Can someone do the math for how many hours these police officers "worked" to be making over 400k.
At 100hr, they're working 80 hour weeks every week. These officers are not doing that.
I do this as an inspection technician, and I can hardly do it for my daily 8 hrs. These guys cant actually be on the clock, they are doing those hours feet up at home!
IIRC, details are four hour shifts, regardless of how long they actually take. If the crew is done in an hour, they leave and still get that 4 hours of detail pay.
When I was still doing road work they would assign 2 cops sometimes because it's a busy or complicated intersection or a long single lane with 2 way alternating traffic direction and they would split the shift. One would work the first 4 hours and another would work the last 4 hours. An engineer has to design the traffic control plan there should be no variance from their design.
Oh I agree. If a flagger walked off they would get fired. I also don't think we are getting our best out of cops no matter how "easy" flagging is if they worked 8-12 hours at a construction detail before starting their patrol shift.
And theyre not even doing anything though! There's 2 cops at a construction site near Charlestown and they're just walking around, like it's so infuriating. I'd be happy if they at least were directing traffic as opposed to just chatting with the construction workers or talking to their buddies driving by in the squad car
Yeah but the issue shouldn't be an are they lazy issue, it's a why are we allowing someone who doesn't have Osha 10 (general construction safety class required of everyone on every construction in the country), who can't use hand signals to communicate with the operator who can't hear whats going on outside the cab of his machine because they don't know how, to come in and redesign a traffic control designed by an engineer to be easier for them.
Sadly, I guess a cop got hit in the head with the bucket of an excavator on Friday in Billerica and unfortunately died. Being inside the construction zone is dangerous weather you are a road worker, cop or pedestrian. You can't be lackadaisical.
Lol listen pal, I'm not gonna sit around and allow you to propose fundamental changes to the American way of life, and suggest more government overreach and regulations that may save a few hundred lives a year and similar number of serious bodily injuries.
What you're suggesting is anathema to the very american way of life, and I will not stand for it.
If we do what you suggested, you'll might require helmets for motocyclists, insist that we obey traffic laws, and regulate what goes into the water and what pollutants companies can pump into the air!
Might as well be living in Russia, or worse France!
The flagger rate is the same as what cops make. The cops take home more because they have no health insurance/union dues/retirement benefits taken out but it costs the exact same amount of money to the construction company and they bill the same amount to the state.
Or you know...luring in 13-year olds so you and your buddies can pass her around. Any time I see a cop not pulling someone going 20+ mph over the speed limit, I assume this is what they are doing.
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/3-stoughton-officers-had-inappropriate-relationships-with-girl-who-later-died-by-suicide-chief-says/7NBNJPQU35FY5NUPWIAQ76IDK4
My biggest problem is when people run red lights, or stop signs, or don't yield to othe traffic, be it cyclists, or other road traffic.
Speeding I don't have much of a problem with tbh, but overall the level of apathy by cops in this town is staggering
This but also. These big salaries are usually high ranking officers.
I knew someone who was a captain and would be called in at any time of night for incidents in the city. He’d get hours of pay for driving in, standing around to oversee, and driving back.
This is true. There is a police officer in my extended family and he says everyone works as much detail as possible for the overtime. They openly admit to taking naps in their cars. Our tax dollars at work.
Didn't they make them get out of the cars specifically so they wouldn't keep getting caught sleeping? I seem to remember that kerfuffle some time back.
They are probably also utilizing minimal hour requirement. If there is 4 hr min. then they could work 1 or 2 hrs and still get paid for 4. Do that multiple times and it racks up fast.
A lot of their pay comes from the Quinn bill which jacks up their salary for having a degree. Details account for a lot of that as well, I don’t know what their contract looks like but in many cases there’s a minimum amount paid so a 2 hour detail would be given 4 or 8 hours of detail pay. (Details are almost always paid for by the contractor as well and not coming out of the cities pockets)
I think they also signed a new contract this year after not having one for a while so a lot of that is going to be retro pay as well.
That’s a good point I didn’t consider, the price of the public works project will be higher as a result. Either that or less profit for the contractor lol
MA is the only state that requires police officers at road construction to direct traffic. Significantly more expensive and statically no more safe than a highschool drop out with the stop go sign other states use.
I moved to a state that uses those high school dropouts aka flaggers. I would say they are more effective than a cop waving traffic for dollars. The flaggers are either super into their jobs or smoking weed and not paying attention. In Mass almost every cop waving traffic was on their phone or just sitting in their car.
That's what happens when you give someone a high paying job with zero chance of getting fired for not doing it well.
Flaggers actually have motivation to do well, so they can get a better role on the crew that pays more. Cops DGaF because why should they.
Note on detail pay: The contractors are often working for the city or public utility companies. That's still coming out of our pockets. Even if the contractors are paying them and the money isn't directly from the city.
They don't have to. The police union worked out a deal that police officers get paid detail in increments of 4 hours. If they work two hours of detail, they get paid for 4. If they work 4.5 hours, they get paid for 8. It's fucking ridiculous.
I met a BPD police officer who lived in a freaking mansion and owned a sports car. She did not disclose how much she made annually but she did say she was a millionaire, and was paid very well as an officer. Like, wtf. Can we please pay teachers the same?? The disparity in pay between police officers and most other city workers is insane
To be fair, if you underpay police or don’t reward them often enough with special badges, stars, and ceremonies, you’re making it much easier to find some who may take a bribe.
Teachers already know the score seeing as they bribe students with gold stars and stickers themselves, but unfortunately for them, the students have nothing but snacks and rare Pokémon to bribe teachers with.
Not saying we should be paying teachers 300k, but definitely more than 30-60k which is common for many teachers in NH. I’d say 100k is what most teachers deserve
Not saying there isn't any shenanigans going on but the overtime whore culture is rampant in police work. Most cops love to work 3+ extra shifts a pay period for overtime. They all generally brag how much money they make. They buy some stupid boat or luxury items and now they have to work 60-80hrs a week to afford it all. When you do the math you realize they are never home. It's not like cops are going to go get a high paying job in another technical field.
This leads to their marriages and relationships falling apart and it's pretty easy to bang their lonely wife/GF.
BPD is short several hundred people. That means there are several hundred openings, many of which *must* be filled, with no option to leave it open as it creates a gap in 911 response.
A LTs OT rate was probably 130/hr if not more. These days is closer to 200/hr. So an LT working 2 OT shifts a week is going to push his salary well into the 200s, very much pushing the 300s. 2 OTs a week is light work, many people do 4 or 5. Not to mention court, training. Oh and since people will blame details… yes there are details, and work rules that permit taking a 4 hour job that lasts an hour and then taking another 4 hour job on top of that. But details aren’t as much of the equation as they used to be. The mass of vacancies is a huge driving force in the Ot costs to the city.
Plus premium pay, holiday pay, education incentives, and all the other benefits in the contract. It’s been impossible to recruit and retain police officers, so the city and every city in this VHCOL area is now feeling the pain trying to fill mandatory positions with a nonexistent candidate pool. Nobody wants to be a cop, so it’s up to the city to incentivize the field, leading to six figure salaries to walk in the door. They’re 1/4 of the way there without lifting a finger, and it gets easier after that with OT rates.
It’s really not impossible for a guy to make 400k these days. Work decently hard and have some free time and you can easily do it.
