The sampling frame for the 2019 SLEPS LEA survey was derived from the 2018 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA). The CSLLEA provides a complete enumeration of all publicly funded state, county, and local law enforcement agencies operating in the United States. The 2018 CSLLEA asked agencies to report the number of full-time sworn officers with general or full arrest powers who served as SROs or whose primary duties were related to safety in K–12 schools for the last pay period of the 2017–2018 school year. SLEPS targeted local police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and school-based agencies that employed one or more full-time sworn SROs. To create the SLEPS LEA sampling frame, BJS filtered the approximately 18,000 agencies in the 2018 CSLLEA down to the agency types of interest for SLEPS: municipal, county, and regional police departments (referred to in this report as local police departments); sheriffs’ offices; and school-based agencies.
The final SLEPS sampling frame consisted of 6,096 agencies. Of these agencies, 2,026 were sampled for the SLEPS LEA survey. The sample represented all local law enforcement agencies, sheriffs’ offices, and school-based agencies in the United States that employed one or more full-time sworn SROs.
Of the 2,026 agencies selected for the LEA survey, 162 were identified as ineligible during data collection because they no longer employed any officers who were primarily assigned to work in public K–12 schools.
A total of 1,524 agencies completed the SLEPS LEA questionnaire, for a response rate of 81.8%. Local police departments had a response rate of 84.3%, sheriffs’ offices had a response rate of 81.5%, and school-based agencies had a response rate of 74.6%.
