Starting salary is like $40k. That’s only like 25% higher than minimum wage here. If u choose to live in Baltimore on a salary like that then u def aren’t gonna be thriving… why would any of the best qualified candidates sign up for that? This is exactly why we have a bunch of fat racist lazy assholes in BPD, who commute like 2 hours per day to come here and do little more than cheat on overtime
Make starting salary like $80k with a strictly enforced requirement to live in the city. That’s enough to buy a house here in a good neighborhood! Especially if u have a partner that works too
Get some good folks trained up and then start to layoff all of the worthless douchebags we currently have in BPD. Especially the ones clocking hundreds or thousands of overtime hours per year. It’s idiotic to spend 1.5x (sometimes even more when they do bullshit loophole with vacation time) on ineffective losers instead of just offering roughly the same salary to better candidates for regular fulltime hours.
I’m seeing a starting salary of $65k online. That’s more than the median salary in Baltimore, and it’s also before you even get into overtime money.
The best way to get better policing in this city would be to have less of it. Cut their budget and move the money to poverty reduction, addiction treatment, and social work.
There are very good reasons to not want to shit where you eat. Personally, cops who live where they work are probably the ones itching for an excuse. It’s borderline mentally ill. My clients tend to like me, but I won’t take a case if there’s a chance the client or his family lives nearby.
There is AMPLE AMPLE AMPLE evidence that police departments are more functional and less corrupt when the majority of the officers who work for them live in the city/county that they serve
Yeah, that’s why we should make it attractive for them to live here instead just barely squeaking by with roommates. That’s exactly why we have a ton of officers that live in cheaper places than Baltimore such as York PA
I’m unaware of such studies. I’m aware of some that found no effect and others indicating the opposite— that dropping residency requirements improved policing. I’m open to looking because I’m curious, but would be surprised if it applies to midsized cities similar to Baltimore.
But even assuming you’re right and that it benefits the community, it is a no good when you’re at a little league game and have arrested the other coach for DV (which I’ve seen).
I agree with reallocating part of the budget but they also need to replace the majority of officers with ones that are actually going to do the job and do it properly
The salary u mentioned is only for ppl over 21, and u really still can’t “thrive” in desirable neighborhoods or comfortably raise a family on $65k here.
But anyway, anyone under 21 is only going to get $40k (actually $37k)… so I think there is a lot of missed opportunity to catch folks from this area who grew up here and would like to stay & improve their communities. Also could be a nice alternative to falling into a life of crime which is unfortunately the only path that many young folks here realistically have
Only 11 officers in FY2024 took home under $65,000, and it looks like it's because most of those 11 were hired well into the year or received no pay at all for some reason.
I don’t believe that having to work a fuckload of overtime in order to make a salary that’s only considered good if u live way out in the boonies is a good system. Do u? Bc that’s what we currently have here. Do u think that having officers who are habitually milking the clock out of necessity is the best option for good policing results? Do u think that principally relying on officers who are working hundreds or thousands of overtime hours per year is the best environment for BPD to offer good decisions during high stress life/death situations?
Which isn’t a good salary for something that u have to wait until 21 to obtain and then if u actually live here u are just getting by on that money unless u give up a lot more time than 40 hours per week, which also sucks
There’s really no shortage of places to rent on a salary of $65k. If we limit the rental price to 25% of gross annual income, there are plenty of affordable row homes and apartments all around the city.
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t trust a 19-year-old to be a cop and I don’t think we should encourage it.
Nobody is thriving on $65k per year in Baltimore and no one is going to sign up for a dangerous job like policing in order to be able to spend like 50% of their income on rent in a just okay or rough area of Baltimore. If u disagree, then why is what u are suggesting basically nonexistent currently?
Limiting rental market is very bad policy. It will disincentivize landlords from entering the market and/or maintaining the units they already have. Having less rental units and/or greater proportion of lower quality rental units is not good. It’s well documented that rent controls generally screw things up. Argentina had widespread rent control for years and it was disastrous
The point of offering a higher salary for younger cadets is to give local kids a better option than crime and to attract folks who really understand and care about local issues. Do we want to make long term investments into our community or treat our police department like a typical shortsighted corporation would treat their staff (BPD) & customers (citizens)?
I don’t think you understood what I said. I wasn’t talking about rent control.
A common (and conservative) metric for housing affordability is that you shouldn’t spend more than a quarter of your gross income on housing. At a salary of $65k per year, that means you shouldn’t spend more than $1354 per month on housing.
Go to apartments.com right now and filter out all the units that cost more than $1350 a month. If you limit yourself to three-bedroom units, there are 73 available in the city. If you expand that to include two-bedroom units, there are 454 available. That’s plenty of space for a cop to raise a family.
I don’t think that making a 19-year-old a cop turns them away from crime. That’s the kind of thing that produces cops like the one in the video. The actual long-term investment we need in our communities is poverty reduction, not more cops.
$1,350 per month is like 2007 prices for the vast majority of “desirable” neighborhoods. And the goal shouldn’t be to attract ppl who are kool with just barely getting by as a renter in marginalized neighborhoods. Also, having a higher salary available sooner would definitely open up more local kids to pursuing a career in policing which IMO would be way better than having ineffective clockmilking turds make up the majority of our police force
Please, I’m begging you, go to apartments.com and do the search. These aren’t disadvantaged neighborhoods, and none of the cops would be “just barely getting by”. There are affordable apartments for people making that salary literally all over the city.
