PoliceCensus

Home / States / California / Ridgecrest Police Department

Ridgecrest Police Department

City agency in Kern, California, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 2021.

ORI
CA0150600
Type
City
County
Kern
State
California (CA)
FBI reporting
Reporting since 2021-12-01
Location
35.6207, -117.6702

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 28,469.

27Sworn officers
21Civilian staff
1.69Employees per 1,000 people
28,469Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
2025272128,4691.69
2024312028,1101.81
2023321928,5301.79
2022281728,2901.59
2021281829,2821.57
2020311829,1201.68
2019311829,1011.68
2018321829,0551.72
2017321828,8731.73
2016321829,0031.72
2015321628,9891.66
2014321628,8301.66

Officer and civilian counts are full-time employees as filed by the agency in its annual return. A dash means the agency did not report that figure for that year — it does not mean zero.

Crime and clearances

Offences and clearances filed by Ridgecrest Police Department in its monthly returns to the FBI, added up by calendar year, 2019–2026. Violent crime and property crime are the FBI’s two categories. These are the counts as filed: Police Census does not turn them into a rate.

Violent crime
YearMonths filedOffencesClearedCleared as % of offences
20267 of 12735169.9%
20251215911371.1%
20241218413372.3%
20231215510467.1%
2022121618049.7%
20211 of 1218527.8%
2020121589660.8%
2019121428660.6%
Property crime
YearMonths filedOffencesClearedCleared as % of offences
20267 of 121497147.7%
2025122468936.2%
2024122937224.6%
2023122838530.0%
2022123979323.4%
20211 of 1227311.1%
20201233410832.3%
20191240513132.3%

Reading the table. “Not reported” means the agency filed nothing for that year; it does not mean zero. A 0 is a figure the agency filed. For 2026 the FBI is still collecting: that year is not complete in the file we read, so where this agency has no 2026 figures the table says “Not yet in the FBI’s file” rather than “Not reported”. We can see that the agency is absent from the file so far; we cannot tell whether it has not filed or has not yet been published, and we do not guess. A year marked “7 of 12” adds up only the months the agency filed, so it is not a full-year total. A dash in the last column means the percentage cannot be worked out: it needs both figures, and at least one offence.

“Cleared” is the FBI file’s clearance count for the year. Clearances in a year can relate to offences from earlier years, so the percentage is not the share of that year’s offences that were solved, and it can exceed 100%. Figures are not adjusted: a year far below the agency’s neighbouring years, or a 0 beside many offences, may reflect what was submitted rather than what happened. The file does not say which, and Police Census does not guess.

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, summarized data for agency record CA0150600.

Arrests

Arrests made by Ridgecrest Police Department, all offences combined, as filed with the FBI and added up by calendar year, 2019–2026.

YearMonths filedArrests
20267 of 12886
2025121,634
2024121,747
2023121,623
2022121,241
20211 of 1293
2020122,810
2019122,537

“Not reported” means the agency filed nothing for that year; it does not mean zero. A year marked “7 of 12” adds up only the months filed. For 2026 the FBI is still collecting, so an absent agency reads “Not yet in the FBI’s file”: absent from the file so far, which is not the same claim as having filed nothing. Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, arrest data for agency record CA0150600.

Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file

2 incidents appear in the FBI’s hate crime file for Ridgecrest Police Department for 2025, as at 14 August 2026. The table lists every year from 1991 to 2025 for which the file has at least one.

Incidents appearing in the FBI’s file, as at 14 August 2026
YearIncidents appearing in the file
20252
20241
20231
20221
20212
20201
20191
20161
20131
20101
20071
20063
20051
20044
20034
20022
20012
20002
19993
19982
19975
199620
19959
Bias motivation recorded, in the FBI’s words, 1995–2025
Bias motivationIncidents
Anti-Black or African American39
Anti-Multiple Races, Group7
Anti-White7
Anti-Hispanic or Latino5
Anti-Asian3
Anti-Gay (Male)3
Anti-Jewish2
Anti-Catholic1
Anti-Mental Disability1
Anti-Other Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry1
Anti-Transgender1

Absence from this file is not a zero. The file lists incidents that were reported to the FBI. An agency can be missing from it because it recorded none, because it did not report, or because it does not take part in the FBI’s hate crime program, and nothing Police Census holds can tell these apart. In any one year the file lists incidents for only a minority of the agencies the FBI counts as reporting.

