If these cities have murder rates that high, it sounds like the cops aren't helping. Police enforce property rights, they don't prevent bad guys from doing bad things. Their job is to fill out paperwork after that happens so they can get more money allocated to city government and thus themselves. Cops are as crooked and buyable as any politican. This cornball notion that they're ever 'fighting crime' is from cartoons and TV shows. The police aren't your friends, EVER, and giving them more of my tax money to protect the property rights of the wealthy isn't going to fix shit.