By the Numbers: How does police violence in Atlanta compare with other big cities?

The Atlanta Police Department (APD) spends more money on policing than most major cities – but for worse outcomes, according to the Police Scorecard, a national database that assesses U.S. policing for over 16,000 city and county law enforcement agencies. 

Atlanta’s overall score is 29%, meaning the city scores worse than 71% of cities with populations of 250,000 or more for its levels of police violence, accountability, racial bias and other outcomes.

Data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe, who developed the Police Scorecard, recently made the keynote address for a grassroots symposium hosted by the Southern Center for Human Rights, called “Pain and Power: Confronting Police Violence in Atlanta.” The Aug. 19 event was part of the group’s year-long Community Keeps Community Safe project to find solutions to police violence.

Police departments with higher scores use less force, make fewer arrests for low-level offenses, solve murder cases more often, hold officers more accountable and spend less on policing overall, according to the Police Scorecard project. The database scores U.S. police departments in four main categories: funding, accountability, violence and approach to law enforcement. 

APD Budget 

The data from the Police Scorecard starkly contrasts with the APD’s ever-increasing budget. For the funding category, the APD scored only 26%. This means the city of Atlanta spent more on police than almost three-quarters of other big police departments during the 2010 to 2020 time period for the data.

Funding the APD is the city of Atlanta’s largest single general expenditure, making up 31.3% of its $790 million general fund budget. This year, the city increased the APD budget by $11.7 million to $247 million. Most of that – $202 million – goes to salaries.  But is the money really making a difference in improving policing outcomes?

Despite the APD’s calls for more officers and more funding to hire and retain them,…