The figures are counts of incidents as they appear in the file, as at 14 August 2026; Police Census does not turn them into a rate and does not compare them with other agencies. Offence and bias wording is the FBI’s own, unaltered. Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, additional datasets, hate crime bulk file, agency record CA0150600.

Deaths during encounters with this agency

1 person has died during an encounter with Ridgecrest Police Department between 2017 and 2017, according to the two datasets named below.

1Deaths recorded
3.51Per 100,000 people policed
2017–2017Period covered
Recorded causeDeaths
Gunshot1

What this figure is and is not. It counts deaths recorded as occurring during an encounter with this agency. It is not a finding of wrongdoing, and a death being recorded here says nothing about whether it was lawful. Many involve armed confrontations; some involve none. Police Census publishes counts only and does not name the people who died.

Source: every one of these records comes from Mapping Police Violence, which records deaths from 2013–2026. They are not official statistics, and no federal database records this comprehensively. See Deaths for how these records are compiled. Mapping Police Violence data is displayed with attribution to its compiler; the written scope of this site’s right to display it is being confirmed (note dated 11 October 2026).

Assaults on officers

Officers of Ridgecrest Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 1995 and 2025. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.

Weapon reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm12
Knife or other cutting instrument10
Hands, fists or feet226
Other weapon50
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
19951094
19960153
19971041
19980080
19992040
20000331
20010070
20020031
200300100
20040072
20050032
20060032
20071041
20080041
20090061
20100062
20110070
201210102
201301122
20141041
20150042
20160032
20171050
20182070
202001120
202200102
2023003310
202422252
20250286

Why there is no single total here. The FBI publishes two breakdowns of the same assaults — by weapon, and by how the officer was deployed — and nationally they do not agree: the assignment columns sum to 1,869,337 and the weapon columns to 1,744,852, and the two match on only 84% of rows. Police Census publishes the weapon breakdown as the FBI states it rather than picking one basis and calling it ‘the total’. The file’s ‘cleared’ column is not shown either: it sums higher than the assaults themselves, so it is not a subset of what is above and we have not established what it counts.

This comes from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted programme. Despite the name, the file carries no officers-killed data at all — those columns are empty for every agency and every year, so this page reports assaults only and says nothing about officers killed.

LEOKA identifies agencies by name, not by the ORI used elsewhere on this site. A row was attached only where exactly one agency in that state reduces to the same base name; 78.7% of rows matched nationwide. An agency with nothing here may have reported no assaults, or may be one of the names that did not match — Police Census does not guess which.

Military surplus received

Transferred under the Department of Defense 1033 programme, which passes surplus military equipment to law enforcement agencies at no cost. Values are the Department’s original acquisition cost, not what the equipment is worth today.

$680Original acquisition value
2Line items received
2014–2014Years of transfers
ItemQuantityAcquisition valueMost recent
Sight,Reflex18$6802014-05-15

Source: Defense Logistics Agency, Law Enforcement Support Office, public data as at 30 June 2026. Items are grouped by description; the date shown is the most recent shipment of that item.

Also policing Kern

Jurisdictions overlap. These agencies are also recorded against the same county, so a single address may be covered by more than one of them.

Source

Agency identity, type, jurisdiction, coordinates and reporting status are as published by the FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency record CA0150600. Police Census reproduces these values without adjustment. Where the FBI publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating.

Believe something on this page is wrong? Tell us at corrections@policecensus.com — every correction is published on Corrections.