Police violence is growing in rural America. A safer path exists.
Thaddeus L. Johnson, a former police officer, is a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and teaches criminology at Georgia State University. Natasha N. Johnson is a faculty member at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State.
A Colorado man experiencing a mental health crisis called 911 when his car stalled on a lonely rural road in 2022. He wasn't breaking any laws. He wasn't threatening others. But when he refused to step out of his car, deputies fatally shot him.
Encounters such as this — once almost exclusive to urban city blocks — have reached America's back roads.
In 2024, law enforcement killed 1,365 people — the most on record. That milestone is striking on its own, but these deaths are increasingly happening in rural areas. By 2023, some estimates show rural Zip codes overtook urban ones in police-caused fatalities.
The danger to officers also moved farther from downtown. Between 2021 and 2023, more officers were killed than in any three-year period in the past 20 years. Assaults on officers rose, too, with the steepest spikes in places with fewer than 50,000 residents.
What's driving this? The pandemic, remote work and rising housing costs pushed millions of people from city blocks to suburban cul-de-sacs and country roads. But they didn't leave big-city problems behind. Federal data shows violent victimizations in nonurban areas increased during the pandemic even as urban violence declined.
This rapid population growth has outpaced local institutions. Officers in many small, booming towns now have to handle crises they're not equipped for.
More than half of the 500 fastest-growing U.S. counties between 2020 and 2023 had fewer than 50,000 residents. Nationwide, only about 4 in 10 counties have a mobile-crisis team and most small to midsize police departments don't have enough personnel or funding for dedicated behavioral-health response units. Meanwhile, rural homelessness rose, drawing police into more noncriminal emergencies.
When places turn over quickly, trust breaks down. Newcomers don't know police deputies or each other. With fewer alternatives, every barking dog or shouting match becomes a 911 call.
More than half of police responses nationwide involve noncriminal emergencies such as someone in mental distress locked in a bathroom, couples arguing loudly, or drug overdoses. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports for 2020 and 2022 show that these types of service calls outnumbered burglary, assault and other crime-related calls by nearly 2.2 million. In rural areas, where gun ownership is most common, these calls are already turning deadlier.
The numbers tell the story. From 2020 to 2024, police killings during 'person with a weapon' calls nearly quadrupled in rural areas. These increases weren't driven by violent crime, but by everyday problems spiraling beyond local capacity.
Officers didn't become more trigger-happy. They're dealing with more threats.
Officers were assaulted 79,000 times in 2023 — about once every six minutes. Nationally, assaults rose 32 percent from 60,000 three years earlier. But the biggest shifts occurred far from city centers. Police assaults jumped 68 percent in places with 25,000 to 49,000 people, and gun assaults on rural officers surged 63 percent.
Disturbance calls were often the trigger. Officers were attacked during 59 of them each day — up from 49 in 2020. In major cities, these assaults rose 24 percent. In midsize towns, they climbed 38 percent. In rural areas, assaults during mental health calls nearly doubled.
Traffic stops were no safer. In towns of 10,000 to 24,000 residents, assaults during stops spiked 77 percent, while increasing 20 percent in cities with more than 100,000. And officers responding to suspicious person calls experienced 51 percent more assaults in rural areas versus 9 percent in the biggest cities.
Police departments — especially in small towns — are struggling to stay staffed. Since 2020, resignations shot up 82 percent as retirements nearly tripled in forces with fewer than 50 officers. To stay afloat, departments lowered hiring standards, rushed training and leaned heavily on overtime. One legacy of such changes is a fatigued, underprepared force handling high-stakes calls with little backup.
A safer path exists for civilians and officers alike. But it starts with rethinking who responds, how they're trained, and what communities truly need. This means sending the right responder — mental health teams instead of police — to nonviolent crisis calls, as cities such as Denver and Eugene, Oregon, as well as rural areas instates such as Kansas and Arizona do. Smaller cities such as Olympia, Washington, dispatch trained social-service teams to handle substance abuse crises and neighbor disputes.
It also means better training for police when they do end up on these calls. According to the Council on Criminal Justice Task Force on Policing, many departments still emphasize firearms over communication. West Virginia and Tennessee now mandate de-escalation training for police. In Louisville, officers participating in the Police Executive Research Forum's de-escalation course use less force and report fewer injuries.
In Mississippi and Virginia, all local law enforcement must now learn how to handle people in emotional or behavioral distress. Studies show officers with such training use force less often — and when they do, they're more likely to use the least amount necessary.
Provider shortages leave many nowhere to turn but 911. States such as Michigan and South Dakota are expanding mobile and tele-mental health services to keep emergencies from becoming armed standoffs. Texas launched a grant program to establish or expand regional behavioral health centers in rural areas.
None of this is easy. But if we want safer communities, we must stop sending armed police to every emergency. Dispatch civilian responders to non-crime calls for homelessness, addiction and wellness checks. Invest in behavioral care. Train officers to de-escalate — not dominate. Until then, these violent clashes will keep spilling into new corners of America.
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