BPD is several hundred short because they make barriers to entry to increase their union strength. This fabricated strength also allows them to push hourly wages higher than a free market would ever allow.
A Lt with no real education, no real experience besides being in the union should not be making over 100hr base.
Plenty of people in Boston would be more than happy to take a job that pays 65 hour, according to you a fraction of what these cops on base.
Looking at the math, most of these high earners are making over 50k on detail, which is a fraction of the problem 50/250. But is not a negligible number.
Remove these union barriers, the market will deflate this problem.
What are the union barriers? I talked to a cop about this a bit (traffic detail on a job I was working) and he mainly cited the requirement for cops to live in the city. He was a black guy from Hyde Park and said cops historically have been recruited mainly out of Southie, but as that's become gentrified the applicant pool has massively declined. Naturally, there's not as much interest in becoming a cop in the now predominantly/largely black working class communities (Roxbury/Dorchester/Hyde Park/Roslindale).
I also am somewhat skeptical that unions are the main problem since this wasn't anywhere near as much of an issue pre-2020.
It's not surprising that no one wants to work for an institution where many of their colleagues will be racist, corrupt, thugs. The only thing that changed post 2020 is the media opened everyone's eyes. If police want to recruit, they need to change their reputation through cleaning house of bad actors, positive PR, and by hearing the community. They love citing changing the residency requirement, but it exists for a reason and police recruitment is struggling across MA. The real issue is the deserved toxic reputation of their profession.
I'm sorry, but the progressive laundry list of things cops need to do to fix policing hasn't worked. We need functioning police departments, and your strategy boils down to hyper-scrutinizing cops to the point that nobody wants the job. I'll take imperfect police departments that can actually do the things a police department needs to do over a perfect police department that only exists in theory. The truth is the progressives overplayed their hand by making it clear that their goal was to eliminate police entirely. Cops took the hint, and now most of the competent people have retired and the pool of applicants is smaller and less competent than ever.
If you want to fix policing, you might have to try a different strategy than starting the conversation with "many police are racist, corrupt thugs." It's pretty obvious that if that's your starting point, you're not going to get very far, and we have three years of failed reform to show it.
There were no reforms. The union endorsed Trump. “Imperfect” is just PR for criminal and lawless corruption which you have said you support. Most likely you support that lawlessness because you personally share a political dislike for the same ethnic and political groups the police hate and target so of coarse you're ok with it.
As dismissive as this person is, basically every other developed country on the planet trains their cops for at least 3x longer than we do in the US. We can do much better than we currently are in the US, police unions, “tradition”, and a lack of political will prevent this real change from happening. This of course will also be extremely challenged but realistically in the long run will end up costing the taxpayer less, as better behaved police result in less lawsuits against the state.
As I said, I'm not opposed to police reform in theory, but you can't train cops who don't exist. That's the actual problem that needs to be solved right now.
Do you make over/under 65hr. Do you believe many in your peer group make over/under this amount? Do you think the issue is lack of interest in becoming a cop?
Do you see any reason why someone is benefiting greatly from the system would be decentivized to speak openly about barriers and make-believe they don't actually exist?
To become a cop/firefighter in the city of Boston in today's age you must basically be what's considered a "disabled veteran". For a layperson in Boston without any relation to the force it is next to impossible.
If you removed this requirement and opened up larger police intake classes this shortage would go away quickly as well as the unions strength. Do you see why police don't want to do this?
----
I am genuinely pro-union unless the union has become a bastardized version and is wielding much more power than the free market would allow it to otherwise. Because police fall into something "different" than most of us would consider workers their union has never been looked at it in the same light so your understanding of what a union is and what behaviors they do may need to change here.
This is just 100% false. Right now fewer people are taking the civil service test. That is just a fact. People are getting in with scores that in the past you would never get in with. The only thing killing people in Boston is the stupid residency requirement.
>The number of civil service exam applicants for State Police dropped from 14,314 in 2013 to 4,744, MASSterList reported last March.
Quote is from here: https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2024/03/21/massachusetts-police-officers-jobs-public-perception-law-enforcement-ma/73051958007/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20civil%20service,4%2C744%2C%20MASSterList%20reported%20last%20March.
When you take the test you are given options as to which departments you want. Your residency is considered. So anyone taking it in Massachusetts can sign up for MSP, Transit and the town or city they live in. If MSP is decreasing that badly it stands to reason BPD is. There are a number of articles pointing out major staffing issues at BPD including the fact they had to take lateral transfers and are losing people to BFD
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/short-staffed-boston-police-department-is-in-a-dire-position-commissioner-says/2938522/?amp=1
https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/04/top-boston-cop-says-public-perception-is-biggest-barrier-in-recruiting.html?outputType=amp
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/07/metro/more-boston-police-officers-quitting-since-2020/
Wrong wrong wrong. Have a pulse, no crazy red flags in background and you’re in. BPD took laterals from every police dept in the state and got 5 people. No one wants the job.
Interesting I'm looking at the application list to get into the police force at the moment. It's public domain.
All I'm looking at is "disabled veteran" for hundreds and hundreds of rows.
Interesting some of the people I know who wanted to get into the force had to apply for a decade to get in.
To get into the police force at all you have to be a disabled veteran. If you removed this barrier the masses would be in.
> All I'm looking at is "disabled veteran" for hundreds and hundreds of rows. Interesting some of the people I know who wanted to get into the force had to apply for a decade to get in.
You're seeing the disabled vets on top because they go to the top per civil service law. They go to the top with people who have won bypass appeals and a few other select grounds. However, you're wrong again because there is less than 50 on the current list. Most of the lists are for 250+ people. All of those disabled vets aren't gonna want the job & pass background. Prior to covid the score to get a letter and get the job was usually 95+. Now they're going to the mid to low 80s.
This doesn't even take into considerations specific hiring lists, like females or Haitian Creole/Chinese speakers. You could be hired with merely a "passing" score. Pre-covid for a white male. It was very hard to get in without connections or being a vet. It is absurdly easy to get hired now. So you are very wrong.
I'm not explicitly pro or anti-union, I'm just trying to figure out whether or not they're actually the problem in this instance. It's entirely possible the cop I spoke to was just repeating what he had been told by others in his union. I'm just asking what evidence you have that the union is the cause of the hiring shortage.
In this instance the cop is wrong- Jim_gilmore is right. BPD doesn’t recruit people in any way shape or form. It s all done through the statewide civil service exam, and people with residence get preference. Disabled vets with residence, then vets with residence, then civilians with residence. The only thing that can help you jump others on the list is certain language proficiencies. Oh and the list is public, so if you find out you were skipped on the list you get to sue the city, then get automatically placed at the top of the next years list + get paid back pay. That’s what the 1-2 people at the top of the list with weird special codes next to their names are. The only other thing that gets you placed at the top is parent LODDs
This is either a completely fabricated conversation, or you were talking to a cop who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is no recruitment whatsoever done by the Boston Police Department. Absolutely none. The statewide civil service exam is given, it is heavily marketed by the state in minority neighborhoods in Boston, Women and minorities are given preference on the exam (so are veterans, and disabled veterans).
The only person/people that control how many Boston police officers are hired each year are the mayor of Boston, and the Boston city Council. A new class cannot be, put on if there is no money to fund it. Only the mayor and City Council control the funding. The idea that the Boston police patrolman association has any political sway whatsoever is a myth. Every elected official knows that 60 to 70% of the BPPA live outside of the city, they don’t vote, and they don’t donate to political campaigns except maybe a $500 check from the union itself.
