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As activists and lawmakers across the country call to defund the police, I took a look at the Pittsburgh police budget and spoke to experts about the challenges and benefits of defunding. (thread) https://www.publicsource.org/activists-call-for-defunding-the-police-here-are-6-key-stats-about-the-115-million-pittsburgh-police-budget/
The @PghPolice budget is $115 million, almost 1/5 of the city's overall operating budget. According to Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, that's “on the light side.” He said most similarly-sized cities spend 25-30% of their budget on police.
City police budgets are generally large for several reasons: new technology, expensive trainings and the need to be equipped for unforeseen circumstances all play a rule, said @LarryLikar, a professor at La Roche University.
In the past 5 years, Pgh's police budget has increased by 49%, or $38 million. That's due to a few things, including purchasing new body cameras and shifting benefits from the human resource dept's budget to the police budget, the city said.
Some other depts with large numbers of staff saw similar or higher increases, so the police dept is not an outlier in that respect (though it does have a higher overall budget than the other depts).
The $38 million annual increase the police budget has seen is significantly more than the city's Housing Opportunity Fund budget. @BrandiSFisher of the Alliance for Police Accountability noted we're in a housing crisis —and funding affordable housing could help reduce crime.
The bureau has 925 officers (more than the 899 in the city budget, though I'm still trying to figure out where the other 26 are budgeted and accounted for.) It hopes to increase the # of "boots on the ground," per the 2020 budget.
Compared to other cities with similar population sizes, Pgh's police dept is on the smaller side.
@HowNowHerbert, a law professor at Howard University, said a city's racial makeup plays a part in determining the size of the police force, because of racism & "the perception of criminality in the Black body."
Several experts I spoke to said defunding the police and allocating resources elsewhere would be challenging, but feasible. "We’re only limited by the limitations of our imagination,” Herbert said.
Read the full story for more stats & info and email me with questions (in bio) https://www.publicsource.org/activists-call-for-defunding-the-police-here-are-6-key-stats-about-the-115-million-pittsburgh-police-budget/
