Government agencies don’t willingly cut headcount because it looks like they’re overstaffed. What a quaint notion.
If the job is getting done and you have 500 employees and the budget for 500 employees, there is literally no incentive to even determine if it could be done with 400. Leaders don’t get a portion of money saved or anything like that. They just lose the budget that was for the extra employees and get a bunch of pissed off employees that now have to work harder for the same pay.
The voters don’t know when police are overstaffed, that’s the problem. Only police management understand how over-subscribed officers are and they have no incentives to fix it when there are too many officers for what’s really needed.
You live in a fantasy if you think voters make rational decisions about policing based on police-load.
If the job is getting done and you have 500 employees and the budget for 500 employees, there is literally no incentive to even determine if it could be done with 400. Leaders don’t get a portion of money saved or anything like that. They just lose the budget that was for the extra employees and get a bunch of pissed off employees that now have to work harder for the same pay.