Tuesday, June 16, 2020

5th Most Dangerous Kansas City Wastes As Much Per Capita On Policing As Chicago

Infographic: How Much Do U.S. Cities Spend On Policing? | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

kansascity |  The four largest cities in the metro area will spend over $400 million on law enforcement this year. That doesn’t count the millions spent on courts, prosecutors and jails. Just the men and women in blue.

Naturally, Kansas City, Missouri, spends the most, having the largest population and the most law enforcement needs. No single division within city government gets more financial support than the police department.

The KCPD is budgeted to get $273 million this fiscal year, which amounts to 16 percent of the city’s $1.7 billion budget. That works out to about $554 for each of the estimated 492,000 people who were living within the city limits at last count.

That’s more than twice the per capita amount that suburban Overland Park spends on its police department and four times more than the citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, pay for police protection in a city whose population is only slightly less than Kansas City’s.

As with any police department or private business, for that matter, most of the KCPD’s budget goes to pay the salaries and benefits of its personnel, roughly 1,400 sworn officers and 600 civilian workers.

The fire department is second with 1,300 employees, followed by the water department.
Just under a quarter of the police budget goes toward paying the health insurance and pension obligations the city owes to employees and retirees.

From a program standpoint, about $100 million supports the patrol bureau, which includes all those cops you see driving down the streets responding to calls for service and enforcing traffic laws.
About $41 million underwrites investigations, of which just under a third is aimed at vice and narcotics crimes, another third to investigate violent crimes and the rest to cover other investigations and underwrite the cost of the crime lab.

Large amounts of the budget go for support services, like vehicle maintenance and the computer network.

Yet even with a quarter-billion-dollar-plus budget, the police department could always use more to keep up with all the demands placed upon it, said Nathan Garrett, one of the four members of the five-member board of police commissioners appointed by the governor that sets department policy. By state statute, the mayor of Kansas City has the fifth vote.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article243490386.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article243490386.html#storylink=cpy

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