Police organisation
New York City Police Department
A municipal police department — by its own account the largest and one of the oldest in the United States — policing a city of 8.5 million people.
At a glance
- Official name
- New York City Police Department (NYPD)
- System
- United States
- Level of government
- Municipal
- Kind of body
- Municipal police force
- Status
- Currently operating
- Official website
- https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/index.page — confirmed against the organisation’s own pages on 13 September 2026.
- Facts last checked against sources
- 13 September 2026
What it is
The NYPD is one of roughly 17,500 general-purpose state and local law-enforcement agencies in the United States, about two-thirds of which are municipal police departments. Its scale makes it unrepresentative rather than typical: it is published here as a worked instance of the municipal tier, and nothing about it establishes anything about the thousands of separately governed American agencies. It is organised into 78 patrol precincts, 12 transit districts and nine police service areas.
What it covers
The City of New York.
Broad responsibilities
- Public safety and law enforcement across the City of New York
- Traffic management
- Counterterrorism
- Emergency response
Elsewhere on this site
- National Law Enforcement Museum — the museum, archive or collection that holds this organisation’s history
- Who polices what — how United States is structured, against other systems
Other organisations to compare
- California Highway Patrol — United States
- United States Marshals Service — United States
Where this connects
Institutions: Municipal police.
Sources
About NYPD — New York City Police Department
City of New York (nyc.gov) · Institutional (self-description) · link verified 2026-09-13
SCOPE: the New York City Police Department only. The Department’s own city-government page, read directly. Supports the official name "New York City Police Department (NYPD)"; that it is "the largest and one of the oldest municipal police departments in the United States"; that it polices "an 8.5-million-person city, by performing a wide variety of public safety, law enforcement, traffic management, counterterror, and emergency response roles"; and its structure of 78 patrol precincts, 12 transit districts and nine police service areas. Staffing figures on the page are the Department’s own approximations and are NOT republished as current. Establishes nothing about any other US agency.
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018 — Statistical Tables
Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice · Government publication · 2018 · link verified 2026-07-24
Reference date June 2018. Supports that 17,541 general-purpose state and local law-enforcement agencies performed law-enforcement functions in the United States, of which about 67% were local (municipal) police departments, 17% sheriffs' offices, and 15% primary state, tribal, special-jurisdiction agencies, constables and marshals, together employing about 1,214,000 full-time personnel. Supports the FRAGMENTATION of US policing across thousands of separately governed agencies. Does NOT support any per-state figure or any claim about a specific agency.