This isn’t true at all. I grew up in a place with no full time police and I currently live in another where I’ve been here for 2 years and seen a police car like 5 times on the highway. It is not the Wild West out there either.

I read another study, though I can't recall where at the moment, that instead of paying law enforcement, putting the money into social programs in a small community was just as effective, but that probably wouldn't scale to entire countries. That being said, it's not like I would go out and rob a place just because the police are no longer a threat. I would imagine many others would feel the same. I don't know about Canada, but in America, citizen's arrest can be a deterrent as well.

There's precedent of living without police (in US, sorry I don't know enough about Canada). The US didn't have an organized police force until 1838 (https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/). Before that, and in some places even after that point, the military was used to enforce laws. Hell, in theory, it's one of the purposes for the US 2nd amendment.

I'm sure that some amount of minimal law enforcement presence reduces some amount of minimal crimes, but what crimes? If someone steals makeup from a supermarket and there's no law enforcement to arrest them, how much damage was caused, versus everyone paying into a system that streamlines putting people into a prison system? If it's a serious crime, like murder, I'm sure the national guard, citizens, federal agents, or military branches, could do the work to arrest suspects. They have a different funding structure, and are already being provided a budget, separate from that of police departments.

Again, sorry for the US-centric viewpoint.

It seems like you maybe thinking this is saying police do nothing, it isn't.

No consistent association means the data doesn't back up higher or lower funding having an impact on crime. It doesn't say anything about rates when the funding is zero or when funding is very high.

I think it means can't pay to reduce crime, or not pay and expect crime to go up.

Testing for zero would be extremely difficult, because we only have one Toronto sized city in Canada.

I'm guessing here but I suspect that there's a significant number of places with zero police presence that have very little crime. And this article suggests that there are very well funded police presences where crime still happens.

Reading is really hard for some people eh?

I mean, the data is only about funding rates that actually exist. No law enforcement at all would be jumped on by organized crime (that's called a power vacuum, and isn't a thing in Canada), but apparently an especially light police presence is no different from a heavy one.

What it most directly supports policy-wise is scaling down the local police a bit. The real work will still get done by whatever investigative teams.

If the headline is to be believed, then completely abolishing the Toronto police would have 0 impact on crime rates in Toronto.

Did you even try to read the study?

data on municipal police service expenditures from 2010 to 2021 in 20 of the most populous urban municipalities in Canada

In 2019, police services were the top operating expenditure in a majority of the municipalities. Real per capita spending on police services increased in 16 of 20 municipalities from 2010 to 2020. Marked differences are seen in spending between municipalities: in 2019, in 2020 dollars, Vancouver spent $495.84 per capita, whereas Quebec City spent $217.05 per capita.