The number of police officers in Europe has slowly decreased in recent years, new figures from the bloc's statistics division revealed.
ADVERTISEMENTThe number of police officers in Europe has slowly decreased in recent years, new figures from the European Union statistics division revealed.
In 2016, there were a total of 1.6 million officers in the countries included in the report — a reduction of 3.4% since 2009.
While there are differences among nations, in 2015, records showed that there was one police officer per 314 people overall.
The figures, taken from official statistics produced by authorities in each country, showed that Hungary had the lowest rate of police officers with 90 per 100,000 people in 2015. The report does not include figures for all countries in Europe, only those that provided the data to Eurostat.
"Countries organise their law enforcement differently, according to national needs, resources and priorities. Another difference between national figures is who exactly counts as police," the report read.
Compiled by the European Union's statistical body Eurostat, it also looked at the personnel makeup of forces across the bloc.
It found that in 2016, 21% of police officers in the EU were women — this marks an increase from 16.7% in 2008.