Welcome to this summary report of our 2024 State of the Industry Projection Survey, sponsored by Damascus Gear, our sponsor partner in this data gathering mission. This survey differs from others in that we don’t ask agencies to tell us what has happened in the past one to three years, but instead we ask them to give us information about their budget and plans for the coming budget year. Now, given that some agencies budgets run from July 1—June 30, year-to-year, the information shared from those agencies is already set in stone, so to speak. Their budgets are already in place and in use. Other agencies have budgets that run with the federal government budget year, from October 1—September 30 year to year. Respondents from those agencies are well into their budget planning process and offering up excellent insight into what the budget year holds as it will start from them in about five weeks (as this is published online). Finally, some agencies have budget years that don’t start until January 1, and they are taking some educated guesses about what they expect. Holistically speaking, this summary should offer you exceptional insight into what the law enforcement industry faces in the coming 2025 budget year.
Let’s start out by looking at the basic information about those who responded and the agencies represented. To start we had over 700 respondents to our survey which ran for approximately three weeks in July and August this year (2024). Of those respondents, approximately 1/3 were patrol ranks, while the remaining 62% were of supervisory and/or command rank. It’s important to remember, as you consider the value of the data drawn from the survey, that in smaller agencies, even patrol ranks can carry significant responsibility and insight. While a corporal in a big city agency may not have much budgetary insight, the corporal at a ten-man agency in a rural area can have a lot of insight and perhaps even be second in command.
The current assignment information for the respondents paralleled the percentage for rank, as 33% are assigned to patrol with 29% specifically in command or executive roles, while the remainder were scattered across duty assignments such as training, SWAT, etc., but many of those are also in command roles within their specialized duty section.
When looking at the types of agencies represented, municipalities were the largest single group at 49% of respondents. Counties were next on the list at 22% with state, federal and campus following in that order. Transit and health agencies were represented at less than 1% each but Private agencies showed 4% and some of them may indeed have been medical/health or transit.
Briefly, population size served varied from less than 2,500 to over 1,000,000. Roughly 2/3 of the respondents serve populations less than 100,000. In line with those population sizes, we also wanted to ascertain the sworn strength of agencies across the nation. It’s interesting that 86% of agencies have 500 officers or less. That number steadily reduces but not as fast as you’d think. 79% have less than 250 officers. 68% have less than 100 officers. 56% have less than 50 officers. Consider those numbers. That means that 55% of all law enforcement in our nation is provided by agencies that have 50 or less sworn officers. Hardly the picture represented by popular television shows.
To the question of budget growth in the anticipated (or existent) 2025 budget, 69% of respondents indicated that they expect growth in their budget. That’s strong given the budget challenges seen by so many agencies as recent as five years ago. It’s further good news that the respondents indicated the three most popular targets of additional spending will be salaries, training and fleet vehicles.
Only 16% of respondents indicated that they expect any kind of reduction in their budget in 2025, and those that did indicated the budget cuts would be applied largely to items that will have no impact on operations. Things like fleet, uniforms, firearms, salary, training and community outreach largely remain untouched while the cuts are found in items so obscure we didn’t include them in our survey, so they were “None of the above.”
Glock handguns chambered in 9mm remain the most popularly used duty handgun in the industry, with some agencies indicating that they expect to change either to the Glock or to Sig Sauer/SigArms in 2025 from another brand. With three answers equaling less than 1% each, any caliber changes are going to be to the 9mm, with 67% of agencies not changing from their current caliber.
Data indicates that 83% of agencies have a current patrol rifle program with 16% of them expecting to expand it. 66% of agencies still authorize shotguns or have a shotgun program and 7% of those are expecting to expand it.
There is more data available after a thorough analysis of all results, and we’ll share the complete report as a downloadable PDF no later than October 15th.
