North Carolina police employment records

North Carolina’s certification file covers 68,842 officers who appear in its records between 1900-01-01 and 2023-12-31, across 636 agencies, in 122,870 employment records.

2023-12-31: coverage through
1900-01-01: earliest record
68,842: officers
636: agencies
122,870: employment records
latest separation date: coverage basis

The coverage date is computed from the file itself — the basis is the latest separation date. The publisher states August 2023. The file holds records newer than the date its publisher states. Source: NPI published bucket. Retrieved 2026-08-29.

Reporting

The reporting on North Carolina’s police records

Carolina Public Press · March 2026

Stray Cops

Lucas Thomae identified nearly 700 currently serving North Carolina officers who had been fired by a previous agency. Decertification is not automatic in the state, agencies vary in what they will share, and the series notes that limited data makes wandering officers hard to count at all.

Our North Carolina file stops at 2023-12-31 — older than this reporting.

What this data does not say

It never asserts that anyone is currently employed. The supported statement is that a person is listed as employed at an agency as of 2023-12-31, with no separation recorded.
Records are state-scoped. North Carolina certification numbers are issued by its own board, so someone certified in two states appears in two files and is never merged into one history.
Measured across the 26 published files as of 2026-08-29, 69,683 officer records are open at two or more agencies at once — a genuine dual appointment, or a separation the board never recorded. Counted per file, never across states. The data cannot tell the two apart, so neither is asserted.

Where this comes from, and how to correct it

This page presents what NPI published bucket made available, as it was released. Some files reach us directly from the reporting agency and some through intermediaries that obtained them under public-records law; either way the content is the agency’s, not ours. CaseParity does not investigate, verify, correct or vouch for any individual record, and takes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of what a reporting agency published.

A correction to the record itself is made by the certifying agency that issued it — that is the only route that changes it at the source, and therefore everywhere it appears, here included. If what this page shows does not match that agency’s file, write to hello@caseparity.com and say which record and which field. No response time is promised, and nothing here substitutes for going to the agency.

← All states·Coverage table·Methodology

CaseParity is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.