Joe Harris, the former auditor general of Detroit and one-time emergency financial manager in Benton Harbor, tells Daniel Howes of the Detroit News that Detroit's spending on police and fire is far different than similarly sized cities.
Detroit spends $397 million of a $1.1 billion budget on a police department to cover 139 square miles, according to data compiled by Harris from publicly available municipal financial reports, Howes writes. That's more than double the $164 million Atlanta spends to police its 133 square miles.
Detroit spends more per capita on police and fire protection than Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Atlanta, even as police and fire officials here labor with sagging morale exacerbated by dilapidated equipment. Police Department costs per officer total $146,603, compared to $90,462 for Milwaukee, $83,716 for Atlanta, $87,198 for Cleveland and less than $66,000 for St. Louis and Pittsburgh.
"We are above our peers in every single department," Harris said in an interview Monday. "You don't solve this just by cutting 10 percent across the board. We've got to find out where the issues are instead of just laying off police officers."
