[23iofj]

Note: sometimes you'll get two people giving different numbers for the same city. AFAICT this happens most often when pensions are broken out as a separate budget item. The fact that cities break them out separately is sensible -- pensions are legally quite different from other budget items.

But pension obligations are a pretty significant component of the price of policing, so excluding them in these calculations doesn't make a lot of sense.

20%-30% is pretty typical. Almost all cities with lower numbers have enormous transportation budgets (e.g., NYC -- they do spend a ton on police, but they also have transportation budget that's comparable to many states).