Boingboing published a piece [boing] looking at US police budgets.
If the US’ expenditures on police were compared with other militaries, our police are the third largest “military” in the world. That sort of puts a new spin on Bismarck’s old comment on the British expeditionary force: “If the English should land on our soil, I shall have them arrested.”
I am absolutely certain that US cops are not the toughies that they think they are, but in budgetary terms they have a 2:1 advantage over the Russians. Perhaps the US should send the police to Ukraine to arrest the Russians. That’s not a funny idea, really – the Russian army are nobody to trifle with, and the police would not stand a chance against them.
That thought got me thinking about the relative budgets of certain municipalities in the US. The LAPD and NYPD both have budgets around $20bn/year. That puts them, combined, right around where Israel’s military budget sits. Israel, being the terror of the Middle East. Iraq, which the Bush administration sold as a great threat to the US, had a military budget that was 1/4 of NYPD’s. So does South Africa.
The military budget of North Korea is 1.2 billion. That’s it. LAPD’s $20bn budget means either that LAPD is really inefficient, or maybe North Korea is an over-promoted paper tiger. All that crap about them being ready to attack South Korea, which has massive US forces stationed there even though the South Korean government has asked the US to take them away – it’s just the usual attempt to create an excuse to start another war. The US would be happy to “reunify” Korea because it would mean that North Korea was going to be subsumed into South Korea’s market economy.
All of that’s interesting but what really bothers me is this: the US Police are a massive army, inward-facing, to control the people. That the US police tend to be fascistic and white supremacist thugs, who are used to brutalizing people under the umbrella of law – I’m not so happy that we’re spending so much on self-oppression. Anyone who has watched the “defund the police” movement will have noticed that the police continue to grow – politicians who were talking about defunding the police suddenly switch their stories to increasing police “training” budgets and buying them more cop gear. Because, being about as well funded as the Israeli army’s not good enough.
LAPD’s budget is a few billion dollars more than Iran’s. Maybe they are secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Now, the term “national security state” isn’t so funny. Repressive regimes like China and Russia have military that are dwarfed by our “freedom forces.” To be fair, China’s inward-looking security forces may dwarf their military; they don’t publish a lot about these things.
The boingboing analysis leaves out the FBI, which are cops, but not municipal. The FBI adds another $10bn. And, if you add the intelligence agencies: NSA and CIA, which are absolutely inward-facing in spite of their earlier charter not to be, that’s another $30-40bn depending on what’s classified off-the-books and what isn’t.
Aren’t there a whole bunch of TLAs?
(DEA, NSA etc)
John Morales@#1:
Aren’t there a whole bunch of TLAs?
I tried to limit to the ones that also serve as inward-looking. There’s the coast guard and ICE, too. Are they police? They aren’t part of the surveillance state.
Oh, you should definitely consider the other TLAs in this.
If I recall correctly, during the Portland police riots, when Trump decided that the police weren’t being cruel enough to the protesters they deployed units of DHS/CBP to conduct warrantless arrests of (suspected) protesters. As a non-American I was quite shocked to learn that none of your much-vaunted 4th amendment rights actually apply if you’re within 100mi of a national border, which includes the ocean. CBP can detain, search and arrest you in that border zone at will.
Apparently this power was mainly used down along your southern border to harass and intimidate people who had the nerve not to look ‘American’ (white). If they arrested someone on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant (ie, looked latin) and they couldn’t present their papers – they could simply be jailed and deported by ICE. Sure, some Citizens of latin decent get caught up by this, but isn’t that a reasonable price to pay to keep the subject population terrified and compliant?
The DEA is, if anything, even weirder. They have both a significant foreign and domestic presence, and in both cases seem primarily to exist to ensure that no drug dealer without CIA connections is allowed to satisfy the US’s demand for drugs. As you mentioned in your Ishii posts, they may also be attempting to pressure foreign governments into using experimental anti-crop bioweapons against producers they disagree with.
