https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
Second, spending on police has actually been trending down for quite some time:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Q7WX
And the number of officers per capita has remained remarkably stable over time (contra suggestions that the number of police has risen dramatically). See Table 1 in this PDF:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf
Third, we spend much more on schools than on police:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
Despite the prevalence of memes to the contrary:
https://twitter.com/RCAFDM/status/1532739121562656770?s=20&t...
https://twitter.com/CharlesFLehman/status/153270044228675993...
Fourth, because spending in the U.S. is split amongst federal, state, and local governments, looking purely at local budgets is often more obfuscatory than explanatory. If we look at combined state and local spending, the picture looks quite a bit more reasonable:
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/state_loca...
That graph in words:
> Overall, police spending was 4 percent of state and local direct general expenditures in 2017. (This data included federal transfers; if we look at just own-source funds, police spending was 5 percent of state and local expenditures.)
> This is far less than what state and local governments spent on public welfare (mostly Medicaid in the Census accounting) and Kâ12 education, but more than many other services, including housing and community development (and others not listed on the chart).
Source: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/what-police-spending-data-c...
Obviously people can disagree about how much we should spend and on what, but, generally, the U.S. spends a pretty typical amount on police, that amount is significantly less than on various other social services, and the amount has largely not been growing.
Forty percent of Uvalde's budget was going to the police - $4.3M for 15,000 residents, or $2900/person. That doesn't include the half a million dollars for their school police force.
New York City has a budget of about $100BN, and $11BN goes to NYPD - $1300 for every single person in the city.