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West Salem Police Department

City agency in La Crosse, Wisconsin, United States. Reports crime data to the FBI, and has done since 2009.

ORI
WI0320300
Type
City
County
La Crosse
State
Wisconsin (WI)
FBI reporting
Reporting since 2009-01-01
Location
43.9082, -91.1118

Workforce

As reported to the FBI for 2025, covering a population of 5,300.

13Sworn officers
15Civilian staff
5.28Employees per 1,000 people
5,300Population served
YearOfficersCiviliansPopulation servedPer 1,000
202513155,3005.28
20231015,2942.08
20221015,2712.09
2021915,0321.99
2020915,0371.99
2019715,0871.57
2018715,0551.58
2017714,9931.60
2016715,0551.58
2015715,0581.58
2014715,0231.59
2013714,9141.63

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 West Salem 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
20263 of 124250.0%
2025124375.0%
2024126350.0%
20231214964.3%
2022127685.7%
20211244100.0%
20201210770.0%
2019125480.0%
Property crime
YearMonths filedOffencesClearedCleared as % of offences
20263 of 125240.0%
202512321443.8%
202412622337.1%
202312471736.2%
202212431432.6%
202112542546.3%
202012341750.0%
201912391743.6%

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 WI0320300.

Arrests

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

YearMonths filedArrests
20263 of 1240
202512240
202412285
202312227
202212235
202112262
202012164
201912226

“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 WI0320300.

Bias-motivated incidents in the FBI’s file

1 incident appears in the FBI’s hate crime file for West Salem Police Department for 2024, as at 14 August 2026.

Incidents appearing in the FBI’s file, as at 14 August 2026
YearIncidents appearing in the file
20241
Bias motivation recorded, in the FBI’s words, 2024
Bias motivationIncidents
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 WI0320300.

Assaults on officers

Officers of West Salem Police Department assaulted in the line of duty, by the weapon reported, between 2016 and 2025. These are the FBI’s own weapon categories.

Weapon reportedOfficers assaulted
Firearm0
Knife or other cutting instrument0
Hands, fists or feet5
Other weapon1
YearFirearmKnifeHands, fists, feetOther
20160001
20190010
20210020
20250020

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.

$499Original acquisition value
1Line items received
2007–2007Years of transfers
ItemQuantityAcquisition valueMost recent
Rifle,5.56 Millimeter1$4992007-06-25

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 La Crosse

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 WI0320300. 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.