Spread over Harris County’s 1,777 square miles are 63 different law enforcement agencies.  That is one law enforcement agency for every 28 square miles.  These agencies employ 12,014 licensed law enforcement officers (“officers”) and another 5,385 civilian support staff.1 That is one officer for every 417 residents of the County.

These range from the largest, the Houston Police Department with 6,337 employees (of which 5,246 are officers), to the smallest, the Shore Acres Police Department with 6 officers.  The second largest is the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) with 4,570 employees.  However, HCSO has a substantially lower ratio of officers at 2,049 (44%).  I suspect this has to do with the personnel necessary to run the County’s jail.

There are another 2,174 employees at the Harris County Constable Offices, 1,921 of whom are officers.  Precinct 4 is, by far, the largest at 706.  Precinct 1 has the second largest with 490.  It is located downtown and has specialized duties related to the courts, resulting in a higher ratio of civilian employees.  The precincts with the larger forces are those in the unincorporated parts of the county where there are no municipal police departments.

There are twenty law enforcement agencies associated with school districts, colleges, and universities.  These agencies employ 1,853, of which 1,108 are officers.  The ratio of total employees to officers is unusual for this group.  One person familiar with their operations told me that some of the larger forces, especially those associated with the universities, employ a substantial number of security guards who are not armed.

The number of women police officers has been steadily rising in recent years.  As of the end of the year, they constituted 19% of all officers.  They accounted for 54% of the civilian employees.

In future posts, I will be looking at the clearance rates for the agencies and how the overall headcount employed by law enforcement compares to the other large counties in Texas.

Stay tuned.

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Note 1 – All of the personnel numbers in this post came from this report on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Uniform Crime Reporting System.  There are five agencies for which DPS shows no employees.  It appears that those agencies have employees/officers but have not filed their reports with DPS.  However, they also appear to be relatively small agencies so the inclusion of their personnel probably would not substantially change the totals.

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