How often police punch, kick or use other force against someone in your town depends a lot on where you live. But until now, there was no way to know how departments compared across the state.

There were 43,629 incidents involving force by a local police officer or state trooper from 2012 through 2016. That's the equivalent of about one every hour, every day, for five years.

It's difficult to compare departments, however, without taking into consideration how many arrests they make. One department might have a lot more incidents than another, but it might also make a lot more arrests, making the comparison misleading.

To account for that, we calculated a "force rate" -- that's the number of incidents per 1,000 arrests in the town. Statewide, that rate is 30.5. Some departments are a bit above, some are a bit below.

Then there are the outliers. At least 20 police departments used force when making arrests at twice the statewide average, and it's not just dense cities with high crime rates.

Click or tap the map below to see the force rate for your town, or select your town from the dropdown menu. Can't see the map? Click here.

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Read more from The Force Report:

The Force Report is a continuing investigation of police use of force in New Jersey. Read more from the series or search your local police department and officers in the full the database.

We are continuing to make this dataset better. The numbers in this story were last updated Jan. 8, 2019. See the changes we’ve made here.