Beginning Salary for a Police Officer
Without police officers, the crime rate in many cities and states would exceed current trends. Although salaries of police officers are often set and controlled by officials at local, state or federal governments, beginning police officers with college law enforcement degrees and criminal justice licenses can earn higher annual salaries than police officers with only a high school diploma.
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Average Salaries
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Regardless of the state or municipality they work at, police officers across the nation earned an annual starting salary of $45,000, as of April 2011, according to Simply Hired. Officers who work in larger towns like New York and Los Angeles can take home larger paychecks; for example, police officers starting out in Los Angeles earned $50,000 a year, while new police officers in New York took home $53,000 a year. Police officers working for departments in Chicago and Philadelphia saw officers take home $49,000 and $56,000 a year, respectively.
Transit and Railroad Police
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If police officers obtain jobs patrolling bus transit stations and railroad companies, they can earn up to $46,670 a year, as of May 2008, according to the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle 50 percent of transit and railroad police officers earned between $37,640 and $57,830 a year, depending on the cities they worked in and their employers. Top earning police officers who patrolled transit and railroad stations took home more than $72,700 per year, as of May 2008.
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Patrol Officers
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Police and sheriff patrol officers earned a median annual income of $51,410, as of May 2008. If they worked for the federal government, they earned as much as $46,620 per year, according to the BLS. State and local governments paid police and sheriff patrol officers higher annual salaries than federal agencies. In fact, as of May 2008, state and local governments paid the officers $57,270 and $51,020 a year, respectively.
Job Prospects
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There were about 883,600 police officers and detectives working in America, as of May 2008. Nearly 11 percent of these law enforcement officials worked for state criminal justice agencies. Police departments in larger cities employed larger numbers of officers, while departments in smaller towns generally employed 25 or fewer police officers to perform their patrol and investigative functions. Overall, jobs for police officers are expected to grow by 10 percent around the country from 2008 through 2018.
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References
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