ICE isn’t? The reason there are sanctuary cities is because ICE is a part of the inward-directed surveillance state, which otherwise feeds them information and resources so they’ll get a steady supply of new victims. Even employees in other parts of the government that aren’t law enforcement (at schools, libraries, etc.) could do some of their “intelligence gathering” for them, when no local laws are in place to prevent it.
But I guess a simpler argument is that ICE is part of the DHS, which basically tells you everything you need to know.
Where did you get your figures? According to the city, the 2021-2022 police budget is about 1.8 billion. Add in related and indirect costs (about 1 billion of which is pension and benefits) and we get almost 3.1 billion. https://cao.lacity.org/budget/
The real question is how much of those budgets go on actual poilicing activities and how much gets funnelled to the pockets of contractors, suppliers, administrators, consultants and the whole array of parasites who permeate every money-sink in a capitalist society. A chunk of the US Military budget at the top is F-35s of course, which would be of greater defensive value if it were just piled up into giant money-forts along the borders. What are the LAPD’s equivalents of the F-35?
marner@#6:
Where did you get your figures? According to the city, the 2021-2022 police budget is about 1.8 billion.
What the heck, I thought I got it via google search, but google search gives me the same $1.8bn you quote.
It is possible I have a mental cut&paste error with NYPD, which does have a $10bn+ budget.
Marcus@8
I figured it was something like that. Easy mistake, especially as much as you post. Which I appreciate! Your primary point remains valid. I do think it is somewhat mitigated by (but not limited to), our relatively large population, higher cost of living, that health care is paid for by the employer and, well, guns. Oh, and that our government was purposely made to be inefficient. We have 17,985 police agencies (wiki). Which goes to show we are not truly great. A great country would have at least 18,000.
cartomancer@7
This doesn’t really answer your question, but I think it’s instructive as so much more of the pie goes to employees at LAPD then it does for the US military. According to the 2021-2022 budget, 78% of the 1.8 billion LAPD budget goes towards sworn employee salaries and overtime. The budget I am looking at did not have the pensions and benefits broken out by employee type, so I did not include related and indirect costs. Total salaries account for 94% of the 1.8 billion. When including related and indirect costs; total salaries, pension and benefits are 86% of the total 3.1 billion budget. There just isn’t as much room for a F-35 level of corruption.
Possibly the biggest potential for corruption is in overtime pay, which does not bother me as much since it is going to the worker class. Except it is going to cops…
As to outside vendors/contractors, one of the things I like to see is an agency using its purchasing power wisely. As comparing commodities are easier to apple to apple, I picked brake pads and tires and looked at some of their PO’s. As a taxpayer I would prefer that the prices paid would be a little better, but overall, really not too bad. Having said that, human organizations are corrupt, so I am sure that someone’s cousin is making bank.
marner@#9:
I do think it is somewhat mitigated by (but not limited to), our relatively large population, higher cost of living, that health care is paid for by the employer and, well, guns. Oh, and that our government was purposely made to be inefficient.
Comparing our size to China’s, and the size of our police budget to China’s – which (according to some simple “research” on google) is about the same – our police must be pretty inefficient. China, with 1/4 of the world’s population but no private gun ownership seems to need less per-capita policing.
That’s not a fair comparison, of course. Autocratic societies get a lot of their policing done by instilling fear in the population. I think that most Chinese citizens are not willing to buck the system because when the Chinese system bucks back, you disappear. Odd that the US operates prisons that are torture galleries, and they still have very little deterrent effect.
marner,
OK, that’s pretty darn good self-deprecating humour. Very droll.
Yea, and? This is old news. I’ve been hammering on this for years. The US is a police state. The 100 mile border exception, mentioned above, is one of the many things that are truly atrocious and which should have never survived constitutional scrutiny.
See also:
“Are Cops Constitutional?” by Roger Roots.
https://constitution.org/2-LawRev/roots/cops.htm