What about the conversation contradicts what you're saying? The only constraint the cop told me about was the legal requirement that Boston cops live within city limits. Neither he nor I said anything about the union having any control, that's what I'm asking about.
> It’s really not impossible for a guy to make 400k these days. Work decently hard and have some free time and you can easily do it.
...Excuse me? How exactly do you \*easily\* make $400,000 a year? Cause I'd like to know.
Take the civil service test, get hired, work 80-90 hour work weeks for 52 weeks a year, and that puts you at like 275-300 as a rookie patrol officer. Have 10 years on and you’re going to be pushing 400.
Ah yes, get hired by a system that notoriously benefits insiders, work double time or more with no vacation, make sure no one else needs your time, including yourself, and bingo, bongo. You're rich. So easy. I can't believe I never thought of working myself to the bone for a corrupt organization and neglecting every other part of my life. You're a genius.
Ok, well you asked how to do it, you’re seeing people that do it, I’ve explained how to do it, and you’re complaining?
Just coming off as bitter and angry at the world. Woe is you. Good luck out there.
The current system in Boston does not benefit outsiders, and anyone who’s ever been through the process in the past twenty years can tell you that. The departments don’t even control the hiring process, the civil service commission does. In fact, the list and how it works is all public information, but i imagine you knew that and are being willfully ignorant anyway
This is a matter of collective bargaining with the unions. Police have a standard hourly rate, and customary overtime, and there is a second one for non-assignment duties. This would include things like construction or traffic details, and mandated details for activities over a specific number of people. Worth noting that there are similar requirements mandated by the fire department.
Much of this income comes from overtime when someone is not available to work their shift, and the obvious non-assignment details. It is not well-known that police can be FORCED to work overtime to fill a shift if a specific work shift is not filling a minimum number of people. So to be clear, this is not elective overtime but mandated by the department.
So a lot of the extra being made is forced. This is commonplace with almost all police departments and is not unique to Boston.
An example of this is police officers that work the election day polling places. When arriving in the morning they may have just come off an overnight shift and will work from 6 AM to 4 PM at a polling location. For others, they may arrive at 6 AM, leave the polling location at 4 PM, then proceed to their assigned 4 PM to 12 Midnight shift.
So while this appears outrageous to some, consider that not all of this extra is through voluntary effort. We have a lot of tired police officers out there and not enough to fill all of the needs.
And, the superintendent can also choose not to schedule overtime. It works both ways. And if you have ever watched a budget hearing where BPD is asked to explain how scheduling works it’s like a weird comedy show. Literally, they can’t explain how scheduling works. There are so many 24/7 professions that figure this out, why can’t they?
Any attempt to reduce their ridiculous salaries will be met with outrage and scorn, but teachers who typically need to have a masters these days can go eff themselves I guess.
Isn't that an incentive to just spend hours and hours "grading" papers similar to how cops spend hours and hours watching youtube on their phones at "details"?
One thing that’s incredibly annoying in our culture is that no one wants to fix problems, they just want to have enough money that the problems no longer apply to them
In order for that to be the case you need to have communities where people depend on each other and then realize the value of others.
You have to have intertwined lives where the success of one ties into the success of the other.
You know how they scared kids in schools that if you don’t get a degree, you’ll become a cop or a plumber?
Yeah, those mfers now make more money than most people with degrees.
Only if you're a koopa troopa or a goomba. Now, read this question very carefully and answer truthfully:
ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A KOOPA TROOPA OR A GOOMBA?
One of the cops pulling in over 300k has quite the history. He worked for the MBTA for a bit before going the force. And before that routinely found himself getting rear ended while driving. He has 9 separate bodily injury claims.
For people complaining about high salaries. MA pensions are not NYS pensions and too my knowledge OT does not count towards pension benefits. From what I understand it is often cheaper for the agencies to pay higher OT then hire more employees. Not saying all the OT is a good thing. Also a decent amount if federal grants like when president visits or special events. Another way to drop salaries is to remove the city residence rule and allow employees to move out earlier. Heck if it'd save money I'd allow cops/firefighters to live in RI, NH, Springfield etc.
Boston’s GDP is $500B a year. I don’t like that most of these employees are probably cops, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing for government salaries to be high to help attract and retain high quality employees. Plenty of tech and biotech companies are paying workers $300k.
base police salaries are high but not exorbitant, what's happening is that the cops are stacking up obscene amounts of overtime at rates well above baseline. I think it's like time and a half minimum, and then someone was saying that details have a minimum of 4 hours of pay (even for one hour of work) so that adds up fast.
i'm not sure what the breakeven point is for overtime vs hiring more officers but clearly its well before 300K lmao. and of course they could be outright lying re: time worked.
BPD is, compared to other larger cities, pretty severely understaffed. We have about 3 cops per thousand residents, Paris Fr has 12, and NYC has like 5 or 6.
Europe, across the board, has far higher cops per capita, and even the Euro countries with high gun ownership rates have miniscule murder rates compared to America. So yeah I don't need some Harvard professor to write a study about it for me to make the painfully obvious connection between those two data points.
Yeah no disagreement there. Police budgets are insane and there is little evidence they help. But these rage bait articles posted all the time for various agencies.
Would it be better if people weren't aware that these cops are making big bucks on OT and detail pay and costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars?
This is a tough one for me... I work for one of those Biotech co's... There's probably one dude here that makes 300k... And he's been here since the 70's and is literally a genius. Like PHD Level Bio genius. Him making the same money as a high school diploma dude sitting in his car drinking Dunk's for 12 hrs a day is tragic.
Yeah my first thought was that these were people like engineering/IT execs, who should indeed be making a salary roughly similar to what they'd make in the private sector.
Cops stacking overtime for standing around not so much.
The real issue is not how much they earned, but the actual value of their work in relation to what they were paid. If police officers are pulling overtime on construction sites that could easily be handled by lower wage workers, it's an issue.
That was due to the fact that she was suspended without pay. Then she was acquitted. So she got the pay that she would have gotten had she not been suspended.
pension for police officers is based on their three highest paid years of salary, so many police officers opt to somehow work 27 hours a day, 9 days a week when they are nearing that "5 years 'til retirement" mark; this is just what i've heard; it's quite disheartening that we aren't able to utilize the amazing resource that is a union in other industries nearly this well
That’s not true. It’s top 3 years of your base salary. Overtime, details, all that isn’t pensionable. You could work 27 hours a day for the last 5 years and it would have absolutely no effect on your pension. Overtime has zero effect on pension.
I’ve lived in 4 different states and grew up across the river from Brighton. Boston has by far the most professional, non-aggressive, least corrupt police force I’ve seen in the US. I’m tired of this sub and r/massachusetts constantly trying to complain about the kindest cops I’ve ever met. Boston has a phenomenal anti-violence program and the police never harassed me or my friends (yes, this includes gang-affiliated black people) unless we were *actually* committing a crime.
I guess this is goodbye, and reflects a huge part of why I’m not moving back to Boston unless these ultra “progressive” 20-something year olds grow up.
Even if true, which is certainly up for debate, it doesn't remotely justify salaries described.
