Indeed is reporting that the average starting salary is like $50k, and the average in the US is $60k. Policing also isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous jobs. That link is also talking base salary, but even in the situation you’re describing, you’re talking overtime in the $20k+ range.
The problem with bad cops comes down to two main things:
well, it’s really just the first one, but keeping that in mind, the system is setup in a way that the only outcome can be a corrupt police force. Legal civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, overly powered police unions (the only time I’ll complain about unions), deliberately low standards in hiring, deliberately not require the police to even know the law they’re supposed to enforce and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting. Police aren’t there for us, they’re there for capital.
Finally, police funding and increasing the number of cops has almost nothing to do with crime rates which is what calls to defund the police actually mean. Police are basically systematized violence where pretty much the only tools in their literal and metaphorical toolbelt are increasing levels of violence. The call to defund the police is more about funding the things that actually reduce crime – better education, economic outcomes, and people trained to deal with the types of issues that police are probably less qualified to deal with than the average retail worker like mental health crises. Advocates for defunding the police are instead advocating for spending to be allocated to people who are qualified to actually deal with these problems.
Anyway, tl;dr – if we offer cops better pay and better hours, we’re just going to be getting more expensive cops stealing our shit, incarcerating us at one of the highest rates in the world, and murdering people with less consequence than the cashier at Target gets for not upselling credit cards enough because while plenty of good people* become cops, policing as an institution in the US is corrupt.
* “Good” people and “bad” people are mostly a result of the systems and culture they exist in and very few are truly “good” or “bad.”
Just for clarities sake, there is one big sticking point here that I want to make clear. Pay, hours, etc cannot incentivize a fix to this system because it’s not about attracting good people or bad people or dumb people or smart people, it’s about the system. If cops made $120k starting with 5 weeks of vacation and only had to work 32 hour weeks, we would not see significantly different outcomes because it is simply the institution and systems and culture that are the problem. Honestly, that would probably only increase the problem since it just further removes police from the normal humans they’re policing. Probably also instead of attracting people that are mission driven, it attracts mercenaries, basically. This is how we get billionaires; they’re mostly not evil, just so far removed reality and doing one of the most human things possible – rationalizing our own behavior for our benefit.
The idea that there are purely good or purely bad people is mostly a myth. There are people that we could objectively define as purely good or purely evil, but they’re the outlier. Nazis for example. The truth is even scarier than the myth. In most of our depictions, nazis are homogenous blob of pure evil. While nazi’s certainly had some purely evil people, the truth is the vast majority were just average people exposed to a system that creates an evil outcome. Of course, there were also purely good people in that as well, but the system often led those people their graves, or they had to be the right combination of good/smart to resist and stay alive. But most people just participated or closed their eyes and went about their day.
The problem is not the people, it is the system and pay and benefits aren’t going to fix it.
Now all that said, the Uvalde cops clearly over-index on little tiny dick bitch ass cowards and kinda blow a hole in my thesis. I wouldn’t call them evil, but just speaking statistically you would think even one of them out of the scores of cops there would have had even an underdeveloped backbone. The cowardice shown here should be something that lives into myth and legend and the way people say “Benedict Arnold” to mean “traitor” they should say “Uvalde cop” to mean “coward.”
It doesn’t help that cops are expected to do so much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an excuse to do fucked up things to people, but it is probably a contributing factor. Like mental health for being a police officer can’t be good. This is part of the reason so many people want to defund the police; it isn’t about giving them less money, it’s about moving funding to programs that are more focused so police can focus on their job and not try to be a mental health counselor as well.
There’s lots of places in the US where cops are paid significantly above median wages for the region as their base pay and then they’re also eligible to earn time and a half in nearly as much overtime as they could possibly want on top of being allowed to work extra side jobs in uniform for third parties.
They’re also typically one of the largest parts of most major cities’ budgets.
Fuck cops. They are overpaid if anything for what little they fucking do.
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“Defund the police” doesn’t mean salaries. It means stop outfitting them with weapons of war.
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Indeed is reporting that the average starting salary is like $50k, and the average in the US is $60k. Policing also isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous jobs. That link is also talking base salary, but even in the situation you’re describing, you’re talking overtime in the $20k+ range.
