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one area where i think the police can save money (and this is the root of a lot of nj issues) is consolidation. There are many small communities that are all clustered together and each of them maintains their own complete police forces. There is no reason why we couldn't see more consolidation among police departments as well as various other municipal forces.
I work in IT and I know of plenty jobs that's on call 24/7 just in my industry sector alone. So that claim is laughable. I should also mention that working off hour for my industry is not paid because these jobs are salary based.
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. Please note that just like police officers these jobs have scheduled hours and working off hours to do what they need to do. Except we don't get paid for working off hours.
Here are the jobs to be specific. Please note this is off top of my head so if I really tried I can make this list very long.
- Network engineers
- Developers
- QA Testers
- Sys Admins
- Project Manager
I'm not saying officer job is so great but do nothing so let's **** on them. I appreciate the services officers provide, crap they need to take from both civilians and gov't administrators. What I am saying please do not try to justify how difficult or demanding it is to be police officers to defend the salaries officers are being paid.
Bottom-line is officers in suburbs are paid very well while risk is there it is not great as of officers in urban environments. Is that so hard to admit?
Edit: As for salaries, if I match experience and skill required for jobs I listed for IT. Salaries for them will be similar to officers...except certs and skills required to make that kind of salary range in IT will be pretty demanding.
i think the demans of a police officer's job are more demanding than an IT office job. I happen to share your general profession area. While I am also in the same position, if something needs to be done, i need to stay late and do it. being on call for a programming malfunction is a bit different than being on call as a utility worker or public safety worker though. you remote connect, fix the problem, and go back to bed. of course, there are larger issues to deal with sometimes as well. but it's not the same as getting called out to a crime scene etc.
now, the suburban vs urban debate - of course a cop should get paid based on the work load and risk, and urban areas have more risk. it could be argued (though i don't necessarily make this argument) that a suburban area has less because of the highly skilled police officers and if urban areas took the same approach, they could be more effective. it's a chicken or the egg argument. do the better compensated officers keep crime out? that's a debate that obviously depends on the town, but it can be made. urban governments just don't spend as much on police officers. doesn't mean that they shouldn't be paid more, but if a city is not spending it, they're not spending it.
i dunno - it's obvious some towns have some inflated salaries, but there's more to it than just looking at stats. do towns with median salaries of $120k have mostly 15 yr veterans? maybe 5 years from now they all retire and that town has a $80k median salary because they have all young officers?
you'd think you'd have a balance of experience levels. point is - there's more behind the numbers than just what we see in the news article.
as someone rightly pointed out - inflated benefits need to be added into the equation. i wasn't going down that road because the discussion was solely about salaries to begin with, but it's a valid point.
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.
you guys are misinterpreting my comments. i'm not playing a card about 24/7. i'm saying - people that know people in 24/7 on call type jobs know it's demanding. sure, IT personnel are on call 24/7, and it's demanding to a point. but it's still not equivilant to an electric utility worker being called in to work a snowstorm power outage for 6 straight days, 18 hours per day.
now the general "overtime" of a police officer - court, documentation, etc - is not really the same as the "on call" work.
i'm saying though, ANY 24/7 on call position is demanding. and IT personnel who are on call are paid quite well compared to someone who's working a 9-5 IT job (though few of those exist). you're compensated one way for being on call, and others are compensated by base + overtime. it's no different.
I'm not one to pooh-pooh on what cops make, but just like every other public employee they will most likely be asked to make sacrifices in the face of declining municipal revenue. The difference here is that the police union actually tends to be reasonable and I think the cops would vote a salary freeze to preserve jobs and maybe even take a cut if it would mean everyone got to keep their job. So, while I don't begrudge them what they make (some are definetily overpaid, but that's not their fault) they shouldn't be immune to cut backs. Same with teachers, I never once complained they made too much, just think they should have been willing to share in the sacrifice.
Also, when it comes to overtime, the vast majority of OT pay that the officers receive come from other funds. When they are working at a constuction site, they are being paid from the budget for the project, not the municipal budget. Most of their OT comes from the town comes from covering for sick and vacationing people and working town events.
Also, when it comes to overtime, the vast majority of OT pay that the officers receive come from other funds. When they are working at a constuction site, they are being paid from the budget for the project, not the municipal budget. Most of their OT comes from the town comes from covering for sick and vacationing people and working town events.
In which case it comes from the contractor, who passes on the cost to the people who contracted him. Either way, the public ends up paying. And that's why the police lobbied for those laws mandating having cops present at utility repair sites and construction sites. They get paid for it one way or another.
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.
yes NJGOAT. if the people discussing this read the entire story, they'd see that the average OT for officers in towns was like $4,000/yr or a little more. people are making it sound like cops are making $100,000 plus another $50,000 in OT the way they are ridiculing it.
and OT often exists because budget doesn't allow hiring another officer. What's cheaper, hiring an officer at $60,000 plus benies, or paying your current 20 officers $4,000/yr in OT each? lol
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.
i actually have done more than a few HR audits, so i do know, generally speaking, what an employee costs vs what overtime costs. i also worked in a consulting environment, where companies would hire us as consultants, because we were cheaper than hiring full time employees + benefits. this is pretty much widely known. yes, it's an assumption in this case. but it's easy math to determine if it's cheaper to pay a couple dozen cops some overtime instead of hiring 2-3 new officers and having benefits and pension obligations.
For what it's worth, as a mid-20s male who's 6'3, 200lbs, generally athletic, hates being stuck in an office and loves to wear my hair very short, I'd be happy to be a police officer in my area. And hell, I'd do it for $50K. I like the idea so much where I researched the whole thing and have been considering applying.
However, our very screwed-up state system of getting jobs in LE has such an insane veterans preference requirement that it's nearly impossible (in part, because these jobs ARE so high-paying and in demand) for your average law abiding, tax-paying, smart, decent citizen to get a job in LE. On top of that, if you don't happen to live in a town that uses the state's CSC system for hiring officers, your name will go on a county list that is almost worthless (unless your Sheriff's Dept. is hiring, which would bring you back to the preference issue anyway). So that leaves you to apply for what's known as a "Chief's Test" in any number of towns, which will be flooded with applicants from all over the state. For example, Toms River PD had (don't quote me, but I'm in the right neighborhood) 600 guys apply to take the test for a potential 18 openings.
Believe me, there are TONS of people in this state who would love to be a police officer but through a number of circumstances feel they have no shot.
i have a friend going through the process right now for state police. pass a physical test, pass a written test, and enter academy. they have a lot of officers up for retirement in the coming years. so it's quite easy actually.
cities aren't hiring a lot of officers right now, so it's going to be tougher to go that route, but you can go through the process if you'd like and get on the list. PA is different, and yes, people do favors, but i have a lot of friends from back home that went through the channels and eventually got selected.
It's also the law. If we actually had people who heeded warnings in construction zones, road work etc etc they wouldn't be needed
exactly!
if people followed 75% of the laws we have, they wouldn't be needed. lol. that's the whole problem. if people just did some common sense things, many laws we've come up with wouldn't even exist!
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