“Ultimately, the decision to manage these larger socioeconomic problems with law enforcement and with prisons ends up winning out,” said Elizabeth Hinton, a historian at Harvard who has written a book on that era. That choice largely remains with us today. Mr. Ramsey dislikes the phrase “defund the police.” But he supports the idea that some police funding should be redirected after years of growth in the police mission. “I don’t even have a problem with that if they re-allocate to give more to substance abuse counselors and mental health professionals,” Mr. Ramsey said. “But then take away some of that responsibility from the police. Don’t just take away money; take away responsibility as well.” Across these 150 large cities, the average share of general expenditures devoted to the police has gradually increased by about 1.2 percentage points since the late 1970s, to 7.8 percent. That change is relatively modest. But it means that residents have watched city police budgets rise by millions of dollars annually — even during lean years for city finances, and through a steep nationwide decline in violent crime that began in the early 1990s.
The long rise in spending is also rooted in the war on crime that began in the 1960s. Federal and local officials wrestled then with how to address concentrated poverty and racial segregation in cities — whether to focus on welfare programs or social control.
“The police have been used to fill the gaps where city services are not adequate,” said Charles H. Ramsey, the former police chief in Philadelphia and Washington, and a co-chair of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.