Home / States / Washington / Bellingham Police Department
Bellingham Police Department
City agency in Whatcom, Washington, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 2010.
- ORI
- WA0370100
- Type
- City
- County
- Whatcom
- State
- Washington (WA)
- FBI reporting
- Reporting since 2010-01-01
- Location
- 48.7557, -122.4796
Workforce
As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 96,902.
| Year | Officers | Civilians | Population served | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 125 | 60 | 96,902 | 1.91 |
| 2024 | 119 | 59 | 95,717 | 1.86 |
| 2023 | 128 | 55 | 94,968 | 1.93 |
| 2022 | 110 | 58 | 93,014 | 1.81 |
| 2021 | 115 | 57 | 95,279 | 1.81 |
| 2020 | 118 | 62 | 93,629 | 1.92 |
| 2019 | 117 | 56 | 91,906 | 1.88 |
| 2018 | 115 | 59 | 90,208 | 1.93 |
| 2017 | 117 | 59 | 88,652 | 1.99 |
| 2016 | 113 | 61 | 86,005 | 2.02 |
| 2015 | 112 | 55 | 83,976 | 1.99 |
| 2014 | 112 | 53 | 83,048 | 1.99 |
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 Bellingham 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.
| Year | Months filed | Offences | Cleared | Cleared as % of offences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 7 of 12 | 136 | 87 | 64.0% |
| 2025 | 12 | 255 | 172 | 67.5% |
| 2024 | 12 | 343 | 231 | 67.3% |
| 2023 | 12 | 313 | 181 | 57.8% |
| 2022 | 12 | 386 | 230 | 59.6% |
| 2021 | 12 | 402 | 207 | 51.5% |
| 2020 | 12 | 247 | 153 | 61.9% |
| 2019 | 12 | 254 | 172 | 67.7% |
| Year | Months filed | Offences | Cleared | Cleared as % of offences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 7 of 12 | 1,171 | 408 | 34.8% |
| 2025 | 12 | 3,174 | 997 | 31.4% |
| 2024 | 12 | 3,620 | 871 | 24.1% |
| 2023 | 12 | 4,008 | 943 | 23.5% |
| 2022 | 12 | 6,092 | 820 | 13.5% |
| 2021 | 12 | 4,837 | 597 | 12.3% |
| 2020 | 12 | 4,348 | 789 | 18.1% |
| 2019 | 12 | 2,707 | 770 | 28.4% |
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 WA0370100.
Arrests
Arrests made by Bellingham Police Department, all offences combined, as filed with the FBI and added up by calendar year, 2019–2026.
| Year | Months filed | Arrests |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 7 of 12 | 1,589 |
| 2025 | 12 | 3,203 |
| 2024 | 12 | 3,041 |
| 2023 | 12 | 4,196 |
| 2022 | 12 | 2,705 |
| 2021 | 12 | 2,124 |
| 2020 | 12 | 2,347 |
| 2019 | 12 | 2,802 |
“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 WA0370100.
Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file
6 incidents appear in the FBI’s hate crime file for Bellingham 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.
| Year | Incidents appearing in the file |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 6 |
| 2024 | 10 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2022 | 12 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2020 | 14 |
| 2019 | 6 |
| 2018 | 5 |
| 2017 | 11 |
| 2016 | 8 |
| 2015 | 5 |
| 2014 | 4 |
| 2013 | 11 |
| 2012 | 10 |
| 2011 | 5 |
| 2010 | 9 |
| 2009 | 2 |
| 2008 | 4 |
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 2 |
| 2003 | 3 |
| 2002 | 3 |
| 2001 | 1 |
| 2000 | 3 |
| 1998 | 1 |
| 1997 | 5 |
| 1996 | 4 |
| 1995 | 14 |
| 1994 | 11 |
| 1993 | 13 |
| 1992 | 8 |
| Bias motivation | Incidents |
|---|---|
| Anti-Black or African American | 56 |
| Anti-White | 33 |
| Anti-Gay (Male) | 24 |
| Anti-Other Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry | 18 |
| Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group) | 14 |
| Anti-Multiple Races, Group | 12 |
| Anti-Asian | 10 |
| Anti-Jewish | 8 |
| Anti-Lesbian (Female) | 8 |
| Anti-Hispanic or Latino | 5 |
| Anti-Other Religion | 4 |
| Anti-Transgender | 4 |
| Anti-American Indian or Alaska Native | 2 |
| Anti-Arab | 2 |
| Anti-Male | 2 |
| Anti-Multiple Religions, Group | 2 |
| Anti-Hindu | 1 |
| Anti-Islamic (Muslim) | 1 |
| Anti-Other Christian | 1 |
| Anti-Physical Disability | 1 |
| Anti-Protestant | 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 WA0370100.
Deaths during encounters with this agency
4 people have died during an encounter with Bellingham Police Department between 2004 and 2018, according to the two datasets named below.
| Recorded cause | Deaths |
|---|---|
| Gunshot | 3 |
| Asphyxiated/Restrained | 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: these records come from Fatal Encounters (3) 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 Bellingham 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 reported | Officers assaulted |
|---|---|
| Firearm | 15 |
| Knife or other cutting instrument | 24 |
| Hands, fists or feet | 541 |
| Other weapon | 112 |
| Year | Firearm | Knife | Hands, fists, feet | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 1 |
| 1996 | 1 | 0 | 13 | 1 |
| 1997 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 1 |
| 1998 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| 1999 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| 2000 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| 2001 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 1 |
| 2002 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 1 |
| 2003 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 0 |
| 2004 | 1 | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| 2005 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 1 |
| 2006 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 2 |
| 2007 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| 2008 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 0 |
| 2009 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| 2010 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 1 |
| 2011 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 2 |
| 2012 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 4 |
| 2013 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 0 |
| 2014 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 2 |
| 2015 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 4 |
| 2016 | 0 | 1 | 14 | 2 |
| 2017 | 0 | 2 | 30 | 0 |
| 2018 | 0 | 4 | 22 | 10 |
| 2019 | 2 | 0 | 17 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2 | 0 | 27 | 6 |
| 2021 | 0 | 5 | 51 | 44 |
| 2022 | 0 | 7 | 31 | 11 |
| 2023 | 3 | 2 | 51 | 12 |
| 2024 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 1 |
| 2025 | 0 | 3 | 35 | 3 |
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.
Washington use-of-force policy
The Washington State Attorney General’s Office publishes a register of law enforcement agencies. Its question is whether the agency’s use-of-force policy is consistent with the AGO model policy. The register lists this agency as “Bellingham Police Department” and answers:
No
Last updated, as the AGO’s register shows it: 2022-03-25. That is the date on the register, not a date Police Census checked the policy, and the answer may have changed since.
Source: Washington Attorney General, law enforcement use of force and de-escalation, read on 2026-10-08. The register’s entries are matched to FBI agency records by name; Police Census attaches one only where exactly one agency fits.
Also policing Whatcom
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 WA0370100. 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.