I was only a bit surprised to find that Chicago’s 2020 police budget is $1,778,002,408, or $660 for each of the 2,693,976 folks that DJ Trump’s Census Bureau estimates live in Chicago. This doesn’t include $737.5 million for the police pension fund, nor $204,867,834 for the Office of Emergency Mgt and Communications, nor $135 million for “judgments and settlements against the City,” (including but not limited to police misbehavior), nor the police-related portion of the City’s capital budget, which seems to include the “joint public safety training academy” ($85 million, but just $15.75 million in the current year), and some other facilities. All told, and without doing the detailed analysis which I wish the Civic Federation would do, it seems the the City spends something like $1000/person/year for police. That doesn’t necessarily mean that police should be defunded in whole or in part; after all, reported crime has for the most part been declining, so perhaps we are getting something for our money. But it gives some idea of the dollars involved. (And it turns out that, as I was writing this, the Civic Federation produced a post covering much the same ground, with better context and detail and colorful charts, and noting that I failed to include some undetermined but substantial benefit costs among the cost of police.)
Compare police costs to Chicago Public Schools. CPS is a separate unit of government, but controlled by the Mayor and funded mainly by Chicago property tax payers. For the current year, it’s planning to spend $7.84 billion, or $2910 per Chicago resident. Enrollment continues to decline, 13% in ten years (roughly the same amount as reported crime, but that might just be a coincidence).
Summing the police and school expenses, Chicago spends $3910/person. For the hypothetical family of four, that’s over $15,000. I wonder how many two-worker households would prefer to have one stay home, help educate the children, hiring tutors as needed, and keep an eye on the neighborhood, if their income increased by that amount. Just a thought.
Update September 27: It turns out I’m not the only one suggesting that we spend too much on government schools.