Quote Originally Posted by ray1970 View Post
Generally speaking, police officers don't prevent crime.
In a really broad sense you might be correct but at least one scientific study says more cops = less crime. At least in some categories:

https://www.nraila.org/articles/2019...-prevent-crime

The key finding is that “Among violent crimes, the results are negative and statistically significant for murder, rape, and robbery, while the estimate is not significant for assault.” Mello’s findings for murder are limited by the variability in the murder rate, his findings imply that “one life can be saved by hiring about 9.5 new police officers.” Mello goes on to discuss his findings in terms of cost-benefit, finding that each officer contributes $352,000 in social benefit (based on crime reduction) – well above the point at which the additional officer would be considered cost-effective.

Of course, it's impossible to determine or measure how many crimes are stopped just by the presence of a police officer. The thing that I found most surprising was the $350k in social benefits each officer creates. That's a pretty amazing number.