5 ms·

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

by jghn 5mo ago

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.

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

by 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.