The problem with bad cops comes down to two main things:
Finally, police funding and increasing the number of cops has almost nothing to do with crime rates which is what calls to defund the police actually mean. Police are basically systematized violence where pretty much the only tools in their literal and metaphorical toolbelt are increasing levels of violence. The call to defund the police is more about funding the things that actually reduce crime – better education, economic outcomes, and people trained to deal with the types of issues that police are probably less qualified to deal with than the average retail worker like mental health crises. Advocates for defunding the police are instead advocating for spending to be allocated to people who are qualified to actually deal with these problems.
Anyway, tl;dr – if we offer cops better pay and better hours, we’re just going to be getting more expensive cops stealing our shit, incarcerating us at one of the highest rates in the world, and murdering people with less consequence than the cashier at Target gets for not upselling credit cards enough because while plenty of good people* become cops, policing as an institution in the US is corrupt.
* “Good” people and “bad” people are mostly a result of the systems and culture they exist in and very few are truly “good” or “bad.”
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Just for clarities sake, there is one big sticking point here that I want to make clear. Pay, hours, etc cannot incentivize a fix to this system because it’s not about attracting good people or bad people or dumb people or smart people, it’s about the system. If cops made $120k starting with 5 weeks of vacation and only had to work 32 hour weeks, we would not see significantly different outcomes because it is simply the institution and systems and culture that are the problem. Honestly, that would probably only increase the problem since it just further removes police from the normal humans they’re policing. Probably also instead of attracting people that are mission driven, it attracts mercenaries, basically. This is how we get billionaires; they’re mostly not evil, just so far removed reality and doing one of the most human things possible – rationalizing our own behavior for our benefit.
The idea that there are purely good or purely bad people is mostly a myth. There are people that we could objectively define as purely good or purely evil, but they’re the outlier. Nazis for example. The truth is even scarier than the myth. In most of our depictions, nazis are homogenous blob of pure evil. While nazi’s certainly had some purely evil people, the truth is the vast majority were just average people exposed to a system that creates an evil outcome. Of course, there were also purely good people in that as well, but the system often led those people their graves, or they had to be the right combination of good/smart to resist and stay alive. But most people just participated or closed their eyes and went about their day.
The problem is not the people, it is the system and pay and benefits aren’t going to fix it.
Now all that said, the Uvalde cops clearly over-index on little tiny dick bitch ass cowards and kinda blow a hole in my thesis. I wouldn’t call them evil, but just speaking statistically you would think even one of them out of the scores of cops there would have had even an underdeveloped backbone. The cowardice shown here should be something that lives into myth and legend and the way people say “Benedict Arnold” to mean “traitor” they should say “Uvalde cop” to mean “coward.”
There is no danger!!!
They aren’t even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US. Pizza delivery is more dangerous.
Please stop with the copaganda talking point about danger.
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It doesn’t help that cops are expected to do so much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an excuse to do fucked up things to people, but it is probably a contributing factor. Like mental health for being a police officer can’t be good. This is part of the reason so many people want to defund the police; it isn’t about giving them less money, it’s about moving funding to programs that are more focused so police can focus on their job and not try to be a mental health counselor as well.
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Pay is definitely not the problem and there’s plenty of places in the US where I’d argue they’re overpaid, in fact.
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There’s lots of places in the US where cops are paid significantly above median wages for the region as their base pay and then they’re also eligible to earn time and a half in nearly as much overtime as they could possibly want on top of being allowed to work extra side jobs in uniform for third parties.
They’re also typically one of the largest parts of most major cities’ budgets.
Fuck cops. They are overpaid if anything for what little they fucking do.
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I disagree that the overtime is expected. It’s a benefit available to them that isn’t available to the general public.
I also strongly disagree about the relative “danger” of their job.
My dad was a firefighter for 30 years. He got paid less than most cops and faced significantly more danger on every shift than most cops.
Fuck the police. They were shitty since their inception.
Full stop
The pay only sucks at the start, then you learn how to exploit overtime and pick up detail shifts.
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