Which Major U.S. Cities Spend The Most Per Resident On Policing? [Infographic]

U.S. police budgets and spending levels have come into sharp focus after the death of George Floyd led to massive nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. There are growing calls for major police reform, particularly defunding and a reallocation of budgets towards social services and community outreach programs. Some of those demands are already being met and earlier this month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was going to make cuts to the NYPD’s $6 billion budget and redirect police funding to communities. His view is at odds with police unions and President Trump who said on Monday that “there won’t be defunding, there won’t be dismantling of our police, and there is not going to be any disbanding of our police.”

The U.S. has dramatically ratcheted up police spending over the past three decades while funding has been stripped from mental health services, community outreach programs, housing subsidies and food benefits programs to the detriment of the low-income communities most affected by criminal activity. In 2017, a report from The Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives and the Black Youth Project 100 estimated that the U.S. spent a collective $100 billion on law enforcement and another $80 billion on incarceration. It also looked at police budgets in a selection of major cities with per capita spending on law enforcement ranging from $381 to $772.

The following infographic provides an overview of the report’s findings with Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd lost his life, spending $408 per person on its police force. Even back in 2017, the report highlighted serious problems with regard to policing in Minneapolis, stating that “racial disparities there are especially stark” and that “black and indigenous people were more than eight and-a-half times more likely than whites to be arrested for low-level offenses”. It added that “black people comprise 19 percent of the Minneapolis population but account for 59 percent of low-level arrests. Whites, by contrast, comprise 64 percent of the population but only 23 percent of low-level arrests”.

Baltimore also received national attention for its policing and racial divisions after members of its police department killed Freddie Gray in 2015. The report noted that its police department has been under scrutiny for years due to misconduct, corruption and brutality that has eroded trust between officers and communities of color. The city had an operating budget of $2.6 billion in FY17, of which $480.7 million was dedicated to policing. That represented 18.2% of the city’s total budget with spending per person on the police equivalent to $772, the highest level in the report by far. Elsewhere, spending per person in New York came to $581 while the figure in Los Angeles was substantially lower at $381.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)