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Wheat Ridge Police Department

City agency in Jefferson, Colorado, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 1997.

ORI
CO0300500
Type
City
County
Jefferson
State
Colorado (CO)
FBI reporting
Reporting since 1997-01-01
Location
39.7584, -105.0798

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 31,904.

72Sworn officers
23Civilian staff
2.98Employees per 1,000 people
31,904Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
2025722331,9042.98
2024842431,6153.42
2023802431,6323.29
20220033,1040.00
2021791732,0273.00
2020862031,4513.37
2019831831,5533.20
2018781831,4523.05
2017782431,5673.23
2016752731,3893.25
2015722731,2413.17
2014752731,0963.28

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 Wheat Ridge 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
20269 of 12762735.5%
202512853541.2%
2024121546139.6%
2023121414229.8%
2022121332216.5%
2021121745129.3%
2020121776536.7%
2019121194033.6%
Property crime
YearMonths filedOffencesClearedCleared as % of offences
20269 of 1262213321.4%
2025121,24917413.9%
2024121,45219413.4%
2023121,4561016.9%
2022121,7091327.7%
2021121,9911196.0%
2020121,7061368.0%
2019121,118887.9%

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 CO0300500.

Arrests

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

YearMonths filedArrests
20269 of 12825
2025121,393
2024121,609
2023121,458
2022121,557
2021121,531
2020121,344
2019121,291

“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 CO0300500.

Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file

2 incidents appear in the FBI’s hate crime file for Wheat Ridge Police Department for 2022, 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
20222
20201
20191
20123
20111
20103
20081
20071
20061
20055
20021
19991
19952
19941
19931
19922
19912
Bias motivation recorded, in the FBI’s words, 1991–2022
Bias motivationIncidents
Anti-Hispanic or Latino5
Anti-White5
Anti-Black or African American3
Anti-Jewish3
Anti-Asian2
Anti-Lesbian (Female)2
Anti-Other Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry2
Anti-Bisexual1
Anti-Gay (Male)1
Anti-Multiple Races, Group1
Anti-Other Religion1
Anti-Physical Disability1
Anti-Transgender1

1 of these incidents records more than one bias motivation. The FBI’s file stores those as a single list; each is shown here as its separate entries joined by “+”, and none is added to a line in the table above.

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 CO0300500.

Deaths during encounters with this agency

3 people have died during an encounter with Wheat Ridge Police Department between 2012 and 2025, according to the two datasets named below.

3Deaths recorded
9.40Per 100,000 people policed
2012–2025Period covered
Recorded causeDeaths
Gunshot3

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: these records come from Mapping Police Violence (2) and Fatal Encounters (1). Where both recorded the same death it is counted once. They are not official statistics, and no federal database records this comprehensively. See Deaths for how the two are combined. 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 Wheat Ridge Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 1996 and 2025. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.

Weapon reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm7
Knife or other cutting instrument6
Hands, fists or feet129
Other weapon20
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
19960012
19971020
19981020
19990001
20000010
20010022
20021021
20030001
20040020
20050030
20060020
20070020
20080121
20090030
20100021
20111060
20120111
20130050
20141131
20150050
20160140
20170050
20180040
201910110
202000250
20210062
20220142
20230072
202401101
20251072

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.

Also policing Jefferson

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 CO0300500. 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.