Police crimes are those crimes committed by sworn law enforcement officers who are given the general powers of arrest at the time the offense was committed. Surprisingly little is known about the crimes committed by police officers, and there are no comprehensive statistics available on the phenomenon. This study reports on the findings of a large scale project to collect data on the arrest of police officers in the United States. The study is a quantitative content analysis of archived records consisting of news articles and court records reporting the arrests of approximately 5500 police officers during the years 2005 through 2011. The overall purpose of the study is to identify and describe crimes committed by police officers. The primary information source was the internet-based Google News search engine and Google Alerts email update service. The findings are organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five key dimension of police crime including police crimes that are drug related, alcohol related, violence related, sex related, and/or profit motivated.

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