I live about a mile north of City Hall, but I grew up in a small town (pop 3000) in south-central PA. I've been living in Philadelphia for only a few years now, but every single night, I hear sirens, several times a night. And several times a week, I hear helicopters. I'm used to it now, but the police activity is on a level I never could have imagined existed in America when I was living in my tiny little town. Parts of the city near Temple are lit up and patrolled like it's the green zone in Baghdad.

When you stop and think about it, there is a near-constant state of emergency, and this no doubt applies to any major American metropolitan area. I'm not at all surprised that the police department has such a huge budget here.

20-25% is about average for non-pension expenditures on police.

It's easy to lose context of just how massive a part of PA Philadelphia is. The city proper alone has more than 10% of the state's population (1.5MM to PA's ~12.7). Add in the other PA counties and you're close to 4. Add in the out-of-state parts of the Metropolitan area and you're quickly closing in on 6.

I've always felt safe when I've been there but given the sheer volume of people, I'd surprised they're not spending a larger amount of police forces.

Not even the worst of it. All the firefighter and police pension expenses are in the Finance Department.

I was going to say that 20% seems exceptionally low, but I see how the pensions were being backed out.

Fire and public safety, and their corresponding pensions, make up the bulk (like often >50%) of all municipal expenditures.

See: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Philadelphia-Pennsylvan...

Every day Philadelphia has about: 1 murder, 2 rapes, 25 robberies, 25 assaults, 35 burglaries, 110 thefts, and 20 stolen cars.

The active police + prison budget seems to be about $850 million. That's about $570 per person to keep 1.5 million people safe in one of the poorest major cities in the country.

maybe they should increase the 'streets' budget (and not just have 1 company get all the contracts) and then clean up that gigantic pile of trash that the city is. never seen a more filthy city than Philadelphia

New York is definitely dirtier than Philadelphia.

Try running for office in a city with a platform of "cutting the police budget" and see how far you get...

You could end up with the police union buying the house next door to you, staging protests there and posting signs about how dangerous your making the city. You could even end up finding yourself or relatives followed for their protection as well.

It is not the public someone who wants to run on that platform has to fear

In a city with "1 murder, 2 rapes, 25 robberies, 25 assaults, 35 burglaries, 110 thefts, and 20 stolen cars" PER DAY -- the public is exactly who you'd better be afraid of.

Percentage-wise it looks pretty normal. $650 million out of $3.5 billion is a bit under 20%, which is common. I used to live in Santa Cruz, a much smaller town with a much smaller police department, but about the same percentage of city funding: police took $22 million out of $101 million (http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?doc..., pp. 22-23).