357,975
Pennsylvania$209.36bn437,456
Ohio$189.39bn296,872
New York$139.32bn193,320
New Jersey$136.36bn177,753
Virginia$131.26bn190,344
North Carolina$116.10bn228,762
Michigan$113.93bn243,005
Wisconsin$106.12bn120,640
Georgia$87.62bn239,040
Missouri$68.61bn135,600
Tennessee$56.04bn109,592
South Carolina$51.75bn197,064
Oklahoma$51.29bn129,712
Massachusetts$49.58bn128,592
Minnesota$43.03bn87,600
Kentucky$42.88bn81,774
Alabama$40.63bn108,092
Kansas$35.83bn102,837
Indiana$33.94bn78,120
Washington$33.49bn77,490
Arkansas$23.08bn89,680
Louisiana$20.60bn55,920
West Virginia$19.91bn86,510
Colorado$19.90bn55,154
Mississippi$19.74bn60,956
Oregon$18.83bn55,680
Maryland$17.08bn35,266
Arizona$16.90bn38,354
New Mexico$12.82bn27,000
Iowa$12.33bn50,374
Connecticut$11.16bn21,384
Nebraska$10.74bn26,691
New Hampshire$9.36bn27,219
Utah$6.18bn19,152
Nevada$4.80bn8,784
Montana$4.26bn18,696
Maine$4.18bn16,254
Idaho$4.00bn14,916
South Dakota$3.91bn16,356
North Dakota$2.45bn10,486
Vermont$2.29bn7,221
Alaska$2.14bn6,919
Rhode Island$1.58bn5,733
Delaware$1.33bn5,040
Wyoming$671.2m4,554
District of Columbia$237.7m225
Hawaii$224.8m754
PR$61.0m65
GU$17.5m23
VI$14.7m18
AS$5.1m12
MP$4.3m10

Source

USAspending.gov — assistance listings 16.710 (COPS Hiring), 16.738 (Edward Byrne Memorial JAG) and 16.741 (DNA Backlog Reduction), awards from 1 October 2019. Amounts are as published; state is the place of performance recorded on the award.