Major Takeaways:

• There’s quite a bit of heterogeneity in how much city budgets have increased over time.
• There are three far outliers: NYC, SF and DC’s budgets have all increased dramatically over the past three decades.
• However, it’s a different set of cities that have seen the largest increase in police budgets: Austin, Charlotte, Jacksonville

The median increase in (real) overall city budgets from 1990 to 2019 in our list 1 of 80 large cities is 34.34%, and 43.6% on average. The median increase in (real) police budget is 37.12%, and 41% on average.

The median correlation coefficient between overall city budget per capita and police salaries is 0.30. The median correlation coefficient between overall city budget per capita and firefighter salaries is 0.298.