re: #104 Jack Burton

I’m trying to figure out something here. San Diego, CA has a population of 1.4 million people and 1834 police officers.

Los Angeles, CA has a population of 4 million. That is 2.85x San Diego but…
LAPD has 10,002 police officers which is 5.45x as many as San Diego.

New York City has a population of 8.4 million. This is 2.1x LA and 6x San Diego.
But the NYPD has 38,421 police officers.

That is 3.84x LA (vs 2.1 pop diff) and 20.94x San Diego (vs 6x pop diff)… TWENTY TIMES. WTF?

Does population density really affect the need of number of police per 1000 people to this degree, or is there shady bullshit going on at one or the other extreme?

My gut says it’s more about the racial disparity of the city, specifically the percentage of black residents who are perceived as needing domination. Then on top of that there’s the age of the city, ie how long the police union has had to entrench power, and the degree of wealth disparity that drives subconscious white fears.