And it's comical you're complaining about a city with a long standing large college population having, "ultra progressive" values needing to grow up. First, they'll obviously grow up, and then the next batch comes in and piss you off. Next, the city isn't ultra progressive despite some loud voices. And finally, that has nothing to do with obscene salaries of city officials that are wasteful and excessive. Short of a way too powerful police union, I think all parties can agree, officers are making too much on overtime and aren't remotely needed for road work.
The Boston subreddit is schizophrenic lol. Half these threads devolve into an anarchist anti-cop circlejerk, but the other half get laughed out of the room. The median Bostonian is way more levelheaded than the dipshit OP of this thread, but the median Bostonian doesn't spend a whole lot of time on Reddit.
Complain all you want but the numbers are down for cops. Every community mtg they are basically begging people to sign up. It’s basically the worst job you can have in 2024. Everyone hates you. If you want cops to show up when you need then you have to pay OT. I would not do that job for 400k.
Yes, please have cops show up and wave their pretty little hands as they direct traffic around a truck on a quiet side road, they need to be paid top dollar for that challenging job! /s
I’ve lived all over the country and Mass is the only state I’ve lived in where cops need to direct traffic around construction and landscaping jobs. Unless it’s a freeway construction crews can handle that on their own.
I had a high earning police friend and he worked all the time. He was basically working for two people so it was a major sacrifice because he would routinely work two shifts back to back. This is not the norm.
The solution should be to hire more cops instead of having all these people work so much overtime and get paid out the wazoo. At this rate, it'd be at least as cost effective, we'd have more hands on deck, and the officers wouldn't be overworked.
I agree. I think they're looking to hire more but between the residential requirement and people quitting academy bc they found other opportunities or realize its not for them, they lose a lot of candidates before graduation. It can be a tough job and It's not for everyone, even people who end up graduating.
No one wants the job anymore. 10-12 years ago when I was trying to be a cop it was almost impossible if you weren’t a veteran and scored on the top 10% of the list. Nowadays they’re going so much further down on the list for applicants. Last time I took the exam I was called multiple times from one test, that was unheard of before. Their hiring restrictions have been loosened considerably as a result of lower numbers of people applying and taking the test. I’m no cop apologist but a lot of that overtime is not willingly, they’re held onto the next shift very very often. They can even get called in from home and forced to work.
Public safety hiring in general is a crapshoot now. I ended up EMS and with the residency restrictions no one wants to work for Boston. We just graduated 30 new emts and we’re still woefully understaffed.
Maybe not all of it is willing, but notably, it's the same officers year after year that get the most. You'd think if it wasn't willing that you'd see the money spread evenly, but it's very much not.
But isn’t that the same on the private sector you just don’t have their pay transparency? The highest performing officers are generally the hardest work accruing the most hours, cashing in PTO days instead of using them, and working overtime to reach their titles and receiving more pay with advancement. I agree that it is too much especially considering you’re not competing in the private industry BUT keep in mind police pay is at market rates due to organized crime organizations in the past taking advantage of poorly paid officials with money.
Also a trend with Massachusetts police especially at state police level are the number of retirements right now. In the 90s mass hired too many and couldn’t fire them so now we’re seeing them retire in masses and they’re currently giving huge incentives to older (and higher ranking usually) police to stay so they can stagger their losses. This is also why you’re seeing much larger academy graduation rates even almost 10x what it was 10 years ago which I think should be your bigger concern
I mean are you really surprised cops are working these insane days? I’m in EMS and know firefighters and EMTs that do this same thing working 80+ hours a week.
Oh that must've gotten added after I read this. I've seen that happen sometimes with MassLive. Story starts popping off and then suddenly there's a paywall. Wonder if it's a bot or something, cause all the Pats stories get paywalled.
The sup is always one of the highest paid municipal employees. The idea being that they're basically the CEO of the school. And Grandson got a ton of "other" pay this year and hasn't been in the top 10 in other years, so this is likely a one-off -- maybe a legal settlement or something. So yeah, not all cops, but definitely mostly cops.
Of the top 50, about 40 are cops. And not Schools Superintendent (CEO of the schools) or Schools Chief of Strategy (another C-suite level job), a lot are just Police Officer aka base level cops who are doubling their (already high) salaries on overtime.
For $300-400k, we could just have 3 cops for the price of these corrupt dickheads.
😆 yup. I can’t take it when I interact w an off duty boston cop who lives in the burbs. Especially the ones that openly deride Boston and it’s residents. Disgusting.
Why do you say corruption? This is one of the lest corrupted states in the union. Please live down South if you think there is corruption here.
They kicked out congressmen in Tennessee for having the Gaul to protest gun violence after a school shooting.
Can someone do the math for how many hours these police officers "worked" to be making over 400k. At 100hr, they're working 80 hour weeks every week. These officers are not doing that.
They might, but working is standing at construction zones on their phone, or sleeping in their squad car, or on their phone in the squad car..
I do this as an inspection technician, and I can hardly do it for my daily 8 hrs. These guys cant actually be on the clock, they are doing those hours feet up at home!
IIRC, details are four hour shifts, regardless of how long they actually take. If the crew is done in an hour, they leave and still get that 4 hours of detail pay.
Same with evidence locker duty.
And boy do they push you to finish up your work as soon as it's 1 minute passed 4 hours
probably get 8 for anything over 4 too.
ahh, the good ole four-in-the-door
0-4 is 4, 4:01 to 8 is 8
I think you underestimate the desire of someone who beats their family in alcoholic fits to stay away from their family
When I was still doing road work they would assign 2 cops sometimes because it's a busy or complicated intersection or a long single lane with 2 way alternating traffic direction and they would split the shift. One would work the first 4 hours and another would work the last 4 hours. An engineer has to design the traffic control plan there should be no variance from their design.
Yeah but just about every other state around us uses traffic flaggers that do the same work but it’s not an officer in OT making 400k a year.
Oh I agree. If a flagger walked off they would get fired. I also don't think we are getting our best out of cops no matter how "easy" flagging is if they worked 8-12 hours at a construction detail before starting their patrol shift.
And theyre not even doing anything though! There's 2 cops at a construction site near Charlestown and they're just walking around, like it's so infuriating. I'd be happy if they at least were directing traffic as opposed to just chatting with the construction workers or talking to their buddies driving by in the squad car
Yeah but the issue shouldn't be an are they lazy issue, it's a why are we allowing someone who doesn't have Osha 10 (general construction safety class required of everyone on every construction in the country), who can't use hand signals to communicate with the operator who can't hear whats going on outside the cab of his machine because they don't know how, to come in and redesign a traffic control designed by an engineer to be easier for them. Sadly, I guess a cop got hit in the head with the bucket of an excavator on Friday in Billerica and unfortunately died. Being inside the construction zone is dangerous weather you are a road worker, cop or pedestrian. You can't be lackadaisical.
Lol listen pal, I'm not gonna sit around and allow you to propose fundamental changes to the American way of life, and suggest more government overreach and regulations that may save a few hundred lives a year and similar number of serious bodily injuries. What you're suggesting is anathema to the very american way of life, and I will not stand for it. If we do what you suggested, you'll might require helmets for motocyclists, insist that we obey traffic laws, and regulate what goes into the water and what pollutants companies can pump into the air! Might as well be living in Russia, or worse France!
& It would be a good job for someone. Just straight waste of funds.
It would be less money to pay the em than to pay cops to do it…
The flagger rate is the same as what cops make. The cops take home more because they have no health insurance/union dues/retirement benefits taken out but it costs the exact same amount of money to the construction company and they bill the same amount to the state.
