A candidate for James Taranto's "Fox Butterfield" effect award is this New York Times news article, which appeared under the print headline, "Crime Is Falling, But Police Levels Remain Robust."
As the article itself concedes, "hardly anyone questions the size of police forces." Hardly anyone, that is, besides the New York Times.
The article is by Jose A. Del Real, whose LinkedIn bio describes him as a 2013 graduate of Harvard.
Newspapers exist in part to raise questions that "hardly anyone" is asking. But readers might be a bit less skeptical of the Times enthusiasm for shrinking the unionized government workforce if the enthusiasm extended beyond the police to other areas.
As for those who might contend that the size of police forces might have actually helped to reduce the crime rate, the Times dismisses that idea: "The relationship between the number of officers and lawful behavior is not clear-cut." The relationship between the number of reporters and editors in the Times newsroom and the amount of useful news they produce is not clear-cut, either.