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willcipriano

>They are often paid quite well because its dangerous

2019 median pay for a police officer/detective: $65,170[0]

2019 median pay for high school teachers (often cited as underpaid): $61,660[1]

[0]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and...

[1]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil...

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That omits overtime, which is a massive component of compensation in many departments. It also ignores after-hours gigs they can get because they're cops and pensions, which not so many get anymore.

OT in Chicago: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/1/14/18343141/editorial-re... :

"In 2017, a sergeant who apparently never sleeps made $279,612, which included $158,917 in overtime pay. A detective made $285,070, including $144,926 in OT. In all, according to a Sun-Times report on Sunday, rank-and-file police officers in 2017 pulled in about 60 percent of the city’s overall overtime pay."

Please point me to all the six-figure teaching opportunities.

there are several counties in maryland where a teacher with an advanced degree and/or many years on the job can make around $100k.

http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DCAA/SS...

Same with eastern PA, Bucks County comes to mind. A friend of mine teaches middle school, has her masters degree, and makes north of 100k. The property taxes in Chester Country, Delaware County, and Bucks County definitely reflect the salaries. The schools in those areas are generally pretty good, I've heard.

The 90th percentile of "Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education" makes upwards of $99,660[0] per year.

[0]https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252031.htm

But it's not just the 90th percentile of cops that get OT. They virtually all do.

Nope I'm taking issue with this maybe in large cities NYC, Chicago, LA they do, but remember most cops aren't in those cities the majority of them are paid for by small municipal budgets and aren't having hours and hours of OT to bill. Remember the vast majority of cops in the US aren't generally violent aren't working in huge cities with thousands of people and may only have a couple dozen people on their force.

Hi, my hometown is in the Midwest and has about 70k residents. The police department budget is two-thirds the general fund and increases about six percent year over year, for the last five years.

This year they added some building code enforcement officers to evict poor people; 95k/year plus benefits.

I think these small town cops are doing just fine with their community college associates' degree in "criminal justice".

My neighbor is a cop (sergeant) in a midwest town of roughly 300K people. His base salary is $95k, and last year he earned $40k in overtime. He's been with the PD for roughly 22 years. Police start at $56k. There academy training is paid for by the city.

In contrast, teachers start out at $46k, and are required to have a BA, plus teaching credential that they pay for themselves. The maximum a teacher can earn in the city is capped at $88K, and that requires a PhD plus 24 years of experience.

If teachers got paid overtime, they'd be the highest paid employees in the nation.

> a sergeant who apparently never sleeps

Isn't that a public safety hazard? I'm not sure I'd want to trust the judgement of a sleep-deprived workaholic with a gun. Either that or if indeed his working hours are nigh super-human then maybe that sergeant isn't human at all and that salary in the budget is being embezzled.

Truckers have strict rules about how much driving they can do in a 24-hour period.

There was a scandal around here recently about some police officer billing the government for weeks where they worked for something like 27 hours a day. Which would be very unhealthy, I imagine, if there was a way to do that.

High school teachers generally require post-baccaleureate education, police officers require a high school diploma, and are the only profession I know of where employers have gone to court (and won!) to defend using IQ tests in hiring with a high score being a negative factor. The latter getting paid slightly more represents a very high premium for danger, given the difference in entry qualifications.

Being a police officer requires no qualifications and barely any training, and low intelligence is notoriously preferred [0].

Being a teacher requires at least a bachelors degree. The two jobs shouldn't even be comparable.

[0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

That figure includes detectives, who do often have a degree[0], removing them brings to total down to $63,150[1] for year round work.

[0]https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/detective/

[1]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and...

The IQ thing blew my mind, although to be honest "low IQ" is not correct since average policemen IQ is slightly above average. Suddenly I'm reminded of Brave New World.

Does any have a reference for the evidence of high intelligence make the police more likely to leave the job early? I wonder what a police force recruited only from the intelligent would be like?

The great thing about IQ tests if you are smart is it is easy to pretend to be stupid.

In Redwood City, police officers start out at $120,000 a year (plus a pension). I know mechanical engineers in the Bay Area that start out making less than that and do not get a pension.

A lot of software engineers in the Bay area make $120k, no pension, maybe stock options, maybe a 401k.

Does that include overtime, holiday pay and pensions? Using only a cop's base salary is incredibly misleading.

It never occurred to me to compare policemen to teachers. But imagine if teachers could levy fines to students and use the proceeds to pay their overtime. Or could walk to a child and steal their lunch money or whatever they have in their pockets (civil forfeiture).

Being a high school teacher is a far worse job than being a cop. Cops don’t even have to pretend they care about helping people.

It would help if 75% of the police force weren't there drawing a salary because they need to make money for the police force by harassing people for minor traffic violations.

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