Philadelphia Police Department

If you work for Philadelphia PD, here's what brokers know about you

Philadelphia PD is the fourth-largest municipal police department in the country. It ended 2024 with about 5,000 sworn officers, well below its authorized strength of roughly 6,380. Pull any one of those names on a people-search site and the same fields come back: full name, current home address, prior addresses going back years, the names and approximate ages of a spouse, parents, and children, and vehicle details.

Spokeo, Whitepages, and BeenVerified assemble most of it. VoterRecords republishes the Pennsylvania voter file with the home address attached. Philadelphia and the surrounding county recorders publish property records online, and brokers copy them. A search by name or zip code pulls whatever the brokers already hold, and for many officers that is a current address in the city or the collar counties.

What Pennsylvania law does, and doesn't do

Pennsylvania protects your home address on the agency side, not against data brokers.

Right-to-Know Law: Pennsylvania's public-records law (65 P.S. §67.708(b)(6)(i)(C)) exempts the home address of a law enforcement officer or judge from disclosure. When an agency answers a records request, it can redact your address before releasing anything. That controls what the government hands out. It does nothing about addresses brokers already sell.

Criminal endangerment statute: Act 165 of 2022 added 18 Pa.C.S. §2719. It makes it a crime to post an officer's home address or other restricted personal information to threaten, intimidate, or help commit a crime against the officer or their family. That gives prosecutors a charge when someone weaponizes your address. It is not a removal tool, and it does not require any broker to take a listing down.

Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA): This federal law limits who can pull the personal information in your driver's license and vehicle registration from a state DMV, and it lets you sue for at least $2,500 when someone obtains those records without a permitted reason. It is a lawsuit right, not a removal tool, so it does not by itself clear the vehicle details a broker already sells. We file removals against the broker listings themselves; where a profile shows DMV-sourced data, DPPA is the claim you would have against the improper disclosure. See DPPA.

Pennsylvania has no Daniel's Law-style statute that lets officers demand brokers delete their home address, the way New Jersey does. A bill to create that right (HB 1822) has been introduced but is not law. Until that changes, the broker side is on you or on whoever you hand it to. See the Pennsylvania state guide for the full picture.

What still leaks

These sources stay open for a Philadelphia officer:

1. Court records. The Unified Judicial System and county dockets publish online. Civil filings, divorce, and traffic cases can show an address unless it was redacted at filing. Federal court filings, posted through the PACER electronic-docket system, sit outside state protection.
2. Property records. Philadelphia and the surrounding county recorders publish online, and brokers copy them. A sale or refinance creates a fresh listing.
3. Out-of-state brokers. Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, and similar sites source from national aggregators and do not apply Pennsylvania's protections.

Why this reaches your family

Philadelphia officers live across the city and the collar counties, and many commute from South Jersey. A broker profile does not stop at your name. It links the people tied to your address: the relative who co-owns the house, the spouse listed at the same address, the adult child who registered to vote there. One listing ties your name to the home you share and the people living in it.

When an officer is named in local coverage of an incident, that exposure moves faster. A name that appears in a story is a name brokers can attach to a home address soon after.

What we do for Philadelphia PD members

We find where your information is posted across the data broker and people-search sites, file opt-out and removal requests, and keep checking, because listings come back. We handle most of the process and tell you clearly when a site needs something only you can provide. Property sales and new court filings tend to trigger fresh listings, so we keep watching after those happen.

See what's exposed before you decide anything. If your district or Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 wants to offer this as a member benefit, talk to us.