To answer the first bolded it should at most represent a 1% increase in Police expenditure if done correctly. As a significant portion of the money would come from jettisoned bureaucratic waste already in existence on the force itself.
On the second bolded, I believe some municipalities spend up to 40% but that's a rarity and not an average or common.
"As a percentage of direct general expenditures, police spending has remained consistently at just under 4 percent for the past 40 years."
https://www.urban.org/policy-center...-and-corrections-expenditures#Question3Police
More money, generally don't get spent on the police. When you see anything over 15% (Often this is a sign of likely corruption or a unique circumstance that required a temporary increase. The average nationwide is slightly under 4%.
To bring it local, here in NY it's about 6.6%. 6 billion of a 92 billion budget. The Mayor against better advice is threatening to defund/Cut the Police fund. But deep down he know it's a bad idea. Hence why he's done a few about turns on the issue.
Unfortunately, because he is a politician and at the mercy of the mob, he has to pretend he is massively making cuts while in reality making as few as possible.
In reality, major cuts ( or defunding if the police) wouldn't serve the protestors, citizens or police well. But it might just satisfy the mob who are out for blood and want the Mayor to comply. He very well might to the detriment of all of us.
As it relates to being called for everything, I am quite sympathetic as even cops themselves don't care much for some of the calls they get and often complain it's outside there capabilities. But that reality, should not confuse us as to what the solution is, it's not to defund or take away funding from cops.
Now let me address the issue of diverting Police fund to other community service experts. I.e say social service expert for homelessness, addiction, or mental illness. What really ends up happening, or ought to happen is that the police has to in fact ride along as escortswescorts for the appropriate health expert who is equipped to best deal with the situation. Thus the police are doing what they are good at - providing security and maintaining order - while the expert deals with the actual situation that needs said expertise.
So in reality, the cost to the cops doesn't go down, at least not in any significant way, rather just an additional expense of responding with an expert is required.
So those costs will simply be an additional costs, albeit not one you can cut from the police's, as their service will still be required. Albeit in a surbodinate role..
On the contrary, "Militarizing of the police" as is often labelled, tends to be a a one-time bump to budgets every 4-5 years or so.. Rather than what's in there average budget you see an extra 1 percent or so bump for equipment. These types of bumps are never permanent.
For example this year, NYC is increasing and updating it's prisons systems. So there is a .5 percent bump in funding for Corrections Programs. That bump won't be there next year. And in years when the City decided to buy new weapon and technology to better equip it's cops there'd be a similar bump. That then disappear once that project is completed.
As for building community trust and rapport. Such a program if instituted, will have an initial cost associated with it.
Okay, now that I've tried to give the the above info as unbiasedly as I could, let me now inject some personal bias... As some who abhors governmental bloat, of course one can cut the 6 billion dollar police budget, we can fiind many areas of policing that can be streamlined. Even up to privatizing some of the work. We can cut down on the administrative bloat ( across the budget).
But the above view is also true if every other wasteful governmental program. Most of which produce less than 20 cent of benefits for every dollar spent.
Any goody 2 shoe physical conservative can cut almost any budget in half and lose out on less than 10% of necessary functions. But, as a Politician, doing that will get you out of office quicker than a virgin's sperm..
However, it's also worth noting that of all government programs, the Police often gives the best bang for a buck. With police some study show between 30-40% value on every dollar spent. With a lot of these other programs they barely give you 20% of value for every dollar spent.
Granted, I'm no economist and don't fully understand what that means, but at a base level it's better to get 30-50% of what you purchased than it is to get 10-20%.
Anyhoo, this is getting too long. But yeah, I generally won't support defunding the police. Nor do I think Militaristic Police is as much of an issue. But I can discuss that point separately.
