New York City can afford it because we have many successful high achievers and hedge fund millionaires and a few billionaires and successful small business owners.
Still, cops are extremely well paid. This means other areas of government are much less well funded: infrastructure, roads, services, etc.
We have a few local cops here who park their personal vehicle anywhere they want. That’s kind of an abuse.
So, the question is: why are cops so well paid (especially in NYC, and other major cities.) Is that a problem? It doesn’t have to be a problem, but money is definitely limited. Three are other areas of government service and spending that must be constrained.
Are cop salaries an implicit bribe? “You have guns, we are going to overpay you so you don’t engage in illegal extra-curricular.”
I’m looking at your link. The pay doesn’t really look that outrageous, considering the cost of living, and the risks inherent in the job. What sort of paycheck would you expect for policing in a major metropolitan area?
Over a lifetime, WalMart spends over a million dollars per Greeter.
Ten dollars ln hour over 47 years is over a million, actual paycheck, not even counting costs of benefits or costs of maintaining the working environment. Greeters even have to buy their own gun.
For NYC? Those wages ( which factor in a number of things beyond base scale ) don’t look at all out of line to me. Of course that link doesn’t factor in overtime which can substantially inflate base wages even higher.
But the dirty little secret of overtime is that it still saves money vs. additional full-time positions which is why overtime usage is so rampant in government agencies and public/private utilities. It always annoys me when people get up in arms about overtime paid to workers - the thing they should be pissed at is understaffed agencies working people 70 hrs a week to save on healthcare costs and the like.
A million dollars sounds like a lot. Until you spread it out over a lifetime. Assume the average new employee is twenty-one years old and will live to the age of seventy-one. Now you’re talking about wages, benefits, and pensions that average twenty thousand dollars a year. Guys delivering pizzas are million dollar employees.
According to the link, $2.2 million of that is in pensions and post-retirement benefits. Maybe a better question is why they get paid so well after they stop working?
$45k - $75k sounds like a typical middle class salary to me.
Well, they are relatively selective skilled jobs with a high risk factor. So I would expect that they get paid more than some drone down at the DMV.
That’s pretty accurate, probably, in places with lower costs of living. With two decades of law enforcement experience, my husband just barely tops your estimate. But he works in a somewhat rural county, with a patrol staff of only about 40 people. And we live in an area where housing costs and taxes are reasonably low.
My educated guess? After those first five years, a significant number of officers are moving up in the ranks. In addition to their standard raises, they’re also receiving more pay after being promoted to supervisory positions.
Also, if we’re figuring out just how the city manages to spend more than $4mm per officer over an average 22-year career: In addition to salary, health benefits, overtime, and retirement pay, there’s also the cost to equip the officers for their jobs. Most employers’ direct spending on employees might include a couple of uniforms and a new computer every year or two. In law enforcement, outfitting the officers includes everything from weapons and ammunition to new Kevlar vests every 3-5 years to patrol vehicles to radios. And then, there’s the cost of fuel for patrol vehicles, workers compensation insurance, liability insurance to cover automobiles and the potential for lawsuits against the jurisdiction, etc. Really, it’s not too hard to see where those millions of dollars go…
My mother’s father and uncles were mostly all semi-rural law enforcement of one sort or another in and around Maryland. They were also all fairly poor. Not breadline poor, but barely scraping by at times poor.
I’m not always the biggest fan of law enforcement as individuals ( I think the job environment attracts and breeds more than its fair share of macho assholes ). But it’s a hard fucking job, somebody has to do it and they deserve a decent living wage when they do.
Here for a long time State police start at about the same pay as a teacher with no experience. While I think technically you still do not require a college degree to be a State police officer in Virginia it’s my understanding it’s now almost impossible to get hired as one without a degree. You can still go to the academy and get a job at a small municipal or county agency, but the pay is much less.
State police here do end up doing decent in that they can retire comfortably in their late 40s and then work a full time second job typically making at least as much as they did as a cop, essentially doubling their pay for the last 10-15 years of their working careers.
But I’d need to see some hard numbers to support OP’s contention that a specific agency is overpaying. Show me police salary versus say, white collar civil servant versus teachers in the same area. Also factor in cost of living, and I don’t know about NYPD but many municipal police departments have regulations against living more than x number of miles or minutes away from the city you serve so that you’re not too far away if they need you. One small town in Virginia I believe the rule is you can’t live more than 15 miles away from town (Firefighters I believe have the same restrictions.) So you can’t take your $75k and live 65-70 minutes out of NYC where cost of living is potentially lower.
Martin Hyde, my dad was Washington State Patrol, Commercial Vehicle Enforcement (he worked weigh stations for trucks) for 36 years - though for the last 20+ years he was basically the equivalent of “regional manager” for his department. And, actually, at the time of his retirement he was the senior WSP officer in the entire state. He was one step below the state head of his department, and was at the top of the list for that job, but he kept turning it down because he didn’t want to be involved in “politics”.
And he still didn’t make much more than a state trooper. He didn’t qualify to be a trooper because he was too short, at 5’ 8". In 1968 that was the only thing that disqualified him; now, his lack of a college degree would also keep him from that job.
During the air traffic controller strike back in, what, 1981-82? he applied for that job at the Portland (Oregon) International Airport when it looked like Reagan was going to fire them all, because air traffic control was what he did in the US Marine Corps, and it paid better than the WSP. Aside from air traffic control and being a cop, he really has no other marketable skills. He’s been retired from the WSP for a few years now. He’ll be 70 next month, and works part-time at Home Depot to supplement his state pension.
I think I also posted to a thread here, years ago, that revealed that some LAPD officer who had been in the news (maybe one of the cops involved with either Rodney King or O.J. Simpson) had retired, and his pension was some big number. I remember being flabbergasted, because they guy’s pension was considerably more than what my still-active cop dad was making.
Paid well? Have you seen cops moonlighting as security guards at grocery stores and other businesses? They wouldn’t be moonlighting if they were paid a good wage.
You couldn’t pay me enough to go into a house after a forced entry was detected. Not knowing if someone is just waiting to pick me off. Or trying to take down some 300 lb dude hopped up on Angel Dust. Cops deserve a good wage.
So you need to elect a government that has different priorities. Or a government that’s willing to raise taxes to pay for the other stuff too. Whatever.
I’ll note, at this point, that governments, at whatever level, and whatever the employee did for that government, who chisel away at the promised retirement benefits for that employee… well, they are scum.