N.J. police salaries rank highest in nation with median pay of $90,672 (Toms River: violent crime, home)

[newjitty]

Originally Posted by tahiti

passive aggressive much?

you just participated in exactly what i described. thanks

[tahiti]

Originally Posted by babo111

I don't know what made you say I play the victim or came off huge weight on shoulder or disingenious? Nothing in my post pointed or even hinted at anything like that. I clarified how it is in our industry so bradykp if he doesn't know what its like in IT to get an idea. Don't misinterpert my post, I know our field demands 24/7 call. What I can't stand is posters like bradykp playing cards like oh 24/7 support blah blah name other jobs that do blah blah

I love working in IT and kindred souls I meet in this field. You kno geek thing.

Edit: And no I'm not talking about easy certs that everyone has to get their foot through the door. Just about every damn skill sector now has a cert everyone has and more tougher one. it's like taking NYPD police exam to get in to academy and then taking sergeants exam blah blah.

this statement comes across as "victim-ish" - What you get in my industry for being on call 24/7 is to keep your job and maybe a comp day if u do need to work through off hours

also, I said "generic you" regarding being on call 24/7, not you specifically.

the argument that "i don't get this, so neither can you" is juvenile and i'll jump on it every time. argue that we as a state are in a financial crisis, give valid ways to change it, but don't ever say "i don't have a matching 401K so you can't". wouldn't that be socialism? LOL (again, not saying this is YOUR argument).

[tahiti]

Originally Posted by newjitty

you just participated in exactly what i described. thanks

why not address me directly instead?

[newjitty]

i quoted you directly. were you expecting a handwritten card?

[NJGOAT]

Originally Posted by newjitty

doesn't matter, funds are still ultimately derived from the taxpayer..and when their pensions go up to take OT into account, those pensions are still derived from the taxpayer..

Very true that the funds are still "taxpayer", but the point was valid that the bulk of their OT is not paid from the municipal budget. They need a cop to sit at the construction site, so they are paid from that budget. The alternative is to pull a cop off the street, which some towns do. The point was that most cops don't earn OT to the level people think they do, generally the equivalent of a few hundred a month and it generally comes from covering shifts for other officers or working town events like parades.

Also, AFAIK, the pension is not based on salary + OT, but just based on last salary. So, if a retiring officer made $100k salary + $7k OT in his last year, only the $100k salary counts for the pension.

[JERSEY MAN]

Originally Posted by tahiti

seems we've moved on from teachers....any bets on who will be the next group to hate on?

Most likely firemen, then parks and recreation, forestry, and then sanitary engineers(garbagemen).

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by bradykp

i pretty much agree on 401k vs pension. it's slowly moving that way. what job in the private sector is comparable to police? certainly not private security, which is usually paid much more than police officers with comparable training.

overtime is the result of not having enough cops on staff generally. and it's often the better choice vs hiring more police officers. overtime is cheaper, unless grossly mismanaged, then having another officer on payroll.

the job doesnt have to be comparable in work done, comparable in the skills required of the person.

anyway, you say a lot of stuff that is like its written from some PR thing but isnt really based on reality. you really dont know why there is extensive overtime and you dont really know the cost of o/t vs hiring someone new. you are just making assumptions and stating them as if you have any idea what you are saying.

[CaptainNJ]

the reality is that a lot of government jobs need to be evaluated because compensation often becomes a matter of politics moreso than proper pay for the level of individual required to do the job.

[JDGraeme]

Originally Posted by TheGambler

I don't think it's stupid at all. And I've never worked in the restaurant industry - fast or slow. Besides, you missed my point, which was that police departments should be properly staffed to deal with the amount of calls that come in. If you have the calls covered, but still have a bunch of guys out running radar and handing out traffic violation summonses, your town is over-policed.

And for what it's worth, unless you were a union leader, I hope you never worked in any capacity setting public policy. Because, if so, you're part of the problem - making excuses and coming up with a host of reasons why government should be bigger and bigger. Of course, it appears you've fled New Jersey and its through-the-roof taxes, so one wonders why you argue in favor of maintaining the status quo that is making it so hard for families to survive in this state on their peasant-like, non-police salaries.

The police are even more worthless than other government agencies. In only about 1% of crimes overall and 2% of violent crimes is someone caught and convicted for the crime.
About 42% of all murders are ever solved, and that's using DoJ/FBI figures (65% arrest rate and about 65% of those convicted, and that's assuming no unreported or unknown murders)
In only 11% of reported cases of sexual assault is someone convicted (Gray-Eurom K, Seaberg DC, Wears RL: The prosecution of sexual assault cases: Correlation with forensic evidence. Ann Emerg Med 2002; 39:39-46.)
Malcolm C Young, Marc Mauer: "...ultimately, only about 2 percent of violent crimes result in a conviction." ("Tougher Laws Will Not Prevent Crime." In: _Crime_, P. Winters, ed. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1998)
Ernest van de Haag, _Fair And Certain Punishment_, McGraw Hill, New York.

