Here is a look inside the most recently adopted budget in Los Angeles. You can use the calculator below to adjust each budget line to see how dollars allocated to the police could be reduced. The numbers included below represent monies coming from the city’s general fund and other local, federal, and state funding sources. (You can learn more about Vera’s data sources and methods here.)
Calculate how your city could save money on policing
City budgets can be notoriously opaque documents and difficult to compare across municipalities. Budgets include the city’s anticipated expenditures and revenues (money coming in from taxes, fines and fees, state and federal funds, etc.) for functions such as sanitation, parks, libraries, roads, and, of course, policing. The general fund typically represents unrestricted revenues that can be used for any legal purpose.
Spending on policing overwhelmingly comes from the general fund. While a budget reflects a municipality’s political and moral priorities, police spending can be very difficult to cut given the strength of police unions.
For each city, we have compiled FY2020 data about the adopted budget and spending on policing. Explore the data and calculate how much the city could have saved if it made different allocations.