Eh. I am assuming you meant to type defund so I am responding to that interpretation.
I will open by saying that putting life on the line is part of their job description ( not unlike firefighters ) and they get appropriate social credit for that. In other words, it is literally their job. It is what they signed up for.
Yes, thank you for spotting that mistake. In any case, police barley make enough money as is.. they could always just not become police, and then where would we be? I fact, if they were smart they wouldn't become police. It's a terrible job, and is currently being attacked en masse from almost every direction.
You think 54k/year is enough to risk your life every day? Would you do that? How about we start at 300k/year, and work our way up to 500k/year from there? This is the actual problem with society. We value our computer programs over our social workers. Without video games this world would be a better place. Without cops it would be absolute chaos.
Hmm. There are people asked to come back to work minimum wage right now and shat upon, because they are fine riding it out with unemployment. I am just saying. No need to get indignant.
Oddly, I am kinda ok with it as a test run, but:
1. Where do you propose to get the money from?
2. How would you offset that cost ( I doubt you are proposing we keep the same amount of officers at that salary )?
And here is a thing, for a 500k I expect a stellar, pristine cop and none of that bad apple crap.
Edit: Afterthought, I am not sure you really want to get rid of video games now.
1. The same place it currently comes from, our tax dollars.
2. With more taxes.
At the very least we could add an additional 500k/year into police training... thereby increase the value of our current officers by x amount and tack that onto the end of their current salary. What I am getting at is that the logic of de funding them is literally the opposite of what we need.
Sorry for not responding sooner. Dog demanded attention.
I was honestly hoping something a little more detailed so you will need to excuse me for relying on publicly available data. I am focusing on IL, because some that data was already pulled by other posters and it happens to be my state.
Share of taxpayer debt in IL as of 2014 was $28,600[1]. It did not decrease since then, but we will use it for calculations. As you can imagine, that starting point is not exactly conducive to suggesting tax increase of any kind without some details regarding where exactly those funds are coming from.
Now, CPD funding in 2018 was $1,600,000,000.00. In 2018 CPD had 13,500 employees. Median salary for officers in IL is $75,720 ( and higher in Chicago, but we will run with it ). Based on that employee cost was $1,022,220,000.00
You are proposing starting salary of $300,000 with a difference from 2018 median of $224,280 resulting in almost tripling employee CPD cost to $3,027,780,000.00
That number adds $1123.91 per resident using 2019 Chicago population of 2,693,976 ( sourced from wiki ) or $2,698.77 per tax payer ( I could not find good info on net payer vs net taker, but maybe that would needlessly complicate it ).
So your proposal puts the tax payer further in the hole with share of tax payer debt in IL rising to $31,298.77
Again, not an easy sell, but maybe there is a greater good to be gained. So what does the tax payer get out of this deal? It is an honest question for you. Be as specific as you can.
Now onto your larger point, that "logic of defunding them is literally the opposite of what we need." How so? Please elaborate. I have cops in my family so I am definitely not unbiased. But I am looking at where we are and cutting the police force down to size is almost exactly what we need right now.
I will open by saying that putting life on the line is part of their job description ( not unlike firefighters ) and they get appropriate social credit for that. In other words, it is literally their job. It is what they signed up for.