Cost of a Funeral in Philadelphia

Factual Questions
1

I read the Philadelphia papers nowadays. A policeman was killed in the city last week. Darn sad case the killer was released from jail ten days before.

But there is lot of things to make one angry. The city is trying to decide if the policeman was on duty, if he was the city will pay for the funeral. The union, God bless them, seems perfectly willing to attack the mayor on this, making political points with a policeman’s blood.

But, more to the point, the union says that the cost of the funeral, including transportation and housing for out-of-town relatives would be about $100,000.

Who has experience with this? Could a first-class funeral really go so high? (As a matter of opinion, should the public pay for relatives to stay in hotels?)

2

Not only do you have hotel and transportation costs, but you also have crowd control around the funeral service as well as crowd and traffic control all along the funeral procession route. It can easily be tens of thousands of dollars by the time you’re done.

Some of it depends on how much they want to do, though. A funeral for a policeman in Baltimore last year cost $45,000. That’s still quite a chunk of change, but it’s less than half of the proposed $100k you’re talking about.

ETA: Note that there was a bit of controversy over spending $45k for that funeral. A lot of folks thought that was excessive.

3

Do policemen get paid overtime to go to police funerals?