And who's budget pays the office staff?

It's all under the same municipal umbrella at the end of the day. You can't get away with (at least not easily and not for a long period of time) wasting man-hours ($$$) on stuff that has no positive impact toward whatever metrics you are evaluated against (crime stats in the case of the cops) when resources are tight.

> You can't get away with (at least not easily and not for a long period of time) wasting man-hours ($$$) on stuff that has no positive impact toward whatever metrics you are evaluated against (crime stats in the case of the cops) when resources are tight.

Most police departments are not really evaluated on crime stats, they are evaluated against the political satisfaction of the locally politically powerful (which tend to be the local economic elites.)

Who is hurt by crime (and who gets away with it) is usually more important than the level of crime.

Yeah. I considered adding a few sentences to the tune of "the politicians won't stick their necks out covering this waste unless they think there's political gain for them so this is really a reflection of the priorities of the people in the town" but felt that would drag things toward the direction of nit picking over what the people actually want.

That said, at the small town level having less crime than the next town over is generally how you please everyone so there's a pretty good overlap between what the powers that be want the cops to deliver and "less crime".

Police performance is kind of a malleable and hard to pin down thing.

You don't have to have a badge to investigate crime. These staff hours are not being effectively allocated.