How many Blade Runners does it really take?

Okay, first let me say i've been a big fan of this movie for over 16 years.
Heres my current beef, How many BR's does one city need? In the movie we see at least three just for the L.A. area alone. Are we to assume that every major city has mutiple BR's.

How often can Replicants really be escaping and returning to earth that the whole planet would need such a specialized police force.

Imagine you're a BR, youve got bills to pay etc. and you're hoping that some handfull of reps will come to your town so you can air them out and that you out of the many BRs in your dept. will get the job. can someone really make a living like this. I can only figure that the BRs were normal Dectectives in the down time between the lucky replicant sitings. It would be better to have certain a few select BRs on call worldwide to deal with the rare sitings.

I do realize that three for the movie, for visual and plotwise is a good number, but realistically its unpractical to have so many bounty hunters waiting aroung on the payroll. If reps were escaping this often then you'd think the U.N. or whoever would do a better job of keeping them in space. It really only makes sense if there are more reps on earth like Rachel, in someones employment etc. and then turn into rep fodder when they're fired or abandoned.

Lastly i assume that the reps make eartly visits rarely considering that in the movie Deckard doesnt even know what a Nexus 6 is, and hasnt before that asked why they come to earth. ( i know its for the audiences sake), and yes hes been not working? why too much killing? sure, but also cause he needs a real paying job.
Maybe i'm over thinking it, i know its just a movie. oh welll -anon7

I was thinking about this too for some time.

Perhaps DADOES can be a small help in this...it describes the work of "android detection" police section more deeply.

There were just two bounty hunters mentioned in DADOES under the direction of Bryant - Holden and Deckard (not counting the "other LAPD's" hunter Phil Resch). And Bryant even called for help to Russia and asked them to send their owhn hunter specialist (who turned out to be an andy).

In DADOES, at some point Pris Stratoon tells to Izidore something like this:

"A bounty hunter receives regular wages, but they are low to keep his motivation...."

Deckard and his wife lived were middle class from the material aspect, but when they wanted to buy a more expensive equipment ot their household (like new sofa set, heh) they needed Deckar's bounties. Also, Deck needed new bounties to pay for a new animal (goat, which costed several 1000s of bucks). The bounty hunters were rewarded with 1000 dollars for every retired andie.Deckard had to go to work every day and when he wasn't hunting reps, he was sitting behind the desk and was doing a regular paperwork. He even had his own assistant in the office! Office rat...

Thats for DADOES. In the BR computer game there is a chart screen near the target practice room where possibly all BRs currently in service of LAPD are listed:

-Crystal Steele (ruthless BR veteran, game only)
-Ray McCoy (BR rookie, game only)
-Lt. Guzza (Bryant's second in charge, game only)
-Cpt. Harry Bryant (head of RepDetect, mentioned in the game)
-Gaff (our "Grey Eminence", only one of Deckard's voiceovers in the OV
suggests he might be actually part of the unit, has appeared in
has appeared in movie&game )
-Dave Holden (movie, mediocre BR probably, mentioned in the game)
-Rick Deckard (oficially out of duty at the time of Nov 2019, mentioned in
the game)

Did I forgot someone? It's early morning...

I don't know where I've read this (old draft of the script or BR comic?), but in the source Gaff says Deckard that he's a blade runner in the fourth sector. So every city sector has its own BR assigned? That would imply that the trespassed reps are visiting the city quite often... Although it's not very logical.

I have not read DADOES but I will promptly do so A.S.A.P. (feel free to flame me crispy for this blasphemy) but I have played and completed the excellent game ages ago and I'm feeling the urge to play it again. Talking about how many it takes to handle reps, It seems to me that there are mabye one or two per sector. Bryant comments that this incident is a bad one, the worst yet and I guess 6 state of the art reps running loose is scary. From the movie I got the impression that they were not actually very well prepared for this, Holden was promptly and efficiently 'disabled' by Leon who also came soooo close to squishing Dekards eyes into his brain if not for the shear luck of Rachel rescuing him (what if Rachel had decided to stay home instead of coming out to meet him at the bar?) Roy could have easily done away with Dekard in a flash if he wanted to but played a prolonged game with him instead. Then ironically Dekards life is saved again this time by Roy himself. The blade runners in this case I think were not in full control of the situation, skating on thin ice is a good description. I guess if Dekard had died it would have been game over or they would have pulled in more runners from other sectors, I'll stop now coz I'm just rambling on and on. Bye for now I'm off to speed read DADOES!