I think to the mass of people, if they can see a cop that means the money is going to something tangible that a politician can point to and say we did all of these numbers because cops. While firefighters the more money you put in, it doesn’t as easily translate to a figure that you can point to and say we did all this fire stuff. Which then the general populous gets pissed off that their tax dollars are being wasted.

It doesn’t make it right, smart, sensible or logical. But the general population doesn’t really care about that.