- How much will police reform cost?
It doesn’t matter!
Let me run some numbers for you…
- Average local/state police officer makes about $67,000 per year.
- American middle-class median income for a 2-person family is $51k, a 3-person family is $63k. So cops are in the upper-middle class in the US. So don’t buy into the crap that police are underpaid. Yeah then get more educated, add in their benefits and pensions! Cops can retire in 25 – 30 years, most with 80 – 100% pensions. Yup, that means their new pension check equals their old paycheck in many cases.
- There are about 906,000 local and state police officers in the US. That comes out to a total annual cost of about $61billion without including benefits and pensions.
- FWIW…there are 35% more cops in the US now than in 1980.
- There is no firm figures for annual equipment and gear costs for police officers but estimates run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
- The 2022 US GDP (gross domestic product) was $26trillion.
So the costs for police officers break down like this…
- Total cost of US crime: $2.6trillion (10% of GDP)
- Cost to US citizens for speeding tickets: $ .6trillion ( 2.3% of GDP)
- Cops salaries (benefits not included): $ .61trillion (2.4% of GDP)
- Equipment/gear/benefits/pensions: $ .05trillion ( .02% of GDP)
TOTAL COSTS OF COPS: $3,860,000,000,000 (14.8% of GDP)
Think about that…total cost of local and state police officers in the United States is nearly 4trillion dollars in unsolved crime, salaries, gear, pensions, and out of pocket fines for US citizens!!!!! That is an unreal amount when you consider that is nearly 15% of the US GDP for 2022.
Now consider the 6,000 unsolved murders each year. Then add in the 75,000 unsolved rapes each year on top of that. So we can’t not do police reform…it is as simple as that.
In the United States local and state police officers are well-paid! They earn above median income for middle-class Americans. When you factor in their pensions and benefits they are easily at the top of the middle-class of Americans.
Now, think about all of those costs to US citizens…
We can not tolerate not having serious and extensive police reform!
The numbers and facts speak for themselves.
Related Articles –
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Part #1)
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Part #2)
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Q&A – 1)
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Q&A – 2)
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Q&A – 3)
- Do We Need Police Reform? (Q&A – 4)