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As protests continue over the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police officers, activists have increasingly called on leaders to defund the police. In Minneapolis, where Floyd died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes, a supermajority of City Council members pledged to pass legislation to defund and dismantle the city’s police department. In New York, as police abolitionists are becoming more vocal and more visible, the movement to defund the NYPD is gaining momentum.
But not everyone agrees on what defunding would mean, or what it would look like.
Most advocates pushing for defunding cite the approximately $6 billion allocated to the NYPD in the New York City fiscal budget. That number, according to the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), doesn’t actually account for the total cost of the agency, because it doesn’t include fringe benefits for employees, such as pensions and health insurance. Ana Champeny, Director of City Studies at the CBC, says the real number is closer to $11 billion.
Either number makes the NYPD the most expensive police department in the United States, by far. Officially, the NYPD has the third largest chunk of funding of any agency in the city, after the Department of Education and the Department of Social Services—but the latter agency’s budget is inflated by its payment of the city’s Medicaid tab.
Personnel costs dominate
The NYPD’s money, according to Champeny, mostly goes to personnel – around 88 to 90 percent. They say that means that massive cuts to the NYPD budget would be difficult to achieve without layoffs. The CBC, a nonpartisan nonprofit that issues recommendations on ways the city and state can balance their budgets, recently recommended a reduction in the NYPD headcount of 1,200 police officers but said that could be done by simply not replacing employees once they quit or retire.
Champeny says that a reduction in arrests would help reduce overtime, because much of that is generated when an arrest occurs at the end of an officer’s shift and he or she must stay on the clock to complete the paperwork—although CBC does not advocate arrest-reduction as an explicit strategy.* Uniformed overtime for the NYPD runs in the neighborhood of $500 million a year, according to Champeny, which amounts to 40 percent or more of the city’s total overtime spending. “It’s a big dollar amount,” she says.
Police spending in NYC vs. Other Big U.S. Cities
| City | Police spending per capita, 2017 |
| Los Angeles | 754 |
| New York City | 672 |
| Chicago | 553 |
| Philadelphia | 427 |
| Houston | 402 |
| San Diego | 328 |
| Dallas | 328 |
| San Jose | 325 |
| Phoenix | 309 |
| San Antonio | 295 |
The NYPD’s share of the budget is lower now than it’s been at any time since 1994, and it’s dropped steadily since 2000. As of 2017, New York spent $672 per capita on the NYPD, according to a fiscally standardized database created by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Of the 10 largest cities in the country, New York was second only to Los Angeles in per capita police spending, doubling the individual city expenditures of Phoenix, San Jose, Dallas, San Diego and San Antonio.
In April, as the coronavirus pandemic caused massive economic upheaval and New York was faced with an unprecedented budget deficit, Mayor de Blasio proposed $6 billion in cuts, including $6.4 billion to the Department of Social Services, but no slashes to NYPD funding. In the wake of the protests, the mayor appeared to reverse positions and pledged to divert some of the NYPD’s funding to social services, but has said little about details.
Where to cut?
On Tuesday, the advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform released a policy report outlining ways that the city could cut at least $1 billion of funding from the NYPD. The report also called for greater budget transparency, commenting that “The NYPD’s budget is arguably the most secretive and opaque of any New York City agency.” Recommended cuts included removing the NYPD from schools and from mental health response, a hiring freeze, canceling the January and April police academy classes and cutting 500 NYPD Transit Bureau officers. The report calculated the average cost per year of money paid out by the city to settle cases of police misconduct at over $250 million, and recommended this be cut from next year’s budget as well.
Eli Silverman, a professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and co-author of “The Crime Numbers Game,” said that asking whether the New York police force is funded appropriately is “putting the cart before the horse” without answering other questions first. “What do you want the police to do?” said Silverman. “What are your public safety priorities and how much of that should be allocated to the police and how much should be elsewhere?”
Silverman said that over the years, many responsibilities that once lay elsewhere have been added to the police department’s duties. “Part of that is attributable to the buy-in of so-called ‘broken windows theory,’” said Silverman, referencing the idea that crackdowns on small crimes, like jumping the turnstile or selling loose cigarettes, will prevent more serious crime from growing. “New York has led the way in this sense, and many other cities have followed in this path.”
