(OP here, made another throwaway since I’m away from my password manager) Yes, the evidence that police reduce crime is dispositive. Even post-2020 NPR admits

(OP here, made another throwaway since I’m away from my password manager) Yes, the evidence that police reduce crime is dispositive. Even post-2020 NPR admits this: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when... > Williams and his colleagues find adding a new police officer to a city prevents between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides, which means that the average city would need to hire between 10 and 17 new police officers to save one life a year. They estimate that costs taxpayers annually between $1.3 and $2.2 million. The federal government puts the value of a statistical life at around $10 million (Planet Money did a whole episode on how that number was chosen). So, Williams says, from that perspective, investing in more police officers to save lives provides a pretty good bang for the buck. Adding more police, they find, also reduces other serious crimes, like robbery, rape, and aggravated assault. The white-collar meme that more police != less crime has caused hundreds if not thousands of excess deaths and many more excess rapes, robberies, and assaults, mainly within minority populations.