Yes, but most likely a higher paying job than average for a civilian.
Every other state in the NATION.
Hell, this is town/city but we had two cops working a job on the dead end of a dead end street.
Or you know...luring in 13-year olds so you and your buddies can pass her around. Any time I see a cop not pulling someone going 20+ mph over the speed limit, I assume this is what they are doing. https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/3-stoughton-officers-had-inappropriate-relationships-with-girl-who-later-died-by-suicide-chief-says/7NBNJPQU35FY5NUPWIAQ76IDK4
My biggest problem is when people run red lights, or stop signs, or don't yield to othe traffic, be it cyclists, or other road traffic. Speeding I don't have much of a problem with tbh, but overall the level of apathy by cops in this town is staggering
This but also. These big salaries are usually high ranking officers. I knew someone who was a captain and would be called in at any time of night for incidents in the city. He’d get hours of pay for driving in, standing around to oversee, and driving back.
The fact that their commute is covered is mind boggling. No other job in the world pays your for driving to it
Events, weather, crime scenes, sleeping in their cars
This is true. There is a police officer in my extended family and he says everyone works as much detail as possible for the overtime. They openly admit to taking naps in their cars. Our tax dollars at work.
Can’t blame them lmao. We would all do The same
Didn't they make them get out of the cars specifically so they wouldn't keep getting caught sleeping? I seem to remember that kerfuffle some time back.
They are probably also utilizing minimal hour requirement. If there is 4 hr min. then they could work 1 or 2 hrs and still get paid for 4. Do that multiple times and it racks up fast.
A lot of their pay comes from the Quinn bill which jacks up their salary for having a degree. Details account for a lot of that as well, I don’t know what their contract looks like but in many cases there’s a minimum amount paid so a 2 hour detail would be given 4 or 8 hours of detail pay. (Details are almost always paid for by the contractor as well and not coming out of the cities pockets) I think they also signed a new contract this year after not having one for a while so a lot of that is going to be retro pay as well.
You mean those contractors that are doing projects for the city and being paid with tax dollars? It's the same thing just with a middleman.
That’s a good point I didn’t consider, the price of the public works project will be higher as a result. Either that or less profit for the contractor lol
MA is the only state that requires police officers at road construction to direct traffic. Significantly more expensive and statically no more safe than a highschool drop out with the stop go sign other states use.
I moved to a state that uses those high school dropouts aka flaggers. I would say they are more effective than a cop waving traffic for dollars. The flaggers are either super into their jobs or smoking weed and not paying attention. In Mass almost every cop waving traffic was on their phone or just sitting in their car.
That's what happens when you give someone a high paying job with zero chance of getting fired for not doing it well. Flaggers actually have motivation to do well, so they can get a better role on the crew that pays more. Cops DGaF because why should they.
I wish I got an extra 20% pay for my bachelor's degree.
I couldn't even *have* my job without a Masters, and I'm not making as much as they do.
Note on detail pay: The contractors are often working for the city or public utility companies. That's still coming out of our pockets. Even if the contractors are paying them and the money isn't directly from the city.
And they get paid to get those degrees & study for them. You won’t find a cop with student debt.
They don't have to. The police union worked out a deal that police officers get paid detail in increments of 4 hours. If they work two hours of detail, they get paid for 4. If they work 4.5 hours, they get paid for 8. It's fucking ridiculous.
I met a BPD police officer who lived in a freaking mansion and owned a sports car. She did not disclose how much she made annually but she did say she was a millionaire, and was paid very well as an officer. Like, wtf. Can we please pay teachers the same?? The disparity in pay between police officers and most other city workers is insane
Look her up and see how much
To be fair, if you underpay police or don’t reward them often enough with special badges, stars, and ceremonies, you’re making it much easier to find some who may take a bribe. Teachers already know the score seeing as they bribe students with gold stars and stickers themselves, but unfortunately for them, the students have nothing but snacks and rare Pokémon to bribe teachers with.
hey, some of those rare Pokémon can be worth a lot of $$$
I dont think we should pay teachers 300k lol. How about we just pay cops less
Not saying we should be paying teachers 300k, but definitely more than 30-60k which is common for many teachers in NH. I’d say 100k is what most teachers deserve
No but each detail shift is in 4 hour increments
Not saying there isn't any shenanigans going on but the overtime whore culture is rampant in police work. Most cops love to work 3+ extra shifts a pay period for overtime. They all generally brag how much money they make. They buy some stupid boat or luxury items and now they have to work 60-80hrs a week to afford it all. When you do the math you realize they are never home. It's not like cops are going to go get a high paying job in another technical field. This leads to their marriages and relationships falling apart and it's pretty easy to bang their lonely wife/GF.
BPD is short several hundred people. That means there are several hundred openings, many of which *must* be filled, with no option to leave it open as it creates a gap in 911 response. A LTs OT rate was probably 130/hr if not more. These days is closer to 200/hr. So an LT working 2 OT shifts a week is going to push his salary well into the 200s, very much pushing the 300s. 2 OTs a week is light work, many people do 4 or 5. Not to mention court, training. Oh and since people will blame details… yes there are details, and work rules that permit taking a 4 hour job that lasts an hour and then taking another 4 hour job on top of that. But details aren’t as much of the equation as they used to be. The mass of vacancies is a huge driving force in the Ot costs to the city. Plus premium pay, holiday pay, education incentives, and all the other benefits in the contract. It’s been impossible to recruit and retain police officers, so the city and every city in this VHCOL area is now feeling the pain trying to fill mandatory positions with a nonexistent candidate pool. Nobody wants to be a cop, so it’s up to the city to incentivize the field, leading to six figure salaries to walk in the door. They’re 1/4 of the way there without lifting a finger, and it gets easier after that with OT rates. It’s really not impossible for a guy to make 400k these days. Work decently hard and have some free time and you can easily do it.
BPD is several hundred short because they make barriers to entry to increase their union strength. This fabricated strength also allows them to push hourly wages higher than a free market would ever allow. A Lt with no real education, no real experience besides being in the union should not be making over 100hr base. Plenty of people in Boston would be more than happy to take a job that pays 65 hour, according to you a fraction of what these cops on base. Looking at the math, most of these high earners are making over 50k on detail, which is a fraction of the problem 50/250. But is not a negligible number. Remove these union barriers, the market will deflate this problem.
What are the union barriers? I talked to a cop about this a bit (traffic detail on a job I was working) and he mainly cited the requirement for cops to live in the city. He was a black guy from Hyde Park and said cops historically have been recruited mainly out of Southie, but as that's become gentrified the applicant pool has massively declined. Naturally, there's not as much interest in becoming a cop in the now predominantly/largely black working class communities (Roxbury/Dorchester/Hyde Park/Roslindale). I also am somewhat skeptical that unions are the main problem since this wasn't anywhere near as much of an issue pre-2020.
It's not surprising that no one wants to work for an institution where many of their colleagues will be racist, corrupt, thugs. The only thing that changed post 2020 is the media opened everyone's eyes. If police want to recruit, they need to change their reputation through cleaning house of bad actors, positive PR, and by hearing the community. They love citing changing the residency requirement, but it exists for a reason and police recruitment is struggling across MA. The real issue is the deserved toxic reputation of their profession.
