Police Chief Magazine: Possible New Revenue Streams For Law Enforcement

The common reaction to a budget crisis is reducing personnel and cutting services. The focus of this article is to provide police agencies with an alternative to personnel and service reductions. This alternative could help the survival of a city and maintain or expand police service through generating new revenue streams as a proactive approach to meet the fiscal crisis of today and the uncertain future of tomorrow.

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Possible New Revenue Streams

A group of experts in the fields of city government, business, real estate, and entrepreneurship assembled in April 2008 to identify possible new income streams that could be initiated by law enforcement.2 Their suggested new revenue streams serve as an example of ideas that can be generated in a short period of time. Each idea must be weighed against the feasibility of implementation, profit potential, and appropriateness for law enforcement involvement. Their most prominent recommendations were

• fees for sex offenders registering in a given jurisdiction,
• city tow companies,
• fine increases by 50 percent,
• pay-per-call policing,
• vacation house check fees,
• public hours at police firing range for a fee,
• police department-run online traffic school for minor traffic infractions,
• department-based security service including home checks and monitoring of security cameras by police department,
• a designated business to clean biological crime scenes,
• state and court fees for all convicted felons returning to the community,
• allowing agency name to be used for advertisement and branding,
• triple driving-under-the-influence fines by the court,
• resident fee similar to a utility tax,
• tax or fee on all alcohol sold in the city,
• tax or fee on all ammunition sold in, the city,
• public safety fees on all new development in the city,
• 9-1-1 fee per use,
• police department website with business advertisement for support,
• selling ride-a-longs to the public, and
• police department--run firearm safety classes.

In addition to concepts that may lie ahead, there are also many examples of revenue-generating ideas that have been tried and proven in actual use.