The Blue Budget: What Cities Spend on Police

Cops may get too much money. But what they get varies widely.

Mother Jones illustration; Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times/AP

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George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis nearly two months ago sparked a national conversation about defunding the police, an idea once considered niche and radical. Police spending may be too high. But what cities spend varies widely.

We looked at city budgets in nine cities using the Action and Race Economy Center’s budget tool to understand what share of their general funds go to police operating budgets. While there’s wide variation in how much cities spend on police, most dedicate between 25 percent to 40 percent of their budgets to policing. Some cities, such as Los Angeles, allocate nearly quarter of their general funds to police budgets. Yet even though New York spends only 8 percent of its general funds on policing, it adds up to $5.2 billion, nearly twice what LA spends.


Even as crime rates have declined in the last 30 years, police budgets have risen in many cities. We looked at historical data on police budgets from 1977 to 2017 compiled by Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to look at per capita spending on police budgets. While the trends between cities still vary, the average share of per capita spending going to police budgets across 150 cities rose from 6.6 percent in 1977 to 7.7 percent in 2017.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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