5 ms·

"State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year" Holy cow.

jghn 5mo ago
People don't realize how well paid cops are. In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.
- throw0101c 5mo ago
  And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
  - ta988 5mo ago
    and pensions...
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
    - throw0101c 5mo ago
      >>> In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police. >> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item. > No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately. Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
      - tptacek 5mo ago
        Right. The point is that people fixate on the percentage of the budget "police" take up, but that budget is specialized. When a county, multi-muni school district, or state provides the schools, you're still paying taxes for it, they just don't show up in the same spreadsheet. You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation". But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
- bpoyner 5mo ago
  My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
  - jghn 5mo ago
    > but it comes with significant risks But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
    - sitkack 5mo ago
      And they are that high just because statistically they are in traffic for such a large amount of time.
      - avs733 5mo ago
        At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units” Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
        delecti 5mo ago
        Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
        jghn 5mo ago
        Where I live this has also created a secondary debate. Due to union laws, when these jobs are handed off to non-police, the municipality must still pay the prevailing wage, aka what the cops were getting paid. Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it. And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
k4rli 5mo ago
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
jmyeet 5mo ago
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT. And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces. And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write. Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
- wahnfrieden 5mo ago
  You say departments get to keep civil forfeiture proceeds, but the truth is individual officers often take that home. There are many cases of US police using civil forfeitures to buy themselves luxury items such as premium trucks for personal use, Super Bowl memorabilia, premium dog food for their pets at home (some actual examples). The money doesn’t just go back to police service funding.
tclancy 5mo ago
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
- morkalork 5mo ago
  It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
- ethagnawl 5mo ago
  > Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income. Yep! Stand around for 4-5 hours on a Saturday morning (often hungover; I personally know cops) and pad that overtime and pension.
ethagnawl 5mo ago
His pension is based on that figure and he _may_ get to retire after ~27 years. From https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper: Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans: Tier 1 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service. Tier 2 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service. A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
- jabroni_salad 5mo ago
  It is not just troopers, it's a lot of IL state employees. Pay being ballooned in the final few years of service is just one of the many reasons the Illinois pension system is in crisis.
  - dakolli 5mo ago
    My grandpa retired as an IL police officer in his 50s and lived for 30+ more years making 6 figures from his pension and getting 3% or 5% (I forgot) adjustments every year. He probably had the most chill retirement of anybody I've ever known (outside of getting cancer twice). He was making six figures a year living on a lake near Dixon, you do not need six figures in Dixon lol
Aurornis 5mo ago
This is the pension game. When the amount of your pension is determined by your last 3 years of compensation before retirement, you do everything you can to maximize overtime in those 3 years. So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn. One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down. Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed. So instead they’re just going away for everyone.
- Refreeze5224 5mo ago
  It would be trivial to exclude overtime from the last 3 years. People gaming them is not why pensions are going away.
  - cogman10 5mo ago
    Or to put limits on overtime. Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours. It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.
bobro 5mo ago
Police and fire fighters have tons of opportunities for overtime. they get paid absurd amounts of money to do it. It’s another thing that badly needs reform.

jghn 5mo ago

People don't realize how well paid cops are. In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.

throw0101c 5mo ago
And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
- ta988 5mo ago
  and pensions...
- tptacek 5mo ago
  No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
  - throw0101c 5mo ago
    >>> In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police. >> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item. > No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately. Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
    - tptacek 5mo ago
      Right. The point is that people fixate on the percentage of the budget "police" take up, but that budget is specialized. When a county, multi-muni school district, or state provides the schools, you're still paying taxes for it, they just don't show up in the same spreadsheet. You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation". But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
bpoyner 5mo ago
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
- jghn 5mo ago
  > but it comes with significant risks But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
  - sitkack 5mo ago
    And they are that high just because statistically they are in traffic for such a large amount of time.
    - avs733 5mo ago
      At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units” Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
      - delecti 5mo ago
        Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
        jghn 5mo ago
        Where I live this has also created a secondary debate. Due to union laws, when these jobs are handed off to non-police, the municipality must still pay the prevailing wage, aka what the cops were getting paid. Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it. And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.

k4rli 5mo ago

Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".

jmyeet 5mo ago

Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT. And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces. And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write. Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.

wahnfrieden 5mo ago
You say departments get to keep civil forfeiture proceeds, but the truth is individual officers often take that home. There are many cases of US police using civil forfeitures to buy themselves luxury items such as premium trucks for personal use, Super Bowl memorabilia, premium dog food for their pets at home (some actual examples). The money doesn’t just go back to police service funding.

tclancy 5mo ago

The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.

morkalork 5mo ago
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
ethagnawl 5mo ago
> Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income. Yep! Stand around for 4-5 hours on a Saturday morning (often hungover; I personally know cops) and pad that overtime and pension.

ethagnawl 5mo ago

His pension is based on that figure and he _may_ get to retire after ~27 years. From https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper: Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans: Tier 1 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service. Tier 2 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service. A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.

jabroni_salad 5mo ago
It is not just troopers, it's a lot of IL state employees. Pay being ballooned in the final few years of service is just one of the many reasons the Illinois pension system is in crisis.
- dakolli 5mo ago
  My grandpa retired as an IL police officer in his 50s and lived for 30+ more years making 6 figures from his pension and getting 3% or 5% (I forgot) adjustments every year. He probably had the most chill retirement of anybody I've ever known (outside of getting cancer twice). He was making six figures a year living on a lake near Dixon, you do not need six figures in Dixon lol

Aurornis 5mo ago

This is the pension game. When the amount of your pension is determined by your last 3 years of compensation before retirement, you do everything you can to maximize overtime in those 3 years. So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn. One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down. Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed. So instead they’re just going away for everyone.

Refreeze5224 5mo ago
It would be trivial to exclude overtime from the last 3 years. People gaming them is not why pensions are going away.
- cogman10 5mo ago
  Or to put limits on overtime. Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours. It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.

bobro 5mo ago

Police and fire fighters have tons of opportunities for overtime. they get paid absurd amounts of money to do it. It’s another thing that badly needs reform.