These increased responsibilities, Silverman said, were also a response to public pressure. “There was this demand to do something about crime, so you saw increases in police budget,” he said. “There’s little recognition of how we got here.” He also expressed concern about layoffs. “If you’re going to lay off police officers, who are you going to lay off?” he said.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said that cuts can be achieved without layoffs. He’s calling for $1.1 billion to be sliced from the NYPD budget over the next four years, through a suspension of hiring, a cut in overtime, and trimming things like computer service spending and outside service contracts.
“When you see a police budget that’s ballooned to $6 billion, that’s never been cut in anyone’s memory – it’s time to think of a new approach to policing but also a new approach to budgeting,” said Stringer. “And that’s what the protesters are crying out for.”
Stringer said that much of the money going to the police department should be diverted to underserved communities of color that have been ravaged by COVID-19. “A budget is a moral document as well as a financial one,” said Stringer. “It’s unconscionable that services for black and brown New Yorkers are on the chopping block while the NYPD budget is almost untouched.”
A different role for cops—or no role?
In a recent interview with NPR’s “Code Switch,” Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College and the author of “The End of Policing,” said that deep social problems like drug addiction and homelessness have been left for police to deal with, and that they’re simply not equipped to do so. “Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers,” said Vitale. “But police are violence workers. That’s what distinguishes them from all other government functions.”
Vitale said that most of the functions the police perform now should actually be handled by other kinds of workers. The process of scaling back police forces won’t be quick, he said, but it is necessary. “What I’m talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them,” said Vitale. “And my feeling is that this encompasses actually the vast majority of what police do.”
Even crimes like burglary could be better dealt with by prevention rather than punishment, according to Vitale. “A huge amount of burglary is driven by drug use,” said Vitale. “We need to completely rethink our approach to drugs so that property crime isn’t the primary way that people access drugs.”
Some advocates—but not all—foresee a day when policing no longer exists.
Marlene Nava Ramos, a member of prison abolitionist group Critical Resistance, said that many crises currently handled by police would be better handled by others.“It’s not just about getting rid of police, but making sure that we have other systems in place,” said Nava Ramos. “It’s about envisioning and transforming the entire system around safety and wellbeing.”
She said that professionals who are equipped to deal with mental health emergencies would be better suited to perform welfare checks, for example.
“Police are no longer a socially necessary entity in our society,” said Nava Ramos. “We need other kinds of agencies that are able to respond to our everyday needs. And our everyday needs don’t revolve around a person coming over with a gun.”
Nava Ramos also said that the pandemic put the lack of adequate healthcare access across the country in sharp focus. The funding that goes toward policing, she said, would be better spent on fixing the inequities in healthcare, which often fall along racial lines. “The very first step towards addressing or moving towards healthy societies is dismantling policing and caging and moving towards a more robust healthcare system,” she said.
The NYPD’s Share of the New York City Budget, 1980-2019
| Year | NYPD Budget | City Budget | NYPD share |
| 1980 | $704,174,580 | $13,548,031,432 | 5.20% |
| 1981 | $714,051,376 | $14,033,428,626 | 5.09% |
