Kevin at The Smallest Minority:

In 2006 there were approximately 836,000 sworn full-time police officers in the U.S. according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Approximately 70% of those are “field” officers, as opposed to desk officers, so that brings the number down to about 585,000. Split by three shifts, and you get about 200,000 officers “on the street” at any particular time.

Divide that up among a population of 300,000,000 and there is one cop for every 1,500 of us. Obviously we don’t have a uniform distribution of either population or police officers, but still, you can see why police officers so seldom prevent or stop a crime in progress, they show up afterwards usually to take a report.

Reminds me of this.

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