Police Officers Per Person by County

This map is showing the amount of police officers within each county in respect to how many people in total live in that particular county.  The original data included the amount full time, and part time civilian and sworn in officers.  This data was taken from the NYS Department of Criminal Justice services website and the data itself is according to numbers from the year 2011.

                The map shown shows a number of patterns throughout the state of New York.  First off it may seem that the counties around New York City do not have any police officers within them.  However these counties of the Bronx, Kings, Queens, New York, and Richmond are all included in the NYPD which I could not break up into these 5 counties which is why I have no data for them.  Much of the State has around 400 to 600 officers per person and these counties are represented with the color yellow.  There are a number of these counties concentrated around the Southern Tier and also a few more clustered in Western New York.  The counties in the orange color have 200 to 400 officers per person.  There are a number of these counties going across central New York and down through the Hudson Valley going south towards New York City.  The counties of Suffolk and Nassau on Long Island also represent this classification.  The green counties on the map represent 600 to 850 officers per person and these are mostly located in the North Country region of the State, with a few scattered around the rest of New York.  Finally there in one county with an unusually high amount of officers per people and that county is represented in the light blue color.  This seems to be a very odd occurrence within this area of the State. 

                The patterns seen here can be explained in a variety of ways.  First off the counties in the yellow color with an average amount of officers per person do not seem to be in counties with a large metropolitan population besides from Monroe County which has Rochester within its boundaries.  This would show that this is an average amount of officers for a normal county within the State.  The Counties with the orange color however have a less than average amount of officers per person.  In general many of these counties have a metropolitan area like Syracuse, Utica, Ithaca, Cortland, Rome, etc. This could contribute to the lower number of officers per person because they have a high concentration of people in one portion of the County. As for the counties in green with a high number of officers per person they seem to be in more rural areas.  These areas have lower populations which would make them have a higher number of officers in general compared to other areas around the State.  As for Schoharie County this seems like a very strange place to have such a high amount of officers per person.  I could not find any reason why this area has such a high amount of officer, although, there seems to be a large number of State Forest within this county so these officers could be park officers who patrol the forests rather than the general public.  Overall, because this information is about employment these numbers could be subject to change depending on the amount of money police forces within these counties are getting on a yearly basis and are subject to change.