In this section, I compare data from FBI reporting on the number of Police officers per 10,000 residents to U.S. census data for poverty rate, population, and racial demographics.
There appears to be a strong correlation between the size of a Police force and the percentage of a city’s non-white population.
Its worth nothing that this trend appears specific to towns and cities, but seems to invert in very small municipalities like villages where higher concentrations of wealth and white population often reflect a very high ratio of police to population.
There appears to be a loose correlation between the number of police and poverty rate.