Petroleum County, MT
Petroleum County, MT (population 496) has no documented police misconduct settlements. The Sheriff's Office has 12 members — approximately 1 officer per 41 residents, one of the highest officer-to-population ratios in the dataset. Police Scorecard rates the department 49/100. Montana counties use the MMIA risk pool, which does not publish individual-county settlement data. Absence of public data reflects pool opacity, not confirmed absence of incidents.
Why This Record Exists
No documented settlements found in public records. Risk pool opacity or data gap — not confirmed absence of incidents.
No documented settlements found. Petroleum County Sheriff's Office has 12 members serving a population of 496 — approximately 1 officer per 41 residents, one of the highest officer-to-population ratios in the dataset. Montana counties use the MMIA risk pool, which does not publish individual-county settlement data.
Population
496
Officers
12 (including Sheriff Dan Linder)
Settled Total
$0 documented
Consent Decree
No
Full Record
Petroleum County, Montana has a population of 496, making it the least populous county in Montana and one of the least populous in the United States. The Petroleum County Sheriff's Office, led by Sheriff Dan Linder, has 12 members - including deputies, reserve officers, and support staff. This produces an officer-to-population ratio of approximately 1:41, which is among the highest in this dataset and significantly higher than most urban departments.
No individual police misconduct settlements attributable to Petroleum County have been found in public records, the Police Funding Database, or Montana court databases. Police Scorecard rates the department 49 out of 100 when compared to counties of similar population size - below average on metrics including use of force rates, accountability, and funding allocation.
The absence of public settlement data almost certainly reflects the opacity of Montana's risk pooling system rather than a confirmed absence of incidents. Montana counties participate in the Montana Municipal Interlocal Authority (MMIA), a public risk pool that does not publish individual-county settlement breakdowns. As with other risk-pooled jurisdictions in this dataset, the standard methodology for tracking police misconduct settlements - public records requests, court filings, news coverage - systematically undercounts liability in jurisdictions whose exposure is absorbed by a pool.
The high officer-to-population ratio is the most actuarially significant data point for Petroleum County. A department of 12 officers serving 496 residents has a fundamentally different risk profile than a department of 12 officers serving 50,000 residents. The frequency of police-civilian contact per capita is higher, the oversight infrastructure is thinner, and the pool of potential claimants is smaller - but the per-capita impact of any single incident is correspondingly larger.
For underwriters, Petroleum County illustrates the structural challenge of pricing rural law enforcement risk: the data is hidden behind pool opacity, the officer-to-population ratio is high, and the per-capita exposure of any single incident would be extreme. These are not indicators of low risk. They are indicators of unmeasured risk.