Did we defund the police?
Polygraph | Newsletter n°281 | 4 Dec 2024
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Did we defund the police?
No.
^Alt text for screen readers: The US spends over $140 billion annually on police. This line graph shows state and local government police expenditures since 2008, culminating at $140 billion in 2022. Data: US Census Bureau (31 October 2024): 2022 Census of Governments – Finance Component.
By comparison, the record-breaking military budget Vladimir Putin just approved for Russia is $126 billion.
The latest figures we have for US police spending are for 2022 (so we might be well over $140 billion by this point, considering the trajectory of this spending). The Census Bureau publishes an annual report on state and local government expenditures about 24 months after it collects the data. The report for 2022, for example, was released about a month ago. I don’t know why there’s such a considerable lag time, but it’s worth the wait considering there’s no other report like it.
If any defunding has gone on since then, it’s not attributable to the outgoing president. Biden committed to surging federal subsidies to police during his time in office and, as the chart below shows, he certainly delivered on that.
And he would’ve liked to deliver more. Read the explanatory statement to any Department of Homeland Security or Department of Justice appropriations bill over the past few years and you’ll encounter something like the excerpt below from the FY2024 DHS bill: Biden requests an increase for police grant programs (underlined in blue) and Congress, despite already being plenty eager to fund that sort of thing, still thinks Biden’s gone too far and enacts a lower amount than he requested (underlined in orange).
Why hasn’t the media pounced on the opportunity to cover this politically-charged and click-worthy theme? Because it requires actually reading legislation and not just White House or congressional press releases. Which is a shame — doing so is tedious, but in my opinion it’s worth it. Leave no stone unturned and you’re bound to find something much more unsettling than woodlice.
The following chart originally appeared in Polygraph newsletter #245. The amounts refer to congressional appropriations for DHS and DOJ police grant programs for each fiscal year. DOJ figures include funding for State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance and the COPS program; DHS figures include funding for the State Homeland Security Grant Program and the Urban Area Security Initiative.
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden surged federal subsidies to police. This chart shows two-part columns representing Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security grants from fiscal years 2017 through 2024. Here are the totals, in billions: 2.7, 3.1, 3.2, 3.5, 3.6, 4.4, 4.5, 4.5. The last three were under Biden. Data comes from the annual appropriations bills for fiscal years 2017 through 2024 and Public Law 117-159.
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