There’s No Way Around It: Spending on Police in the US Is out of Control
Our cities have siphoned money away from public goods like education and social services, and funneled the cash into ever-larger, ever-more-militarized police forces. It's time to reverse that.
Police remove people from a vehicle during a protest against police brutality and the police murder of George Floyd, on May 31, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
“Defund the police” has become a nationwide mantra, and for good reason: budget data from across the country show that spending on police has far outpaced population growth and drained resources from other public priorities.
Basically, our cities have been siphoning money from stuff like education and social services and funneling the cash into ever-larger militarized security forces.
Nationally, the numbers are stark: between 1977 and 2017, America’s population grew by about 50 percent, while state and local spending on police grew by a whopping 173 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to data from the Urban Institute. In other words, the rate of police-spending growth was triple the rate of population growth.
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