There is no evidence that the police have a significant effect on the crime rate:
Kansas City preventive patrol experiment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kansas City preventive patrol experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kansas City preventive patrol experiment was a landmark experiment...by the Kansas City Police Department. It was evaluated by the Police Foundation. It was designed to test the assumption that the presence (or potential presence) of police officers in marked cars reduced the likelihood of a crime being committed.
The design took three police beats in Kansas City, and varied patrol routine in them. The first group received no routine patrols, instead the police responded only to calls from residents. The second group had the normal level of patrols, while the third had two to three times as many patrols.
Victim surveys, reported crime rates, arrest data, a survey of local businesses, attitudinal surveys, and trained observers who monitored police-citizen interaction were used to gather data.
Major findings
1. Citizens did not notice the difference when the frequency of patrols was changed.
2. Increasing or decreasing the level of patrol had no significant effect on resident and commercial burglaries, auto thefts, larcenies involving auto accessories, robberies, or vandalism-crimes.
3. The rate at which crimes were reported did not differ significantly across the experimental beats.
4. Citizen reported fear of crime was not affected by different levels of patrol.
5. Citizen satisfaction with police did not vary.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Over 30 years of criminological research has shown that the ability of police to influence crime is extremely limited. For example, neither the number of police in a community nor the style of policing appears related to the crime rate. In 1991, San Diego and Dallas had about the same ratio of police to population, yet twice as many crimes were reported in Dallas. Meanwhile, Cleveland and San Diego had comparable crime rates even though Cleveland had twice as many police officers per capita. And in 1992, the District of Columbia had both the highest homicide rate and the most metropolitan police per square foot of any city in the nation.
The most thorough study ever done, a 1981 analysis of police beats in Newark, NJ, found that foot patrols had virtually no effect on crime rates."
--Richard Moran, professor of criminology at Mount Holyoke College.
"Community Policing Strategies Do Little to Prevent Crime." In: _Crime_ P. Winters, ed. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1998.
"The New York Story: More Luck Than Policing." _Washington Post National Weekly Edition_, Feb 17-23,1997.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David H. Bayley, Ph.D. (1961) Princeton University, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York at Albany:
_Police for the Future_ Oxford University Press: New York 1994
"The police do not prevent crime (Ch 1)...Dishonest law enforcement...is by and large what we have now. It occurs when the police promise to prevent crime but actually provide something else - namely, authoritative intervention and symbolic justice." (p. 124)
A study of policing in Detroit from 1926 to 1977 found no relationship between policing and crime rate
--_What Works in Policing_ by David H. Bayley (Editor). New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 (Ch 1).

And that doesn't take into account that a large percentage of those convicted are actually innocent. See, for example, The Innocence Project
Innocence Project Northwest | UW School of Law - Clinical Law Program
_Actual Innocence_by Dwyer, Scheck, Neufeld, New York: Doubleday, 2000.
Dorothy Rabinowitz's book and articles of people falsely convicted:
injusticebusters 2003 > > Dorothy Rabinowitz *: interview with journalist who broke the Kelly Michaels case
No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
by Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal book, Free Press, NY, NY, 2003
Nor is it true that policing is a dangerous job.
Bureau Labor Statistics show that the job-related fatality rate of cops is no higher than most common occupatiions and a lot lower than many like truck drivers, garbage collectors, nad roofers.


BLS NATIONAL CENSUS OF FATAL OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES
(job-related fatalities per 100,000 workers in field averaged over last two decades)
Police & detectives 11.6
Truck drivers 26.2
Logging workers 92.4
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 92.4
Fishers and related fishing workers 86.4
Structural iron and steel workers 47.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors 43.2
Farmers and ranchers 37.5
Roofers 34.9
Electrical power-line installers and repairers 30.0
Driver/sales workers and truck drivers 27.6
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 24.2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLS
NATIONAL CENSUS OF FATAL OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES IN 2004
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
Logging workers 92.4
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 92.4
Fishers and related fishing workers 86.4
Structural iron and steel workers 47.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors 43.2

[newjitty]

Originally Posted by JDGraeme

BLS NATIONAL CENSUS OF FATAL OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES
(job-related fatalities per 100,000 workers in field averaged over last two decades)
Police & detectives 11.6
Truck drivers 26.2
Logging workers 92.4
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 92.4
Fishers and related fishing workers 86.4
Structural iron and steel workers 47.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors 43.2
Farmers and ranchers 37.5
Roofers 34.9
Electrical power-line installers and repairers 30.0
Driver/sales workers and truck drivers 27.6
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 24.2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLS
NATIONAL CENSUS OF FATAL OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES IN 2004
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
Logging workers 92.4
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 92.4
Fishers and related fishing workers 86.4
Structural iron and steel workers 47.0
Refuse and recyclable material collectors 43.2

wow just 11.6?? insane.

you'd think with all the "it's dangerous patrolling suburbia, hence your taxes should pay me in the 6 figure range and all my benefits on top of your own, as well as my COLA pensions which adjust with inflation unlike your measly 401(k)" rants you'd think that number would be higher.. nice find.