Suburban Police and Fire Jobs are Subsidized Employment

I live in a well to do suburb of New York City. Well I think it is well to do, It is certainly better than where I grew up, but I didn't notice. Anyway, we are definitely over policed and over protected again fire. In fact, the number of police and firemen in our jurisdiction is astounding especially given the very low level of crime and the low number of building fires in our community. To me it looks like another hidden jobs program for non college educated males. And in our area, they are white males. Our force is more diverse than the surrounding areas but the fore is still overwhelmingly white. And male.

I have to find some non-biased statistics on the appropriate level of spending on law enforcement and fire protection relative to the actual crime or fire rate. The problem is the statistics are very hard to come by. They are generally kept in each municipality's library. And there is no cross community comparison so you cannot be completely sure.