Poorer Cities Spend More of Budget on Police, Even Where Crime Is Lower

Data analysis of 473 cities nationwide finds that spending on police takes up almost one-third of municipal budgets, independently of local crime rates—with poorer cities spending a higher share.

[readsludge.com]

{After all, rampant police misconduct is a tremendous waste of money—for example, police department lawsuit settlements cost taxpayers in the three largest U.S. cities $300 million in 2019. Policing expert Alex S. Vitale noted recently that the Minneapolis Police Department’s killing of George Floyd and the resulting counter-response to protesters came after a three-year, multi-million dollar program of procedural reforms.}

First they misuse our tax dollars disproportionately spread throughout society for the betterment, then when their failed system kills us they charge us again.

{Given the valid concerns about militarization and surveillance, one might expect to see police spending liberally on artificial intelligence software tools, public surveillance cameras, and body armor. In fact, most police funding goes to personnel. In the same 103 city subset as above, local police spent an average of 71.9% on wages, benefits and other compensation.

The most interesting revelation from our modeling analysis is the disconnect between police budgets and violent crime per 1,000 residents. Cities that allocated more of their general funds in the past three years to police did not experience more or less crime in any predictable pattern, using data on violent crime from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data for 2016.}

For that last paragraph, as wages go from the first paragraph, it might be related to the pay rate. As often spoken in the articles I post here the frequent narratives of dissenting views attempt to expose the correlation to policing for the wealthy. I learned several years ago when I took a motorcycling course at a career center which we had a Cleveland police officer in the class, that they have a fluctuating wage rate in the Cleveland area according to which suburb they patrolled. The suburbs that were wealthier than others paid a substantially higher rate of pay. So as separated communities/suburbs that had more wealth with less crime was a determining factor towards achievement for the officers to reach for. I don't know how anyone else feels about that, but to me it indicates there's possibly no reason for officers to actually have a genuine desire to fight crime in low and impoverished communities?

And I'm not quite sold on crime being down yet. As the 2016 election cycle came in it was quite apparent that violent crimes went up against the black and LBGTQ communities, mass murders have been increasing yearly, and as someone in the scrap industry the theft rate has climb substantially as manufacturing in my area has been going under. I know this year has seen less mass shootings so far. The various aspects of crime in the protest might be making up for that though, and this election cycle is just getting started as the hate speech is being ramped up. Hold that thought!