Police Departments versus Public Works

Your local municipal government is on average much better funded for busting people for minor pot possessions than for fixing potholes.  As you watch the Eric Garner video for the 30th time - remember that police department utilizes 34% of the budget for the average city, 18% for fire protection, and 16% for public works.  The ASCE report card didn't see the need to point this out.

When almost 50% of your budget goes toward public safety, you can afford to bring down and kill citizens for rather minor violations.  Public safety has many faces - - one overlooked face is the safe and effective investments we need to make in our aging public infrastructure.  Our public infrastructure is the most important wheel in our economic cog and we are foolishly wasting money rounding up people for minor violations.  ASCE and many others have done a terrible job getting into the police versus public works department debate.  ASCE mainly wants to do report cards and take pictures of crumbling bridges - - they don't want any of the hard and difficult debates that go into an effective democracy.  The Garner video not only demonstrates the outrageous actions of some police officers and departments - - it also demonstrates how we have collectively mis-allocated public money away from fixing our national infrastructure tragedy.