I live in a city with a monetarily constrained police force.
It's great. They take the big stuff (violent crime and trafficking in hard drugs) seriously but don't have time to be running BS task forces, procuring military equipment they don't need and sitting around watching for "sketchy looking" people to harass. I'm sure it sucks to be them and they're all over worked but frankly it's great for the people.
Not being seen as jerks gives the local police better freedom of operation than the much better funded state cops who are seen as being jerks who enforce every law to the letter and nobody wants to cooperate with. I kinda feel bad for the state cops because cities like mine are where they stick the fresh academy grads who have no connections or seniority to avoid a crap assignment and then they get locals hating them for doing what the state trained them to do (also goes to show you the conflict between what the state wants and what the people of the city want).
That said, were the Real Crime(TM) to vanish I can see the local police using their newfound free time to optimize enforcement for revenue generation which would be very bad.
It's great. They take the big stuff (violent crime and trafficking in hard drugs) seriously but don't have time to be running BS task forces, procuring military equipment they don't need and sitting around watching for "sketchy looking" people to harass. I'm sure it sucks to be them and they're all over worked but frankly it's great for the people.
Not being seen as jerks gives the local police better freedom of operation than the much better funded state cops who are seen as being jerks who enforce every law to the letter and nobody wants to cooperate with. I kinda feel bad for the state cops because cities like mine are where they stick the fresh academy grads who have no connections or seniority to avoid a crap assignment and then they get locals hating them for doing what the state trained them to do (also goes to show you the conflict between what the state wants and what the people of the city want).
That said, were the Real Crime(TM) to vanish I can see the local police using their newfound free time to optimize enforcement for revenue generation which would be very bad.