Palo Alto, California: 1 Police Officer per 673 Residents

It's been quite a week for the Palo Alto Police.

The 92 officers of Palo Alto's finest started off the week handing out We're Bored tickets to cyclicts for riding while talking on cell phones (an activity which, as you guessed, turns out to be legal). The cops ended the week befuddled by an anarchist rally downtown.



(I'd heard before that Palo Alto had more police per capita than any comparable US city. Although I haven't found a good online resource to back up this factoid, here's a point of reference: With slightly over 9,600 police officers and a population of 9,871,506, Los Angeles has 1 police officer per 1,028 residents.)