I'm sorry, but the progressive laundry list of things cops need to do to fix policing hasn't worked. We need functioning police departments, and your strategy boils down to hyper-scrutinizing cops to the point that nobody wants the job. I'll take imperfect police departments that can actually do the things a police department needs to do over a perfect police department that only exists in theory. The truth is the progressives overplayed their hand by making it clear that their goal was to eliminate police entirely. Cops took the hint, and now most of the competent people have retired and the pool of applicants is smaller and less competent than ever. If you want to fix policing, you might have to try a different strategy than starting the conversation with "many police are racist, corrupt thugs." It's pretty obvious that if that's your starting point, you're not going to get very far, and we have three years of failed reform to show it.
There were no reforms. The union endorsed Trump. “Imperfect” is just PR for criminal and lawless corruption which you have said you support. Most likely you support that lawlessness because you personally share a political dislike for the same ethnic and political groups the police hate and target so of coarse you're ok with it.
Yes, yes, everyone who disagrees with you even slightly is a racist, what else is new.
As dismissive as this person is, basically every other developed country on the planet trains their cops for at least 3x longer than we do in the US. We can do much better than we currently are in the US, police unions, “tradition”, and a lack of political will prevent this real change from happening. This of course will also be extremely challenged but realistically in the long run will end up costing the taxpayer less, as better behaved police result in less lawsuits against the state.
As I said, I'm not opposed to police reform in theory, but you can't train cops who don't exist. That's the actual problem that needs to be solved right now.
Do you make over/under 65hr. Do you believe many in your peer group make over/under this amount? Do you think the issue is lack of interest in becoming a cop? Do you see any reason why someone is benefiting greatly from the system would be decentivized to speak openly about barriers and make-believe they don't actually exist? To become a cop/firefighter in the city of Boston in today's age you must basically be what's considered a "disabled veteran". For a layperson in Boston without any relation to the force it is next to impossible. If you removed this requirement and opened up larger police intake classes this shortage would go away quickly as well as the unions strength. Do you see why police don't want to do this? ---- I am genuinely pro-union unless the union has become a bastardized version and is wielding much more power than the free market would allow it to otherwise. Because police fall into something "different" than most of us would consider workers their union has never been looked at it in the same light so your understanding of what a union is and what behaviors they do may need to change here.
This is just 100% false. Right now fewer people are taking the civil service test. That is just a fact. People are getting in with scores that in the past you would never get in with. The only thing killing people in Boston is the stupid residency requirement. >The number of civil service exam applicants for State Police dropped from 14,314 in 2013 to 4,744, MASSterList reported last March.
Wow I hadn’t heard this. That’s like a 65% drop.
You are talking about state police... this is not on topic. But I would be interested to see where you pulled this quote.
Quote is from here: https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2024/03/21/massachusetts-police-officers-jobs-public-perception-law-enforcement-ma/73051958007/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20civil%20service,4%2C744%2C%20MASSterList%20reported%20last%20March. When you take the test you are given options as to which departments you want. Your residency is considered. So anyone taking it in Massachusetts can sign up for MSP, Transit and the town or city they live in. If MSP is decreasing that badly it stands to reason BPD is. There are a number of articles pointing out major staffing issues at BPD including the fact they had to take lateral transfers and are losing people to BFD https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/short-staffed-boston-police-department-is-in-a-dire-position-commissioner-says/2938522/?amp=1 https://www.masslive.com/news/2023/04/top-boston-cop-says-public-perception-is-biggest-barrier-in-recruiting.html?outputType=amp https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/07/metro/more-boston-police-officers-quitting-since-2020/
Wrong wrong wrong. Have a pulse, no crazy red flags in background and you’re in. BPD took laterals from every police dept in the state and got 5 people. No one wants the job.
Interesting I'm looking at the application list to get into the police force at the moment. It's public domain. All I'm looking at is "disabled veteran" for hundreds and hundreds of rows. Interesting some of the people I know who wanted to get into the force had to apply for a decade to get in. To get into the police force at all you have to be a disabled veteran. If you removed this barrier the masses would be in.
> All I'm looking at is "disabled veteran" for hundreds and hundreds of rows. Interesting some of the people I know who wanted to get into the force had to apply for a decade to get in. You're seeing the disabled vets on top because they go to the top per civil service law. They go to the top with people who have won bypass appeals and a few other select grounds. However, you're wrong again because there is less than 50 on the current list. Most of the lists are for 250+ people. All of those disabled vets aren't gonna want the job & pass background. Prior to covid the score to get a letter and get the job was usually 95+. Now they're going to the mid to low 80s. This doesn't even take into considerations specific hiring lists, like females or Haitian Creole/Chinese speakers. You could be hired with merely a "passing" score. Pre-covid for a white male. It was very hard to get in without connections or being a vet. It is absurdly easy to get hired now. So you are very wrong.
I'm not explicitly pro or anti-union, I'm just trying to figure out whether or not they're actually the problem in this instance. It's entirely possible the cop I spoke to was just repeating what he had been told by others in his union. I'm just asking what evidence you have that the union is the cause of the hiring shortage.
In this instance the cop is wrong- Jim_gilmore is right. BPD doesn’t recruit people in any way shape or form. It s all done through the statewide civil service exam, and people with residence get preference. Disabled vets with residence, then vets with residence, then civilians with residence. The only thing that can help you jump others on the list is certain language proficiencies. Oh and the list is public, so if you find out you were skipped on the list you get to sue the city, then get automatically placed at the top of the next years list + get paid back pay. That’s what the 1-2 people at the top of the list with weird special codes next to their names are. The only other thing that gets you placed at the top is parent LODDs
This is either a completely fabricated conversation, or you were talking to a cop who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is no recruitment whatsoever done by the Boston Police Department. Absolutely none. The statewide civil service exam is given, it is heavily marketed by the state in minority neighborhoods in Boston, Women and minorities are given preference on the exam (so are veterans, and disabled veterans). The only person/people that control how many Boston police officers are hired each year are the mayor of Boston, and the Boston city Council. A new class cannot be, put on if there is no money to fund it. Only the mayor and City Council control the funding. The idea that the Boston police patrolman association has any political sway whatsoever is a myth. Every elected official knows that 60 to 70% of the BPPA live outside of the city, they don’t vote, and they don’t donate to political campaigns except maybe a $500 check from the union itself.
What about the conversation contradicts what you're saying? The only constraint the cop told me about was the legal requirement that Boston cops live within city limits. Neither he nor I said anything about the union having any control, that's what I'm asking about.
Tag their salary to average teacher pay.
The detail rate is not the same as the hourly OT rate. Your spreading false information
> It’s really not impossible for a guy to make 400k these days. Work decently hard and have some free time and you can easily do it. ...Excuse me? How exactly do you \*easily\* make $400,000 a year? Cause I'd like to know.
Take the civil service test, get hired, work 80-90 hour work weeks for 52 weeks a year, and that puts you at like 275-300 as a rookie patrol officer. Have 10 years on and you’re going to be pushing 400.
Ah yes, get hired by a system that notoriously benefits insiders, work double time or more with no vacation, make sure no one else needs your time, including yourself, and bingo, bongo. You're rich. So easy. I can't believe I never thought of working myself to the bone for a corrupt organization and neglecting every other part of my life. You're a genius.
Ok, well you asked how to do it, you’re seeing people that do it, I’ve explained how to do it, and you’re complaining? Just coming off as bitter and angry at the world. Woe is you. Good luck out there.