| 1982 | $799,110,580 | $15,150,572,558 | 5.27% |
| 1983 | $864,317,471 | $15,780,376,734 | 5.48% |
| 1984 | $961,629,363 | $17,116,852,493 | 5.62% |
| 1985 | $1,092,200,331 | $18,911,281,563 | 5.78% |
| 1986 | $1,189,186,298 | $20,142,740,271 | 5.90% |
| 1987 | $1,325,463,081 | $21,514,921,094 | 6.16% |
| 1988 | $1,436,734,331 | $22,561,412,733 | 6.37% |
| 1989 | $1,513,082,373 | $24,664,293,442 | 6.13% |
| 1990 | $1,621,682,201 | $26,141,940,089 | 6.20% |
| 1991 | $1,634,789,857 | $27,692,831,630 | 5.90% |
| 1992 | $1,688,028,105 | $29,231,180,265 | 5.77% |
| 1993 | $1,798,517,482 | $30,364,842,914 | 5.92% |
| 1994 | $1,838,639,405 | $31,585,702,458 | 5.82% |
| 1995 | $2,038,648,069 | $31,818,213,504 | 6.41% |
| 1996 | $2,325,067,928 | $32,310,550,941 | 7.20% |
| 1997 | $2,453,042,533 | $33,981,325,232 | 7.22% |
| 1998 | $2,595,222,684 | $35,174,341,882 | 7.38% |
| 1999 | $2,845,151,283 | $36,107,876,832 | 7.88% |
| 2000 | $3,085,518,027 | $38,119,663,509 | 8.09% |
| 2001 | $3,275,051,967 | $40,511,207,499 | 8.08% |
| 2002 | $3,578,458,499 | $41,164,885,730 | 8.69% |
| 2003 | $3,448,353,393 | $44,640,506,036 | 7.72% |
| 2004 | $3,429,796,819 | $47,619,962,731 | 7.20% |
| 2005 | $3,756,723,907 | $53,135,894,242 | 7.07% |
| 2006 | $3,627,797,785 | $54,363,948,242 | 6.67% |
| 2007 | $3,657,778,224 | $59,126,968,408 | 6.19% |
| 2008 | $3,940,063,734 | $62,425,097,386 | 6.31% |
| 2009 | $4,242,507,534 | $60,641,504,474 | 7.00% |
| 2010 | $4,420,305,519 | $63,390,689,510 | 6.97% |
| 2011 | $4,559,495,864 | $65,876,253,218 | 6.92% |
| 2012 | $4,631,506,247 | $67,527,971,282 | 6.86% |
| 2013 | $4,658,350,435 | $71,562,342,285 | 6.51% |
| 2014 | $4,669,342,271 | $73,410,768,666 | 6.36% |
| 2015 | $4,896,334,549 | $78,581,696,096 | 6.23% |
| 2016 | $5,075,080,640 | $80,538,508,607 | 6.30% |
| 2017 | $5,312,163,257 | $84,095,875,859 | 6.32% |
| 2018 | $5,480,431,760 | $88,568,143,054 | 6.19% |
| 2019 | $5,668,823,293 | $92,431,090,079 | 6.13% |
NYPD Personnel Spending, FY2019
The first three categories encompass some of the specific spending lines that follows. This is not a complete accounting of NYPD spending, but does give a fair sense of how resources are divvied up.
| Category | Spending, CY2019 |
| Operations | $3,446,754,124 |
| Administration | $271,768,387 |
| Executive Management | $510,323,552 |
| School Safety | $310,763,402 |
| Transit Police | $245,340,433 |
| Office Chief Of Operations | $211,730,568 |
| Housing Police | $211,730,568 |
| Traffic Enforcement | $155,744,663 |
| Office Of Police Commissioner | $148,443,837 |
| Administrative Services Div | $142,340,997 |
| Deputy Commissioner Management & Budget | $101,939,792 |
| Deputy Commissioner Of Training | $96,759,935 |
| Patrol Services Bureau | $86,329,784 |
| Narcotics Division | $75,414,695 |
| Internal Affairs Division | $71,859,747 |
| DC Operations | $64,061,415 |
| Criminal Justice | $61,958,857 |
| Detective Bureau | $55,298,930 |
| Scientific Research Division | $53,613,990 |
| Court Division | $44,907,390 |
| Detective Borough Bronx | $42,136,262 |
| One Twenty Two Precinct | $34,759,011 |
| Thirty Fourth Precinct | $32,738,907 |
| Seventy Fifth Precinct | $32,708,733 |
| Motor Transport Division | $32,707,659 |
| Highway District | $31,629,649 |
| Headquarters | $31,416,614 |
| Forty Fourth Precinct | $27,627,347 |
| Applicant Processing Division | $27,177,865 |
| Street Crime Unit | $26,943,626 |
| Midtown North Precinct | $26,718,942 |
| Sixty Seventh Precinct | $26,286,775 |
| One Twenty Precinct | $26,229,303 |
| Forty Sixth Precinct | $24,596,484 |
| One Hundred Fifth Precinct | $24,511,590 |
| Seventieth Precinct | $23,933,778 |
| Forty Third Precinct | $23,845,498 |
| One Hundred Ninth Precinct | $22,945,587 |
| Management Information Systems | $22,904,922 |
| Seventy Third Precinct | $22,826,838 |
| Forty Seventh Precinct | $22,594,732 |
| Manhattan Traffic Area | $22,531,410 |
| Health Services Division | $22,286,043 |
| Fortieth Precinct | $22,062,662 |
