Home / States / South Dakota / Custer County Sheriff's Office
Custer County Sheriff's Office
County agency in Custer, South Dakota, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 2003.
- ORI
- SD0160000
- Type
- County
- County
- Custer
- State
- South Dakota (SD)
- FBI reporting
- Reporting since 2003-01-01
- Location
- 43.6849, -103.4622
Workforce
As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 9,603.
| Year | Officers | Civilians | Population served | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 16 | 2 | 9,603 | 1.87 |
| 2024 | 13 | 8 | 9,338 | 2.25 |
| 2023 | 12 | 1 | 9,342 | 1.39 |
| 2022 | 12 | 1 | 8,587 | 1.51 |
| 2021 | 11 | 1 | 8,626 | 1.39 |
| 2020 | 12 | 1 | 8,622 | 1.51 |
| 2019 | 12 | 1 | 8,320 | 1.56 |
| 2018 | 11 | 1 | 8,400 | 1.43 |
| 2017 | 10 | 2 | 8,217 | 1.46 |
| 2016 | 11 | 1 | 8,073 | 1.49 |
| 2015 | 11 | 0 | 8,049 | 1.37 |
| 2014 | 11 | 1 | 8,119 | 1.48 |
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 Custer County Sheriff's Office 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.
| Year | Months filed | Offences | Cleared | Cleared as % of offences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Not yet in the FBI’s file | |||
| 2025 | 12 | 10 | 6 | 60.0% |
| 2024 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 71.4% |
| 2023 | 12 | 15 | 4 | 26.7% |
| 2022 | 10 of 12 | 11 | 2 | 18.2% |
| 2021 | 12 | 15 | 6 | 40.0% |
| 2020 | 12 | 11 | 6 | 54.5% |
| 2019 | 12 | 8 | 5 | 62.5% |
| Year | Months filed | Offences | Cleared | Cleared as % of offences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Not yet in the FBI’s file | |||
| 2025 | 12 | 33 | 6 | 18.2% |
| 2024 | 12 | 41 | 0 | 0.0% |
| 2023 | 12 | 60 | 1 | 1.7% |
| 2022 | 10 of 12 | 97 | 1 | 1.0% |
| 2021 | 12 | 163 | 2 | 1.2% |
| 2020 | 12 | 131 | 3 | 2.3% |
| 2019 | 12 | 137 | 10 | 7.3% |
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 SD0160000.
Arrests
Arrests made by Custer County Sheriff's Office, all offences combined, as filed with the FBI and added up by calendar year, 2019–2026.
| Year | Months filed | Arrests |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Not yet in the FBI’s file | |
| 2025 | 12 | 55 |
| 2024 | 12 | 49 |
| 2023 | 12 | 37 |
| 2022 | 10 of 12 | 64 |
| 2021 | 12 | 99 |
| 2020 | 12 | 40 |
| 2019 | 12 | 72 |
“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 SD0160000.
Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file
2 incidents appear in the FBI’s hate crime file for Custer County Sheriff's Office for 2024, as at 14 August 2026. The table lists every year from 1991 to 2025 for which the file has at least one.
| Year | Incidents appearing in the file |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 2 |
| 2023 | 1 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2009 | 1 |
| 1993 | 1 |
| Bias motivation | Incidents |
|---|---|
| Anti-Black or African American | 3 |
| Anti-Female | 1 |
| Anti-Hispanic or Latino | 1 |
| Anti-Jewish | 1 |
| Anti-Lesbian (Female) | 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 SD0160000.
Deaths during encounters with this agency
1 person has died during an encounter with Custer County Sheriff's Office between 2020 and 2020, according to the two datasets named below.
| Recorded cause | Deaths |
|---|---|
| Gunshot | 1 |
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 Fatal Encounters, which records deaths from 2000–2021. They are not official statistics, and no federal database records this comprehensively. See Deaths for how these records are compiled.
Source
Agency identity, type, jurisdiction, coordinates and reporting status are as published by the FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency record SD0160000. 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.