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Yes, quite often. Officers are spread a lot more than most people think. They have bigger areas to cover.

Take you city size or population size and the number of cops in your local department. Take out the administration, detectives, evidence etc., then divide the remaining into three shifts plus specialty units such as K-9 or traffic units and they see what remains on any shift for your city or county size. Guess how many are busy with calls, arrests, transport, and court.

Additionally assume officers have days off, sick days, vacation, and guess what that is. The best part is then look at the area they cover. Figure out how long it takes YOU to get from place to place and realize how thin the blue line is really stretched.

This is why I always support the police, fire and EMS. They really are my heroes.

[Yes, quite often. Officers are spread a lot more than most people think. They have bigger areas to cover.]

That’s why NYC’s low reported crime rate doesn’t impress me. NYC has 40,000 cops covering 300 sq miles. That’s literally 130 cops per square mile. Assuming 1/4 of those cops is on duty at any time, that’s 30 cops per square mile. Compare that to someplace like Dallas, with similar demographics (i.e. % of blacks), where 3,000 cops have to deal with 385 sq miles. That’s 2 cops per square mile at any time. Based on coverage alone, NYC’s murder rate should be 1/15 Dallas’s. Instead, it’s 1/3 (i.e. NYC’s rate is 5x higher than it should be).

https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Dallas-Texas.html
https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-New-York-New-York.html