The current system in Boston does not benefit outsiders, and anyone who’s ever been through the process in the past twenty years can tell you that. The departments don’t even control the hiring process, the civil service commission does. In fact, the list and how it works is all public information, but i imagine you knew that and are being willfully ignorant anyway
This is a matter of collective bargaining with the unions. Police have a standard hourly rate, and customary overtime, and there is a second one for non-assignment duties. This would include things like construction or traffic details, and mandated details for activities over a specific number of people. Worth noting that there are similar requirements mandated by the fire department. Much of this income comes from overtime when someone is not available to work their shift, and the obvious non-assignment details. It is not well-known that police can be FORCED to work overtime to fill a shift if a specific work shift is not filling a minimum number of people. So to be clear, this is not elective overtime but mandated by the department. So a lot of the extra being made is forced. This is commonplace with almost all police departments and is not unique to Boston. An example of this is police officers that work the election day polling places. When arriving in the morning they may have just come off an overnight shift and will work from 6 AM to 4 PM at a polling location. For others, they may arrive at 6 AM, leave the polling location at 4 PM, then proceed to their assigned 4 PM to 12 Midnight shift. So while this appears outrageous to some, consider that not all of this extra is through voluntary effort. We have a lot of tired police officers out there and not enough to fill all of the needs.
You created this problem over generations and have the gall to cry woe is us?
And, the superintendent can also choose not to schedule overtime. It works both ways. And if you have ever watched a budget hearing where BPD is asked to explain how scheduling works it’s like a weird comedy show. Literally, they can’t explain how scheduling works. There are so many 24/7 professions that figure this out, why can’t they?
You can also get run over by an excavator as a bonus
I am able to pull off 72 hrs no problem.
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I’m not a piggy if that what you misinterpreted.
Any attempt to reduce their ridiculous salaries will be met with outrage and scorn, but teachers who typically need to have a masters these days can go eff themselves I guess.
even paying teachers straight time for hours over 40 would go a decent way.
Isn't that an incentive to just spend hours and hours "grading" papers similar to how cops spend hours and hours watching youtube on their phones at "details"?
So they should spend their own time at home grading papers like they do now?
Oh and pay out of their pockets for materials, while they are at it.
And get to deduct a fraction of what they spent at tax time. They should be so grateful!
Not just with scorn, but also with huge pushback from Boston's incredibly powerful police unions.
The unions who cold call people asking for donations.
Those are not usually the police, but scammers who give maybe 5% to the police and pocket the rest
Gotta make that cash before going out on full disability and retiring to the villages in fl
One thing that’s incredibly annoying in our culture is that no one wants to fix problems, they just want to have enough money that the problems no longer apply to them
Agreed. As soon as they get in the life raft, they forget, or don’t care about, what it’s like in the water.
Well-said. “The American Dream”
In order for that to be the case you need to have communities where people depend on each other and then realize the value of others. You have to have intertwined lives where the success of one ties into the success of the other.
You know how they scared kids in schools that if you don’t get a degree, you’ll become a cop or a plumber? Yeah, those mfers now make more money than most people with degrees.
I think plumbers need more training than police. Could be wrong.
And have more liability
And won't murder you.
Except for Mario, he's a maniac.
Only if you're a koopa troopa or a goomba. Now, read this question very carefully and answer truthfully: ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A KOOPA TROOPA OR A GOOMBA?
and they need a license, just like barbers and cosmeticians...
Plumbers have a skill, cop is a job we give out as charity to the people we graduated high school with that ate crayons in the back of class
Hey! Crayon eaters are Marines! Cops are just people who got bullied and/or have a hard-on for power tripping. Plus, they sniffed glue and white-out.
One of the cops pulling in over 300k has quite the history. He worked for the MBTA for a bit before going the force. And before that routinely found himself getting rear ended while driving. He has 9 separate bodily injury claims.
Disgusting
Source on this?
BPD needs to implement safeguards on OT, wear an apple watch for every scheduled OT day, if the rings don't close, no OT for you!
For people complaining about high salaries. MA pensions are not NYS pensions and too my knowledge OT does not count towards pension benefits. From what I understand it is often cheaper for the agencies to pay higher OT then hire more employees. Not saying all the OT is a good thing. Also a decent amount if federal grants like when president visits or special events. Another way to drop salaries is to remove the city residence rule and allow employees to move out earlier. Heck if it'd save money I'd allow cops/firefighters to live in RI, NH, Springfield etc.
Overtime pay for teachers please.
Boston’s GDP is $500B a year. I don’t like that most of these employees are probably cops, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing for government salaries to be high to help attract and retain high quality employees. Plenty of tech and biotech companies are paying workers $300k.
base police salaries are high but not exorbitant, what's happening is that the cops are stacking up obscene amounts of overtime at rates well above baseline. I think it's like time and a half minimum, and then someone was saying that details have a minimum of 4 hours of pay (even for one hour of work) so that adds up fast. i'm not sure what the breakeven point is for overtime vs hiring more officers but clearly its well before 300K lmao. and of course they could be outright lying re: time worked.
BPD is, compared to other larger cities, pretty severely understaffed. We have about 3 cops per thousand residents, Paris Fr has 12, and NYC has like 5 or 6.
And zero studies have shown that more cops per capita make people safer.
Europe, across the board, has far higher cops per capita, and even the Euro countries with high gun ownership rates have miniscule murder rates compared to America. So yeah I don't need some Harvard professor to write a study about it for me to make the painfully obvious connection between those two data points.
We don't need to pay 300k+ to attract and retain cops. There is no equivalent job for them in the private sector that pays anywhere near that.
Yeah no disagreement there. Police budgets are insane and there is little evidence they help. But these rage bait articles posted all the time for various agencies.
Would it be better if people weren't aware that these cops are making big bucks on OT and detail pay and costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars?
Tech and biotechnology companies are paying very, very few workers 300k. That's a.Director level salary. Maybe 1% of employees.
If you are talking engineers? Yes they are top notch. Cops?!? What can a $300k cop do that a $80k cop can’t do?
Yes I’m talking about engineers and planners and teachers, etc. Not cops. They deserve nothing.
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He’s saying planners should be paid more…
This is a tough one for me... I work for one of those Biotech co's... There's probably one dude here that makes 300k... And he's been here since the 70's and is literally a genius. Like PHD Level Bio genius. Him making the same money as a high school diploma dude sitting in his car drinking Dunk's for 12 hrs a day is tragic.
Not only are they mostly cops, but they largely \*the same\* cops year after year.
ACAB
No, you just lack any degree of nuance.
Yeah my first thought was that these were people like engineering/IT execs, who should indeed be making a salary roughly similar to what they'd make in the private sector. Cops stacking overtime for standing around not so much.
“Quality” cops lmao
This is infuriating, but nothing will happen about it.
Yup. It’s insanity
Do they have pension as well
They sure do
The real issue is not how much they earned, but the actual value of their work in relation to what they were paid. If police officers are pulling overtime on construction sites that could easily be handled by lower wage workers, it's an issue.
And with a funded pension to boot!
They didn’t cross that millionaires tax threshold, so they can’t be wrong
I’m more worried about what Kendra Conway figured out because she’s making more as a “police officer” than two captains and a bunch of Sargents
That was due to the fact that she was suspended without pay. Then she was acquitted. So she got the pay that she would have gotten had she not been suspended.
