That might be an improvement in many places, but it would probably create problems for San Francisco and San Jose, where cost of living is largely unsustainable

That might be an improvement in many places, but it would probably create problems for San Francisco and San Jose, where cost of living is largely unsustainable for people who make starting police salaries unless they lucked into a family house. We sometimes forget that officers get to choose where they want to work and will migrate to the best place for them. The ratio between housing costs and salary (among other quality of life factors) is pretty important to lots of officers and we may end up lowering the quality of officers by only restricting the pool of eligible employees.