| Seventy Ninth Precinct | $21,395,938 |
| Fifty Second Precinct | $21,099,740 |
| Patrol Borough Queens | $20,930,671 |
| Seventy Seventh Precinct | $20,600,828 |
| One Hundred Third Precinct | $20,024,897 |
| Eighty Fourth Precinct | $19,927,126 |
| One Hundred Thirteenth Precinct | $19,828,851 |
| Building Maintenance Section | $19,800,836 |
| Forty Eighth Precinct | $19,744,697 |
| One Hundred Fourteenth precinct | $19,633,197 |
| Seventy First Precinct | $19,617,265 |
| Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matter | $19,594,626 |
| Patrol Borough Bronx | $19,365,954 |
| Public Morals Division | $18,243,042 |
| Sixtieth Precinct | $18,243,024 |
| Property Clerk Division | $18,046,816 |
| One Hundred Fifteenth Pct | $17,882,545 |
| One Hundred One Precinct | $17,827,023 |
| Thirty Second Precinct | $17,546,862 |
| One Hundred Two Precinct | $17,331,835 |
| Eighty Third Precinct | $17,267,606 |
| Eighty First Precinct | $17,259,418 |
| Nineteenth Precinct | $17,142,338 |
| Forty Second Precinct | $16,776,326 |
| Thirteenth Precinct | $16,467,219 |
| Twenty Fifth Precinct | $16,464,740 |
| One Hundred Tenth Precinct | $16,322,093 |
| Forty Ninth Precinct | $16,234,626 |
| One Hundred Seventh Precinct | $16,157,936 |
| First Precinct | $16,005,118 |
| One Hundred Fourth Precinct | $15,663,916 |
| Seventy Second Precinct | $15,537,885 |
| Forty Fifth Precinct | $15,175,491 |
| Seventy Eighth Precinct | $14,990,816 |
| Twenty Eighth Precinct | $14,841,173 |
| Sixth Precinct | $14,818,410 |
| Forty First Precinct | $14,731,081 |
| Ninth Precinct | $14,719,647 |
| Twenty Third Precinct | $14,643,214 |
| Sixty First Precinct | $14,567,718 |
| Tenth Precinct | $14,115,007 |
| Sixty Ninth Precinct | $13,881,530 |
| One Hundred Eleventh Precinct | $13,812,203 |
| Seventh Precinct | $13,696,667 |
| Central Investigative Resources Division | $13,658,197 |
| One Twenty Third Precinct | $13,337,424 |
| Fiftieth Precinct | $13,336,969 |
| Thirtieth Precinct | $13,266,662 |
| Sixty Third Precinct | $13,252,995 |
| Twenty Fourth Precinct | $13,128,863 |
| Sixty Second Precinct | $13,105,792 |
| Ninety Fourth Precinct | $13,105,154 |
| Staten Island Detective Operations | $13,071,012 |
| Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs | $12,817,956 |
| One Hundred Eighth Precinct | $12,809,551 |
| Eighty Eighth Precinct | $12,726,189 |
| One Hundredth Precinct | $12,696,114 |
| Seventy Sixth Pct | $12,636,172 |
| Fifth Precinct | $12,533,471 |
| Patrol Borough Manhattan North | $12,461,358 |
| One Hundred Twelfth Precinct | $12,318,517 |
| Twentieth Precinct | $12,176,507 |
| Patrol Borough Staten Island | $12,081,032 |
| Patrol Borough Brooklyn North | $12,020,988 |
| Seventeenth Precinct | $11,973,144 |
| Twenty Sixth Precinct | $11,824,192 |
| Special Investigations Division | $11,694,950 |
| Harbor Unit | $11,466,274 |
| Employee Management Division | $11,457,030 |
| Central Park Precinct | $10,982,837 |
| Central Robbery Div | $10,697,271 |
| Criminal Justice Bureau | $10,173,376 |
| Patrol Borough Brooklyn South | $9,174,382 |
| Office Of Management And Planning | $9,166,300 |
| Mounted Unit | $8,200,092 |
| Office First Deputy Commissioner | $8,187,080 |
| Central Records Division | $7,617,709 |
| Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Criminal Justice | $6,878,091 |
| Special Operations Division | $6,056,036 |
| Personnel Bureau | $5,937,460 |
| License Division | $5,766,842 |
| Administrative Services Div | $5,565,379 |
| Department Advocate’s Office | $5,066,332 |
| Payroll Pension Section | $4,531,631 |
| Organized Crime Control Bureau | $4,198,066 |
| Aviation Unit | $3,964,653 |
| Employee Relations Section | $3,918,781 |
| Personnel Orders Sections | $3,673,267 |
| Deputy Commissioner for Public Information | $3,190,518 |
| Office Of Equal Opportunity | $2,555,390 |
| District Attorney NY County | $2,021,936 |
| Printing Section | $1,894,556 |
| Support Services Bureau | $1,750,522 |
