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Lake Wales Police Department

City agency in Polk, Florida, United States. This agency has no NIBRS start date on record. The FBI file does carry arrest counts for it, shown below; Police Census holds no crime counts or clearance rates for it.

ORI
FL0531300
Type
City
County
Polk
State
Florida (FL)
FBI reporting
No NIBRS start date
Location
27.9002, -81.5888

No crime counts or clearance rates are published for this jurisdiction. Lake Wales Police Department has no National Incident-Based Reporting System start date on record, and Police Census holds no crime or clearance figures for it. The FBI file does carry arrest counts for this agency; they are shown below.

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 18,200.

48Sworn officers
9Civilian staff
3.13Employees per 1,000 people
18,200Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
202548918,2003.13
2024461316,8133.51
202349716,8783.32
202245716,7933.10
202146818,0922.98
202045717,0753.05
201943516,9012.84
201843516,3492.94
201745616,1503.16
201643515,8193.03
201542615,3773.12
201443615,0923.25

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.

Arrests

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

YearMonths filedArrests
2026Not yet in the FBI’s file
2025120
2024120
2023120
2022120
2021Not reported
2020Annual total only586 †
2019Annual total only730 †

† Annual total only. For 2019, 2020, the FBI’s file places this agency’s whole year of arrests in a single month. Police Census shows the annual total as filed and no month-by-month figures for those years: a monthly table would show one month’s spike above zeros in the other eleven, which the source does not support.

“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. A 0 is the figure as filed: the file does not distinguish an agency that made no arrests from one that did not submit them, and Police Census cannot either. Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, arrest data for agency record FL0531300.

Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file

1 incident appears in the FBI’s hate crime file for Lake Wales Police Department for 2003, 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
20031
20011
Bias motivation recorded, in the FBI’s words, 2001–2003
Bias motivationIncidents
Anti-Black or African American1
Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group)1

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 FL0531300.

Deaths during encounters with this agency

3 people have died during an encounter with Lake Wales Police Department between 2018 and 2022, according to the two datasets named below.

3Deaths recorded
16.48Per 100,000 people policed
2018–2022Period covered
Recorded causeDeaths
Vehicle2
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: these records come from Fatal Encounters (2) and Mapping Police Violence (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 Lake Wales Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 1998 and 2025. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.

Weapon reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm2
Knife or other cutting instrument2
Hands, fists or feet56
Other weapon31
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
19980044
19990133
20000041
20010062
20020030
20030022
20040011
20050021
20060021
20070010
20080011
20090020
20100001
20110011
20120010
20140010
20151030
20160012
20170021
20180031
20191121
20200013
20220040
20230054
20250011

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 Polk

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 FL0531300. 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.