Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
How much does police service scale with city size? I suspect density creates more interpersonal conflict due to extra human contact, increasing policing cost. The only thing they do that probably scales with size is traffic enforcement, but that is self funding.
Compare the City of Vancouver (population 675k) to the City of Calgary (almost exactly double population at 1.336 MM). Vancouver had a 2020 police budget of $340.6 MM. From the 3 year budget cycle document, Calgary Police had a 2020 budget of $401 MM.
The city of vancouver is way, way more dense than Calgary, and spends 66% more money per capita on police services. I think if there is any positive correlation with city land area it must be very slight, as calgary is much, much less dense than the city of vancouver. In fact Vancouver has more than 3x as many people per square km. If density was a big savings for police services they should be seeing that savings.
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I don't think that's a fair comparison. 675k people live in Vancouver, but how many people work and visit there on a daily basis?
Burnaby's population is 232,755 and has a police budget of $67 million. That's way higher per capita than Vancouver's. Why? It has half the population density of metro Vancouver so shouldn't it have a lower police budget?