The Security Map
If you feel you are in immediate danger or a life-threatening situation, please contact 911 or your local authorities.
The Public Service Alliance (PSA) and The Impact Project partnered to build The Security Map to raise awareness of the threat landscape facing America's public servants nationwide and amplify resources to help these individuals better protect themselves and their families.
To review The Security Map, scroll down.
To review our dashboard of key findings, click here.
To explore how PSA helps current and former public servants better and more affordably protect themselves and their families, click here.
This Map is best experienced on desktop.
- Rural Counties
- Indigenous Lands
- Majority Non-White
- Poverty Rate >= 20%
- Boundaries
- 0 - 9
- 10 - 19
- 20 - 29
- 30 - 39
- 40 - 59
- 60 - 79
- 80 - 99
- 100 +
- 0 - 9
- 10 - 19
- 20 - 29
- 30 - 39
- 40 - 59
- 60 - 79
- 80 - 99
- 100 +
- 0 - 9
- 10 - 19
- 20 - 29
- 30 - 39
- 40 - 59
- 60 - 79
- 80 - 99
- 100 +
Map Last Updated: 10/15/2025
If you reference, reproduce, or use data or content from this website, please include a citation and proper attribution. We ask that you cite The Impact Project with a direct link to our website. For example, “Data Provided by The Impact Project (2025) theimpactproject.org.”
How to Use the Map
- Dots: Each dot denotes a verified incident involving a threat toward a public servant, with links to source materials. Events encompass both unexecuted threats and those that resulted in action. See definitions below.
- Hover Details: Users can hover over a state or the District of Columbia to access an overview of data specific to that geography, including summaries of National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE), Chapman University, Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI), and Impact Project data as well as the counts for local, state, and government employees as of August 2025 (BLS).
- Legend: Each dot is classified into broad, accessible categories based on information from news articles or Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) records. Use the filters on the left to sort by public servant type, threat category, response taken, or level of government. On the right, toggle between layered views that offer additional insights—such as rural counties or areas with high poverty rates. See definitions below.
- Zooming: Users can zoom in or out using the +/- buttons in the upper right corner of the map.
Data Integrity & Transparency
- Methodology: Our methodology can be found here. Our approach to data collection and analysis is fully detailed on the Data Transparency page.
- Newspaper Articles: This map includes over 1,100 publicly available newspaper articles on threats to public servants from 2015 to 2025. Data from these articles is collected and analyzed using standardized methodologies.
- Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER): PACER is an electronic database that allows registered users to search and view documents from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts online. This map includes more than 500 federal cases pulled from PACER from 2013-2022.
- Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative’s (BDI) Threats & Harassment Dataset (THD): BDI collects secondary information stemming from open-source investigation of traditional and social media; and integrates a variety of data from BDI partner organizations to track reported threats and harassment incidents against local officials around the country, from elected officials at the municipal, county, and township levels to appointed officials and election workers. BDI updates the THD dataset each month. In addition to the THD, BDI also seeks to understand threats and harassment against local officials via surveys (in collaboration with CivicPulse) and via interviews with local officials as part of a larger mixed-methods project. BDI’s data is not included as dots on the map, but is included in the summaries that appear when users hover over a state. BDI’s assessment of news articles is distinct from the methodology described above.
- Chapman University and the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Omaha Nebraska: Chapman University and NCITE built its archive using federal court records from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database from across all 94 federal districts, as well as publicly available data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Department of Justice. Between 2013-2022, they identified more than 500 individuals charged in federal court for threatening public officials. Their database is included as individual dots in the map.
- Bureau of Labor and Statistics: We used BLS data to total the number of local, state, and federal workers in each state (August 2025).
- Location data: We geocode events to points on the map using the Google Maps API, which takes a location name and provides latitude and longitude data that we enter into mapping software. The accuracy of geocoded data varies depending on the quality of the underlying data, the precision of the address input, and the type of location.
- Inconsistencies: Inconsistencies in our data may be errors on our end, while others are created by flaws, inconsistencies, or gaps in the underlying data. If you find errors, please contact us at [email protected].
