Honestly, the numbers are surprising to me. Example: Normally, New York City is quoted as having the largest police force in the United States. However, NYC only spends 8% of its city budget on police. I lived in Manhattan for a few years, and it was normal to see police on foot/bike/car patrols even in wealthy, relatively crime-free neighborhoods.
Also: In the Mother Jones article pie charts, Oakland spends 44% of its city budget on police. But in the historical graphs below, they spend about 8%. There must be a subtle difference in what they are measuring, but it is unclear to me.
I'm sure there's a better source, but this site has a list of police budget figures for the 300 largest US cities with links to the budget reports: https://costofpolice.org
According to that list police budgets make up an average of 30% of overall spending.
Note: sometimes you'll get two people giving different numbers for the same city. AFAICT this happens most often when pensions are broken out as a separate budget item. The fact that cities break them out separately is sensible -- pensions are legally quite different from other budget items.
But pension obligations are a pretty significant component of the price of policing, so excluding them in these calculations doesn't make a lot of sense.
20%-30% is pretty typical. Almost all cities with lower numbers have enormous transportation budgets (e.g., NYC -- they do spend a ton on police, but they also have transportation budget that's comparable to many states).
Regarding what United States cities spend on police, Mother Jones has some information here: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/the-blue-b...
Honestly, the numbers are surprising to me. Example: Normally, New York City is quoted as having the largest police force in the United States. However, NYC only spends 8% of its city budget on police. I lived in Manhattan for a few years, and it was normal to see police on foot/bike/car patrols even in wealthy, relatively crime-free neighborhoods.
Also: In the Mother Jones article pie charts, Oakland spends 44% of its city budget on police. But in the historical graphs below, they spend about 8%. There must be a subtle difference in what they are measuring, but it is unclear to me.