St Paul Police paid more than you think

Federation petition drive by the Saint Paul Police Offices.

It seems the fine men and women in blue feel they are not soaking the tax payers enough with their high salaries and now they are demanding more. Who doesn't feel for the poor beat Officer? After all they are our servants here to protect and serve us poor helpless citizens. Why not make sure they are paid well? I sure want them paid well. I want the Police to show up when I call them. Well, we have made sure they are paid well. Very well in fact.

Based on the Public Employee records St. Paul Police Officers make an average of approximately $75,000 per year. Yet they want more.

They want their pay to be the 5th highest for police officers in the region as compared to other cities in the region. So St. Paul Police Officers are going to be petitioning for signatures on election day at polling places this election day.

The thought of Police at polling places has the Democrats scared that it will deter voters. I say it will only deter illegal voters at best. So let them petition. But do not be fooled into signing their petition. It's your paycheck they are after.

www.twincities.com/allheadlines/ci_10866213

www.topix.net/forum/source/twincities-pioneer-press/TC0Q4GT5MCPV0GQ5R#lastPos

I spent my lunch hour grabbing the salaries for police officers from the Pioneer Press Extras section that has a searchable database of public employee records. I put the data in a spreadsheet and ran basic stats and St. Paul spends about $20 Million on Police Officers and about $69k on average. This does not including higher ranker officers.

When I got home this evening I researched the data more and found I had missed Sergeants and Commanders. (I did leave out the Chief and Assistant Chiefs as those are appointed positions.) Now the average salary is above $75,000 per year and the total payroll jumps to more than $33 million dollars. And this does not include their benefits package and retirement package.

Also as I dug through the records I found many that were incomplete, inaccurate or misleading. There is no way one Sergeant is making $1,823/year. I do not know whether he only worked one or two weeks out of the year or someone mistyped his info. So I left that obviously wrong piece of data OUT of my calculations. Had I left in that one really low number it would have reduced the average salary to about $38k per year which is completely incorrect and misleading. I wonder if the Police are using the incorrect data to justify their pay raise demands?

In 2007 the lowest entry level Officer made over 37k and was one of only 2 officers made less than $51k. And only 5 made less than $60k. We all started out at entry level. Most of these guys/gals make more than I do as a professional programmer. I also started out at a low wage. That's life. As they gain experience and additional 'payable' skills their salary will increase. It the payable skills that are not mentioned here. The base pay for an officer may be near the $47k they are talking about, but almost all of the Officers had a payable skill added to their title which means more money. So it seems that incentive pay is working.

So who needs a pay raise? You do! Remember a pay raise for ANY Government employee means a PAY CUT for YOU!