Data is collected from governmental and non-governmental sources. We collect data from a wide range of government and non-governmental sources, utilizing rigorous methodologies to ensure accuracy and clarity. While we verify information to the extent possible, the data available is incomplete and will therefore constantly evolve. For example, stories included reflect the situation at a given point in time; to increase transparency, a date of entry on the map is included to indicate when a story was collected. As a result, all of our data is provided ‘as-is,’ without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to accuracy, reliability, or fitness for any particular purpose.
If you reference, reproduce, or use data or content from this website, please include a citation and proper attribution. We ask that you cite The Impact Project with a direct link to our website. For example, “Data Provided by The Impact Project (2025) theimpactproject.org."
Definitions
Public Servant Type
Elected Official. A local, state, or federal employee who was elected to their position.
Public Official. A local, state, or federal employee who was appointed to or selected for their position without an election.
Election Official. A local, state, or federal employee whose job involves managing elections at the county, state, or federal level.
Law Enforcement & Military. A local, state, or federal employee responsible for enforcing laws (includes state police, local police, the FBI, prosecutors) and military; notably, this definition excludes judges
Judge. A local, state, or federal employee appointed to decide court case outcomes.
School Board Official. Local or state employees who serve on school boards or boards of education.
Family Members. Members of a public servant’s family.
Office & Staff. A public servant’s staff or physical office.
Other. Any local, state, or federal employee who does not fall within one of the above discrete categories.
Threat Category
Harassment. Repeated threatening statements and actions, including numerous phone calls, voicemails, emails, or letters or verbal abuse, that cause annoyance, distress, or frustration.
Threatening Statement. Expressions of intent to harm that may be verbal, written, or online.
Stalking. Unwanted, obsessive attention from an individual that may include the perpetrator following the victim, cyberstalking, repetitive messaging, etc., that causes the victim to fear for their safety.
Doxxing. Release of a victim’s private or identifying information, which may include their full name, home address, office location, etc.
Physical Attack. A physical action on a public servant, including assault, battery, attempted kidnapping, kidnapping, attempted murder, and sexual violence.
Vandalism. Deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property related to a public servant’s presence, job, or actions.
Suspicious Package. The delivery of unidentified material to a public servant or government office with the intent to cause annoyance, distress, or harm.
Swatting. A hoax call to emergency services in an attempt to cause (whether it happens or not) an armed law enforcement dispatch to an address.
Death to Threatened Party. Death of threatened public servant related to threat.
Other. Threats that do not fall into one of the above discrete categories.
Response to Threat
Case filed. Case filed against alleged perpetrator in federal court (NCITE & Chapman University 2013-2022). A follow-on version of The Security Map tracking local responses to acts of political violence will be released in the coming months.
Government Level
Federal. Employees who work for the federal government (e.g., members of Congress and their staff, federal judges, postal workers, etc.)
State. Employees who work for the government at the state level (e.g., governors and their staff, state legislators, state police, etc.)
Local. Employees who work for the government at the local level (e.g., county officials, mayors and their staff, school board members, etc.)
** Note that threats also occur on Tribal lands and against tribal government officials. However, these incidents are not well represented in newspaper articles accessed for this initial study.
Drawing on original research from The Impact Project, as well as data from other leading nonpartisan experts—including Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI), Chapman University, and the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska Omaha—The Security Map dataset is one of the most extensive publicly available compilations of threats against public servants to date. This dataset will expand over time as new cases from the last decade are identified and verified, and as new instances of violent threats to public servants occur. An additional layer of The Security Map tracking responses to violent threats against public servants will be released in the coming months.
Note: Built from publicly available information, The Security Map dataset does not capture the full scope of threats against public servants, and some overlap may exist among data compiled by BDI, Chapman University, NCITE, and The Impact Project. Because all three datasets rely primarily on publicly available reporting, they likely underrepresent the full scope of threats, particularly in cases that received limited or no media coverage. Please reach out via email at [email protected] if you would like to support our work or provide feedback.