The real cost of the police, and why the NYPD's actual price tag is $10 billion a year

New York City has the biggest police budget of any city in the United States. In 2020, the New York Police Department spent $6 billion. But the true cost of the police is well above $10 billion a year. Most of that goes to uniformed officers' salaries, pension, and overtime. As police budgets have risen, the extra policing hasn't necessarily led to less crime. Instead, record-high settlements in police misconduct cases, unconstitutional policing policies, and high-profile deaths of Black New ...