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The answer, as with all govtech, is “a lot more than it should be.” Governments, especially local governments, have no internal technology competence, and have to rely on vendors and contractors for absolutely everything.
To run a tip-line and collect tips: probably very little.
To act on that information, so you're able to identify and punish violators, without which there's no point in having a tip line: looooooots more.
This is not what raises the cost of development. It’s not having any in-house knowledge of software development or even how to manage software development contracts effectively. Most companies that require a lot of software end up building development organizations, because they recognize that paying someone else to do it is more expensive long-term. That’s not an option available to most governments.
It’s possible that this is just an inherent effect of outsourcing but even if it is, it ends up being too inefficient to justify.
In many cities, the police don't even respond to auto/bike burglaries -- they're very minimally staffed.
For example NYPD has 36000 ifficers for 8.4M residents or 1 for every 230 people. In Chicago it's 225. In Seattle it's over 500 but they could probably afford more if they weren't paying individual officers up to 400k including non electronically tracked probably fraudulent overtime.
