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You should look at how much of the budget the police dept takes of an average town. In my med-small town they're 50% of the city budget. Police depts are shocki
by dv_dt 6y ago
You should look at how much of the budget the police dept takes of an average town. In my med-small town they're 50% of the city budget. Police depts are shockingly well funded compared to the problems they actually end up solving.
- Bostonian 6y agoIn your town more money is spent on the police than the public schools? Certainly not in mine.
- jessaustin 6y agoIn much of USA the school district is a separate entity from the city. Often this is because many students live outside city limits.
- dv_dt 6y agoMy town may have something atypicial about its finances at 50%, if you look at the budget of San Jose it seems about $400m for city services and $200m for police and fire. I didn't pick it apart further between police/fire, but IIRC fire tends to have much smaller budgets than police depts. But I would say that's still shockingly large vs the budget for other city services.. (that's setting aside some large chunks for airports etc..., I was also a bit surprised SJ had a $4B budget and how much was for airport services). Edit: I guess looking at Oakland/Chicago, it's 50% or close to it too though. https://www.gq.com/story/cops-cost-billions https://www.gq.com/story/cops-cost-billions "Oakland PD receives nearly half of the city's discretionary spending( $264 million out of $592 million), dwarfing every other expenditure, including human services, parks and recreation, and transportation combined. A whopping 39 percent of Chicago's 2017 budget went to police, and still the department got even more money, peaking in 2020 with a 7 percent increase to nearly $1.8 billion. "