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Maybe looks are deceiving, but officers and their vehicles sure look like they're having a whole lot more money spent on them than they were in, say, the 90s. They have more stuff, it all looks fairly new, and it all looks slicker, meaner, and more "apart" from normal folks, than it used to. I'm not talking about SWAT or armored cars or any of that stuff, either, but normal stuff that ordinary officers wear, carry, and drive.

This. The rules that allow them to confiscate and sell or use materials deemed to be "having been used in aid of committing a crime" means the funding is actually drastically higher than it once was.

High enough for them to buy APCs for staging public relations events.

LAPD budget is about 15% of the total LA city budget.

NYPD is about 11% of total NYC city budget

Police spending was 0.05% of the GDP in 1980, it's 0.25% of the GDP now.

So, somehow were spending more and the opinion is that were spending less.