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Comment by timcederman | Hacker News Reader

It's always fun to ask people how much they think the annual budget for the NYPD might be, and learn they're off by several orders of magnitude.

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It's not really a fair comparison because much of the budget is the cost of labor, but the NYPD's budget is roughly equal to the budget of Ukraine's military (pre-February 2022).

Well, NYC has about 8.5 million people. I'm from Flanders and we have about 6.5 million people. 8.5 is about the population of Austria or Switzerland.

I think people underestimate how big NYC really is. It is basically a small country.

So yeah, how much funds do the police of Austria or Switzerland get?

according to https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D..., in 2015, Austria spent €545 per inhabitant on "public order and safety", which includes "Police services; fire-protection services; law courts; prisons; R&D related to public order and safety; public order and safety n.e.c. ". about 9 million people live in Austria, so they spent about €5 million in total.

according to https://cbcny.org/research/six-fast-facts-about-nypds-prelim..., the NYPD budget in 2023 was $10.8 billion. so, NYC spent about twice as much on police as Austria spent on police plus fire protection, law courts, prisons, etc.

even if they have the same population, it should cost more to police Austria than NYC because Austria has a larger area, so they need to have more police stations and cars.

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