| Deputy Commissioner Trials | $1,366,379 |
| District Attorney Squad Queens | $1,345,929 |
| District Attorney Squad Kings | $1,221,613 |
| Staff Services Section | $885,114 |
| Office Of Labor Policy | $867,716 |
| Arson Explosion Division | $503,206 |
| Audits & Accounts Division | $61,667 |
The NYPD’s Spending on Supplies, Equipment, and more
As is true for most agencies, the vast majority of NYPD spending is on personnel. Here is what a city budget document indicates was spent on other stuff in fiscal 2019:
| Category | Total |
| Advertising | $2,556,312 |
| Allowances to participants | $36,900 |
| Automotive supplies | $17,843,814 |
| Awards to widows and other dependents of employees killed | $25,000 |
| Books | $2,472 |
| Books (other) | $390,272 |
| Cleaning services | $2,277,470 |
| Cleaning supplies | $52,000 |
| Contractual services | $121,843,488 |
| Data processing equipment | $61,500,801 |
| Data processing services | $6,383 |
| Data processing supplies | $4,346,519 |
| Education & recreation for youth | $278,538 |
| Equipment leasing | $1,283,976 |
| Equipment rentals | $2,102,760 |
| Financial assistance to college students | $2,036,920 |
| Food & forage supplies | $904,064 |
| Fuel oil | $1,208,135 |
| General maintenance and repair | $4,170,110 |
| Heat, light & power | $22,900,511 |
| Land and building rentals | $66,517,871 |
| Library books | $49,173 |
| Maintenance and repair of motor vehicles | $225,005 |
| Maintenance of operations/infrastructure | $11,837,237 |
| Maintenance supplies | $6,816,975 |
| Medical & surgical lab equipment | $285,059 |
| Medical & surgical lab supply | $1,439,944 |
| Miscellaneous charges | $8,758 |
| Motor vehicle fuel | $19,834,259 |
| Motor vehicle maintenance | $1,498,126 |
| Motor vehicles | $53,197,600 |
| Non-overnight travel | $144,595 |
| Office equipment | $337,612 |
| Office equipment maintenance | $341,301 |
| Office furniture | $5,258,048 |
| Office services | $400,641 |
| Other expenses | $11,300,000 |
| Overnight travel | $3,944,694 |
| Payments to delegate | $1,598,500 |
| Postage | $792,642 |
| Printing contracts | $4,248,127 |
| Printing supplies | $282,937 |
| Profession services – other | $2,138,675 |
| Professional services – computer | $21,054,121 |
| Professional services – engineer/architect | $436,055 |
| Professional services – legal | $7,321,355 |
| Property and equipment | $37,512,889 |
| Security equipment | $24,465 |
| Security services | $3,355,960 |
| Social services | $397,252 |
| Special expense | $196,201,928 |
| Supplies | $309,000 |
| Supplies and materials | $28,008,928 |
| Surety bond premiums | $500 |
| Telecommunications equipment | $2,801,500 |
| Telecommunications maintenance | $237,264 |
| Telephone and other communications | $42,204,848 |
| Temporary services | $289,658 |
| Training for city employees | $6,703,446 |
| Transportation | $161,094 |
*Clarification: This segment was after publication to clarify that CBC does not recommend a drastic reduction in arrests.
1 Comment
ML
Do any of the people quoted remember the 1980s and 1990s? Crime was out of control then; NYC had 2000 murders a year, about five or six times the current amount. The city hired a ton of new cops, and crime went down- far more rapidly than in other cities. (By the way, Los Angeles, which is no. 1 in police spending, also had higher-than-usual decreases in crime).
I have no doubt that police are being asked to waste time on petty matters that are beyond their core mission of apprehending thieves and violent criminals. Nevertheless, we need to be careful to avoid going back to the 1980s.
Moreover, getting police back to their core mission may actually COST the city money in the short term. Why? Because the city has been using the police as a revenue tool, to catch people in minor offenses and getting fines out of them. If you focus police energies on controlling petty crime, you lose fine revenue. So the notion of the police budget as a big revenue source for social services is wrong.