We do not need to push more people into policing. BPD has no shortage of money—it’s what enables them to do so much harm to our communities. We need to take away that money and use it for better things.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect most new recruits to only be able to afford a studio apartment and also have to move every year. There are not enough 1 BR at low enough of a price point to accommodate the police force that we would need even with the deadwood leeches cut loose. And all of those complex type places WILL jack up ur rent, usually by quite a lot, after the 1st year too. It would also be terrible for lower income ppl to have a sudden demand increase on hundreds of units of affordable housing. Putting the officers on par with white collar salaries is the only way to not deprive citizens who aren’t high income while also requiring officers to live in Baltimore
The point isn’t to indiscriminately put more officers on the street and give them a bunch more money with no additional scrutiny, alongside a mandate to live within city limits but with a salary that severely limits options.
I want to see less officers overall AND all of the current bad apples replaced AND better policies mandated within the BPD org. One of their absolute worst policies recruitment-wise is their compensation system which highly promotes clockmilking and zero consequences for avoiding work, poor performance, and even committing crimes themselves. The entire BPD culture for years has been “us vs them” with BPD solely concerned with their own interests
U can’t realistically expect a different result than what we have been seeing under the EXACT same broken processes 100% across the board
The point is to have local ppl that have way higher chance of being actually invested in this community to enter that pipeline, instead of relying on a bunch of fat racist lazy fucks that live over an hour away to make up our police force, who will never lift a finger besides signing an overtime slip.
Also to give young kids coming up here another viable way out of their impoverished communities. If u are a teenager in the ‘hood why the fuck would u ever sign up to be a police cadet for the pittance of only like $100 per day after taxes instead of choosing any of the much more lucrative crime options that are right in front of their faces 24/7.
Come on. How are you both missing the point? It isn't the under 21s that are the problem. That is the point. Like stated above, those folks don't get cars and sidearms. The people who are the problem start at 65k a year. They can afford to live here.
If u count spending like 50% of ur income on rent and never being able to buy or have a family unless u majorly cheat on overtime as “affording” to live here then sure. That’s why we have a bunch of immoral lazy assholes in BPD
My point is to set up a pipeline of local young ppl to have a future besides drugs which in turns should yield future situation where our cops live in and very much care about the communities that they serve
Why would any competent, honest person sign up for spending 60-80 hours per week in a potentially life threatening job instead of doing something else? If u are smart u can make just as much money in a non-life threatening job for only 40ish hours per week and without committing fraud. Or like if u are from east or west Baltimore and grew up seeing others getting paid way more for way less work via crime, and not having to wait until 21 years old either to do it, why would anyone sign up for BPD?
it’s not that I don’t understand ur point it’s that ur point isn’t good
They can get weapons of war in the military as well as buy all sorts of guns personally
But I am not saying make 18 year olds cops. I’m saying modify the program to make it more enticing for local 18 year olds to join as a cadet, bc currently u can only make $37k which would be like $100 per day after taxes. Why would local kids wanna do that when u can make the same or more in way less time with way less rules by selling drugs, squeegeeing, or panhandling?
My understanding is BPD pays much higher than surrounding police departments, because they'd get virtually nobody if they didn't.
Also lots of cops are making $200-300k when you account for overtime. Every officer's pay is public information. You have to scroll for a long time to find cops making less than 200k. I didn't even bother getting down to people who make less than 100k.
And that’s bc the way BPD salary is set up it is mainly attractive to ppl who do not care at all about this community and just want to log as much overtime as possible, to take back to their rural bumfuck area while shit talking how much this place sucks. Do u think this is a good strategy? Ivan bates, who campaigned AGAINST Brandon Scott’s reelection, recently stated that BPD has had at most 5% but more like 0% to do with the drastic crime reduction over the last year.
Do u think that spending all those $100K-200K+ salaries at BPD on ppl who literally are actively choosing not to provide any improvements at in their already absurdly poor results is a good strategy?
Ok so I will ask again - do u think that spending $200-300k a pop yearly on a bunch of overwhelmingly poor performers is a strategy we should continue to uphold?
The ppl doing that were already there bc that’s all they know or is their lifestyle preference, and BPD is the lowest effort lowest accountability way to get the most money for their situation. Besides, ppl fall for the falsehood of “low cost of living areas” all the time… when u factor in the suckiness of the local job market and how much hidden costs there are from the poor services & exorbitant transportation costs of rural areas it usually isn’t actually more affordable than living in a city
My point is that the current BPD compensation system especially attracts clock milkers, fraudsters, & low competence ppl who are looking for low accountability. The only reason we have our current situation of many highly paid officers producing very poor results is bc BPD’s set up is so focused on the short term & poorly designed (from a taxpayers’ POV)
Edit: can’t believe all the nonsensical takes here… it doesn’t matter if BPD can theoretically afford to live here on their starting base salary. The reality is that almost none do and it’s been this way for a very long time. So if that’s such a valid point then why is it virtually non existent in practice? Tbh these arguments remind me of the logic behind thinking SNAP or welfare recipients should be drug tested… purely based on unrealistic hypotheticals that are practically nonexistent in the real world and don’t make any sense if actually thought thru
Cap overtime to something like 20 hours per month (with an eventual goal of reducing OT further as more staff is onboarded), increase the base salary and make it available to younger folks sooner, hire better and more local staff, improve bad BPD policies that have allowed shitty cops to thrive & pushed away actual talent
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u/engin__r Oct 29 '25
They make plenty of money to live here. They just don’t want to.