NYPD America's Biggest and Baddest?
Mayor Bloomberg's boast of a "personal army" may not be far off with a police department larger than the FBI that's moonlighting as an intelligence agency in the region and the world
The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country, with over 34,000 uniformed officers patrolling New York's streets, and 51,000 employees overall -- more than the FBI. It has a proposed budget of $4.6 billion for 2013, a figure that represents almost 15 percent of the entire city's budget.
NYC's population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers--a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
The vaunted "NYPD" is an overrated joke, filled with little piss-pots that really ought to go do something productive with their lives.
Anyone that would do the bidding of that piece of feces of a mayor in NYC, would be no different than those that in the 1970's, did what the Khmer Rouge ordered in Cambodia.
Perhaps someday the US can be rid of that trash pit.