Waste in Chicago Police Department

Chicago suffered 507 murders in 2012, up from 433 in 2011.  The increase was a result of cuts in the number of police and a reorganization of police, such as moving detectives from high to low crime areas of the city.  But after cutting back on the number of police, even Chicago politicians realized that had been a mistake. But their short term solution was to massively increase overtime hours for existing police officers.  In 2013, some $93 million was spent on overtime, burning through two-thirds of their $32 million overtime budget in just their first three months of the year.  The official number of murders then declined to 415, though there are some real issues of how much of that decline was due to corruption and falsifying the numbers.  Despite the decline in Chicago murders, the city still had more murders than more populous cities -- New York and Los Angeles.  LA had 298 murders in 2012 and about 250 in 2013.  New York had 414 murders in 2012 and 333 in 2013.