Digging Through Police Budgets - Tips & Tricks
Police In Philadelphia during the George Floyd Protests
August 1, 2023
The police defund movement has brought widespread attention to just how much public spending goes into policing. While the massive budgets of major cities like Philadelphia and New York City are often noted, how often do we look at police budgets in smaller cities and towns? In fact, police departments that employ ten or fewer officers are the most common type of police agency in the U.S. So, when we discuss police de/funding, it is imperative to look to smaller locales.
Here are some tips on tracking police budgets wherever you may be in the United States. I will use Ambler as an example, a borough 16 miles from Philadelphia which hosts 6,400 residents.
1. Go to the Municipal Budget on Your Locale’s Website
You will find the operating budget on your locale’s website (Figure 1). You can often find it by clicking on a “budget” page (Figure 2). I will use the 2023 municipal budget.
Ambler Homepage
Budget Statements
2. Locate the Police Budget in the Annual Budget
To find the police budget in the annual budget, you can scroll to “police” and “total,” often named in a table. Depending on the format, you can input a ctrl-f search using “police” as a key term. To note, previous budgets for Ambler were scanned and did not allow for this kind of search, unless the user tweaks the PDF. Each budget may look different and have different search tools, but the police are definitely there.
Track the proposed budget and actual expenditures for the designated year. In 2023, Ambler designated $2,681,382 for police (or $2.7 million for short) (Figure 3). If you look deeper into the budget you can see where this money goes, including salaries, uniforms, and vehicle maintenance.
Compare the budget to previous years to detect a trend. This may mean looking at past budget forms, or locating previous budget amounts in the current budget. As is evident in the 2023 budget, the proposed budget increased from $2.2 million in 2021, to $2.5 million in 2022, and to $2.7 million in 2023. To note, for 2022, the actual expenditure was less than the proposed budget, at $1,950,239. Either way, these figures show that a substantial amount of money is spent on police in Ambler. But, wait, how do we know if $2 million a year is a substantial amount?
Police Budget
3. Compare the Police Budget to the Total Budget
The best way to know how much money is going to police is to compare the police budget with the total operating budget.
Look on the same form for the operating budget. This will be located near the top. For Ambler in 2023, the total budget was $4,703,154. If we divide that by the police budget of $2,681,382, we see that 57% of the total budget goes to policing (Figure 4).
It also helps to compare to other localities, whether similar in population size or not, depending on your interests. For instance, Philadelphia passed a $815 million police budget in 2023, which is approximately 15 percent of the annual budget. So, while Philadelphia spends more on police, less of the proportion of spending goes to police than in Ambler.
Total Revenue
4. Track Local Crime Data
Often the role of police is viewed as maintaining public safety. Critics of the police defund movement have been quick to argue that less funding for police means more crime and more risk to public safety. It is worth, then, tracking crime known by police. The most readily available way to do so is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), an imperfect but useful way to gather crimes known by police, based on Part 1 crimes, as “more serious” crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery), and Part 2 crimes, as “less serious” crimes (assault with no weapons or serious injury, stalking, intimidation). It is certainly not a measure of actual offenses, as they are only known and reported by police. Yet, because they are known by police, it offers a good measure on how much local police focus on crimes, including serious Part 1 crimes - the violent crimes that often drive people to support police. To track crime rates:
Go to your state’s UCR crime report. Figure 5 shows PA and offers some background information. Go to the “Crime Dashboard” and type in the year of interest and police department of interest (Figure 6). I put in “2022” and “Ambler Borough.” A table will generate that shows the chosen year and the preceding year (2022 and 2021, respectively) (Figure 7). While you can go to “reports” for Part 2 data, I decided to look at Part 1 crimes, as often when we think of police and public safety it is based on these more serious offenses.
Analyze the data. As shown, in 2022 there were 54 Part 1 offenses and 8 clearances, revealing a clearance rate of 14.81%. This was a drop from 2021, where police reported 59 offenses with a clearance rate of 9 (15.25%).
Homepage for PA UCR
Search Tools for PA UCR
PA UCR Stats
5. Compile Your Findings
It helps to write a mini-report to keep things in perspective. To review, Ambler, a borough with 6,400 residents, has increased the police budget over the last three years, from $2.2 million in 2021, to $2.5 million in 2022, and to $2.7 million in 2023. With a total operating budget of $4,703,154 in 2023, 57% of the total budget went to police. Nevertheless, the year that the 2023 budget was passed, in 2022, only 54 serious offenses were reported to the police, with only 8 clearances, a rate of 14.81%. While some were quite serious crimes (notably, there were three rapes reported to police), the vast majority were for larceny - theft, which includes shoplifting (to add, often sexual assault often goes unreported to police). When looking at Ambler’s budget, such data does beg the question of how so much money can be justified for policing in the borough.
6. Get Involved with Local Politics
See your locale’s public webpage for open meetings. On Figure 9, the city website shows meeting times, meeting minutes, and videos. You can go to meetings, e-mail council members, and track local elections. Of course, rallies are always an option, and it’s important, still, to know local officials and meetings when pressing your demands. It also helps to keep up with proposed budgets, of which are passed by local councils and reviewed during open sessions. Figure 10 shows the dates for the 2023 budget in Ambler.
Maintain a support network. My first involvement going to public meetings was in Broome County, where members of local Justice and Unity in for Southern Tier (JUST) spoke against spending on county police and the jail (it is important to remember the difference between municipal and county police when conducting local action and tracking data, the latter being run by the sheriff). I recall standing in front of the Broome County council, encouraged by my advisor, Bill Martin, and expressing dismay at the unnecessary and increasing spending on criminal justice at the expense of public health.
Council Information
Ambler Meeting Information
As a somewhat newcomer to Ambler, in fact, I am writing this, in many ways, to remind myself that wherever I am, it’s important to get involved. The defund movement is local, and, since police are in all of our backyards, so to speak, it’s also important to have a voice in local politics. And it’s easy to track budgets, with really no “tips & tricks” needed - just a few clicks.
ACAB in Ambler
