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Right out of the article you linked: > The starting salary for an NYPD officer is $55,910 without overtime. Meanwhile, the required annual income for a person

Right out of the article you linked: > The starting salary for an NYPD officer is $55,910 without overtime. Meanwhile, the required annual income for a person living alone in New York City with no children is $53,342, according to an MIT living wage calculator. So a police officer starts out barely makes a living wage. No wonder they end up living outside NYC to save money. And then if they manage to save up a down payment, good luck qualifying for a NYC mortgage on that salary.

woodruffw 3y ago
Emphasis on "without overtime." Their actual take-home pay includes overtime. And note: the NYPD has very handsome perks: it's a 22-years-to-half-salary-pension job that rises to 121k after 5.5 years in the service[1]. The other benefits are worth looking at as well. Working as a cop doesn't entitle someone to be able to afford a mortgage; millions of New Yorkers can't afford mortgages. Millions of New Yorkers also live in this city while making less than the NYPD does; on a basic civic level, it would behoove the NYPD to live a bit more like the people they're meant to protect. [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...
- pseudo0 3y ago
  If cops can't qualify for a NYC mortgage and are forced to live in NYC, many will quit. They have very transferable skills and there are loads of police departments with staff shortages in places where housing is affordable on a police officer's salary. Including overtime seems questionable. It's arguably a "perk" but it damages work/life balance and contributes to burnout. Most people do a ~40 hour work week, comparing that to a police officer doing 50-60 does not seem fair. I understand the issues with policing as an institution, but average police officers are basically societal janitors, doing a nasty, unpleasant job for very mediocre pay. You aren't going to improve the quality of people hired by making the job even more unattractive.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    > If cops can't qualify for a NYC mortgage and are forced to live in NYC, many will quit. They have very transferable skills and there are loads of police departments with staff shortages in places where housing is affordable on a police officer's salary. This is true for every other civil servant in NYC; they haven't quit. People want to live here. Overtime does indeed contribute to burnout. But overtime use by the NYPD is culturally endemic and rampant[1]; individual anecdotes don't make a trend, but you can look up "NYPD overtime abuse" for widely shared "tricks" among NY's finest for getting paid extra money for indefinitely detaining suspects, conducting calls where they know an arrest won't be made, &c. Finally: I agree that policing is a nasty, unpleasant job. To a certain degree, it's fundamentally nasty and unpleasant. But the current degree to which it's that way is a problem of our own making: police departments have been happy to absorb the budget that was slashed from mental health and community building programs, all while complaining about the overflowed social ills that come with doing that. I'd rather make the job more attractive by funding those things than dumping more money into the black hole that is the NYPD's labor budget. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/nypd-blows-overtime-budget-by-nearly-100-million-on-pace-for-record https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/nypd-blow...

woodruffw 3y ago

Emphasis on "without overtime." Their actual take-home pay includes overtime. And note: the NYPD has very handsome perks: it's a 22-years-to-half-salary-pension job that rises to 121k after 5.5 years in the service[1]. The other benefits are worth looking at as well. Working as a cop doesn't entitle someone to be able to afford a mortgage; millions of New Yorkers can't afford mortgages. Millions of New Yorkers also live in this city while making less than the NYPD does; on a basic civic level, it would behoove the NYPD to live a bit more like the people they're meant to protect. [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-ben...

pseudo0 3y ago
If cops can't qualify for a NYC mortgage and are forced to live in NYC, many will quit. They have very transferable skills and there are loads of police departments with staff shortages in places where housing is affordable on a police officer's salary. Including overtime seems questionable. It's arguably a "perk" but it damages work/life balance and contributes to burnout. Most people do a ~40 hour work week, comparing that to a police officer doing 50-60 does not seem fair. I understand the issues with policing as an institution, but average police officers are basically societal janitors, doing a nasty, unpleasant job for very mediocre pay. You aren't going to improve the quality of people hired by making the job even more unattractive.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > If cops can't qualify for a NYC mortgage and are forced to live in NYC, many will quit. They have very transferable skills and there are loads of police departments with staff shortages in places where housing is affordable on a police officer's salary. This is true for every other civil servant in NYC; they haven't quit. People want to live here. Overtime does indeed contribute to burnout. But overtime use by the NYPD is culturally endemic and rampant[1]; individual anecdotes don't make a trend, but you can look up "NYPD overtime abuse" for widely shared "tricks" among NY's finest for getting paid extra money for indefinitely detaining suspects, conducting calls where they know an arrest won't be made, &c. Finally: I agree that policing is a nasty, unpleasant job. To a certain degree, it's fundamentally nasty and unpleasant. But the current degree to which it's that way is a problem of our own making: police departments have been happy to absorb the budget that was slashed from mental health and community building programs, all while complaining about the overflowed social ills that come with doing that. I'd rather make the job more attractive by funding those things than dumping more money into the black hole that is the NYPD's labor budget. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/nypd-blows-overtime-budget-by-nearly-100-million-on-pace-for-record https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/nypd-blow...