This is the pension game. When the amount of your pension is determined by your last 3 years of compensation before retirement, you do everything you can to maximize overtime in those 3 years.
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours.
It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.
No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
>>> In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.
>> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
> No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way.
Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately.
Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
Right. The point is that people fixate on the percentage of the budget "police" take up, but that budget is specialized. When a county, multi-muni school district, or state provides the schools, you're still paying taxes for it, they just don't show up in the same spreadsheet.
You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation".
But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
There are lots of ways to quantify or record "risk"?
Risk of death?
Risk of injury? How much injury? I've had paper cuts recorded as workplace injuries, I've also had to get stitches after bleeding profusely, are both equally recorded as risk incidents?
What about the risk of getting shot? Just the risk, will I get shot today, has a physiological impact, is that risk recorded?
What about the risk of moral injury? The potential that you're hurt in your soul, because you failed, and someone got injured or hurt?
What about the risk of infectious disease or transmission from needles, blades or bodily fluids?
Police may be a safer job than forestry from a death risk, but there are many risks for police.
I am not sure why some people seem to hate the police so much that downplaying the risks police face. I used to sell drugs and the police were my adversary, but I don't hate them as much as people who have never been arrested. It's very strange. Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
> Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
For one thing it doesn't happen that much in the first place. In 2024 the rate was 229.4 per 100k in the USA [1] And yet this always gets cited as some reason to keep the police around. These sorts of threats that people cite are exceedingly rare, and yet used to fuel a vision of the world that's one of requiring constantly vigilance and paranoia.
Also, my mom's house was burglarized, unknown if they had guns. After that, she got a home alarm.
My mom moved do a different part of the city, and her home was broken into at night while she was asleep. The home invaders continued as the home alarm was going off, and only stopped when a group of male neighbors started shouting at them. Presumably the criminals had weapons to conduct their home invasion.
In Toronto if you call the police because of armed home invasion, you’re connected to an AI that decides whether to escalate to a human operator. But if you do get connected they’re not going to show up anytime soon.
The advice given by Toronto police is to leave your car keys out by your front door so that armed home invaders can get what they came for with ease. The police don’t show up to protect you and your property. They also don’t want to risk their own safety around armed invaders.
It is really high, but it's high because cops interact with traffic a lot, not because of criminals or guns or whatever. Real life isn't CSI Miami, cops are mostly sitting in cars. You'll notice crossing guard is much higher up the list, for the same reason.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession. EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095469
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans:
Tier 1
This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service.
Tier 2
This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service.
A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
It is not just troopers, it's a lot of IL state employees. Pay being ballooned in the final few years of service is just one of the many reasons the Illinois pension system is in crisis.
My grandpa retired as an IL police officer in his 50s and lived for 30+ more years making 6 figures from his pension and getting 3% or 5% (I forgot) adjustments every year. He probably had the most chill retirement of anybody I've ever known (outside of getting cancer twice). He was making six figures a year living on a lake near Dixon, you do not need six figures in Dixon lol
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
You say departments get to keep civil forfeiture proceeds, but the truth is individual officers often take that home. There are many cases of US police using civil forfeitures to buy themselves luxury items such as premium trucks for personal use, Super Bowl memorabilia, premium dog food for their pets at home (some actual examples). The money doesn’t just go back to police service funding.
Police and fire fighters have tons of opportunities for overtime. they get paid absurd amounts of money to do it. It’s another thing that badly needs reform.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
So instead they’re just going away for everyone.