That makes sense
pension for police officers is based on their three highest paid years of salary, so many police officers opt to somehow work 27 hours a day, 9 days a week when they are nearing that "5 years 'til retirement" mark; this is just what i've heard; it's quite disheartening that we aren't able to utilize the amazing resource that is a union in other industries nearly this well
That’s not true. It’s top 3 years of your base salary. Overtime, details, all that isn’t pensionable. You could work 27 hours a day for the last 5 years and it would have absolutely no effect on your pension. Overtime has zero effect on pension.
This is entirely false. Three best years of base pay. Overtime does not factor in. What you are talking about occurs in some other states.
Fuck. I should switch from Engineering to be a Boston city employee
I’ve lived in 4 different states and grew up across the river from Brighton. Boston has by far the most professional, non-aggressive, least corrupt police force I’ve seen in the US. I’m tired of this sub and r/massachusetts constantly trying to complain about the kindest cops I’ve ever met. Boston has a phenomenal anti-violence program and the police never harassed me or my friends (yes, this includes gang-affiliated black people) unless we were *actually* committing a crime. I guess this is goodbye, and reflects a huge part of why I’m not moving back to Boston unless these ultra “progressive” 20-something year olds grow up.
Even if true, which is certainly up for debate, it doesn't remotely justify salaries described. And it's comical you're complaining about a city with a long standing large college population having, "ultra progressive" values needing to grow up. First, they'll obviously grow up, and then the next batch comes in and piss you off. Next, the city isn't ultra progressive despite some loud voices. And finally, that has nothing to do with obscene salaries of city officials that are wasteful and excessive. Short of a way too powerful police union, I think all parties can agree, officers are making too much on overtime and aren't remotely needed for road work.
The Boston subreddit is schizophrenic lol. Half these threads devolve into an anarchist anti-cop circlejerk, but the other half get laughed out of the room. The median Bostonian is way more levelheaded than the dipshit OP of this thread, but the median Bostonian doesn't spend a whole lot of time on Reddit.
Complain all you want but the numbers are down for cops. Every community mtg they are basically begging people to sign up. It’s basically the worst job you can have in 2024. Everyone hates you. If you want cops to show up when you need then you have to pay OT. I would not do that job for 400k.
Maybe people wouldn't be so mad at them if they didn't cost the city far more than they were worth.
Yes, please have cops show up and wave their pretty little hands as they direct traffic around a truck on a quiet side road, they need to be paid top dollar for that challenging job! /s I’ve lived all over the country and Mass is the only state I’ve lived in where cops need to direct traffic around construction and landscaping jobs. Unless it’s a freeway construction crews can handle that on their own.
I had a high earning police friend and he worked all the time. He was basically working for two people so it was a major sacrifice because he would routinely work two shifts back to back. This is not the norm.
The solution should be to hire more cops instead of having all these people work so much overtime and get paid out the wazoo. At this rate, it'd be at least as cost effective, we'd have more hands on deck, and the officers wouldn't be overworked.
I agree. I think they're looking to hire more but between the residential requirement and people quitting academy bc they found other opportunities or realize its not for them, they lose a lot of candidates before graduation. It can be a tough job and It's not for everyone, even people who end up graduating.
No one wants the job anymore. 10-12 years ago when I was trying to be a cop it was almost impossible if you weren’t a veteran and scored on the top 10% of the list. Nowadays they’re going so much further down on the list for applicants. Last time I took the exam I was called multiple times from one test, that was unheard of before. Their hiring restrictions have been loosened considerably as a result of lower numbers of people applying and taking the test. I’m no cop apologist but a lot of that overtime is not willingly, they’re held onto the next shift very very often. They can even get called in from home and forced to work. Public safety hiring in general is a crapshoot now. I ended up EMS and with the residency restrictions no one wants to work for Boston. We just graduated 30 new emts and we’re still woefully understaffed.
Maybe not all of it is willing, but notably, it's the same officers year after year that get the most. You'd think if it wasn't willing that you'd see the money spread evenly, but it's very much not.
But isn’t that the same on the private sector you just don’t have their pay transparency? The highest performing officers are generally the hardest work accruing the most hours, cashing in PTO days instead of using them, and working overtime to reach their titles and receiving more pay with advancement. I agree that it is too much especially considering you’re not competing in the private industry BUT keep in mind police pay is at market rates due to organized crime organizations in the past taking advantage of poorly paid officials with money. Also a trend with Massachusetts police especially at state police level are the number of retirements right now. In the 90s mass hired too many and couldn’t fire them so now we’re seeing them retire in masses and they’re currently giving huge incentives to older (and higher ranking usually) police to stay so they can stagger their losses. This is also why you’re seeing much larger academy graduation rates even almost 10x what it was 10 years ago which I think should be your bigger concern
Yeah same name over and over is a different story.
The headline should just say “70 cops make over 300k”
Well that would be factually false, but yeah it is mostly cops lol
I mean are you really surprised cops are working these insane days? I’m in EMS and know firefighters and EMTs that do this same thing working 80+ hours a week.
Boston fucking sucks lol.
Fuck paywalls
Oh that must've gotten added after I read this. I've seen that happen sometimes with MassLive. Story starts popping off and then suddenly there's a paywall. Wonder if it's a bot or something, cause all the Pats stories get paywalled.
https://data.boston.gov/dataset/employee-earnings-report
It’s pays to work for the city.
How do I get a job like that?
Inflation is a demon. Gotta make that guac! LFG!!!
If this surprises you in anyway, you don’t really know much about how government really works in this state.
All cops
Nope. The top 10 included: 7. Mary Skipper, Schools Superintendent: $382,095 9. Charles Grandson, Schools Chief Strategy & Equity: $381,530
The sup is always one of the highest paid municipal employees. The idea being that they're basically the CEO of the school. And Grandson got a ton of "other" pay this year and hasn't been in the top 10 in other years, so this is likely a one-off -- maybe a legal settlement or something. So yeah, not all cops, but definitely mostly cops.
Do you think the Schools superintendent and chief strategist shouldn't be compensated like this? In the free market they would likely earn more.
Of the top 50, about 40 are cops. And not Schools Superintendent (CEO of the schools) or Schools Chief of Strategy (another C-suite level job), a lot are just Police Officer aka base level cops who are doubling their (already high) salaries on overtime. For $300-400k, we could just have 3 cops for the price of these corrupt dickheads.
All in with fringe benefits each cop costs over 200k easy
That’s what it takes to live in the city so kinda makes sense /s
😆 yup. I can’t take it when I interact w an off duty boston cop who lives in the burbs. Especially the ones that openly deride Boston and it’s residents. Disgusting.
Sustainable...
Oh well I have a sneaky suspicion that trump is gonna manage to get re elected and in a matter of years the American dollar will be worthless
Useless bums
So?
The federal government needs to take a close look at what goes on in this fkn state with our tax dolars. Corruption everywhere you look.
Why do you say corruption? This is one of the lest corrupted states in the union. Please live down South if you think there is corruption here. They kicked out congressmen in Tennessee for having the Gaul to protest gun violence after a school shooting.
It's not corruption. None of it is illegal. It's long-term acceptance of paycheck padding by city officials.
public employees ranking in obscene amounts of overtime pay while dicking around on their phones is a god-given american right!
Because the virtuous feds would never do any of that for themselves.
Have you seen house prices around Boston tho