Police Departments Are Offering Big Pay Raises. Does It Work?

When Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara took over the department in 2022, he said it felt like walking into a funeral home.

“People weren’t even talking to each other,” he says. “A lot of the members were openly saying to me, ‘Yeah, if someone asked me if they were thinking about being a police officer, I’d say, no, don’t come here. Everybody hates us. Everybody leaves. Go somewhere else, but not to Minneapolis.'”

After all, this is the police force where an officer killed George Floyd. O’Hara says that’s taken a toll. He estimates the department is now 40% short of staff compared to 2020.

In the US, police forces in major cities have been shrinking since 2020. In response, many are giving officers big pay raises. But many say it takes much more than money to attract people to the police and keep them there.

How many police officers are enough?

According to the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, the number of officers employed by large agencies is about 5% lower than it was four years ago.

According to O’Hara, Minneapolis residents are feeling the effects of fewer detectives and fewer officers on the streets.

“It means much longer response times for certain things,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we forget things, but it does mean we prioritize.”

According to him, officers have less time for checks and less direct contact with the community. They are now more dependent on the cars of one officer and there is fear that it will take longer to call for reinforcements.

Typically, city officials calculate the number of officers needed for a department to be fully staffed based on a variety of factors, including population numbers, crime trends and budget allocations.

But there is no magic number and the evidence is mixed on whether more officers – or more money spent on policing – predicts crime rates, researchers say.

Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, says not enough is known yet to say definitively what the best number of police officers is.

“If you talk to police chiefs and law enforcement experts, they’ll tell you that we need more officers because officers help reduce violent crime and solve other problems in communities,” Grunwald says. “On the other hand, you can talk to activists who will tell you, ‘No, we don’t need more officers. What we need are fewer officers because police officers cause a lot of social harm in communities.’”

‘Departments had to try to provide incentives.’

Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF, says the fact that large agencies are struggling to recruit and retain police officers is a “sign of the times.”

“The challenge for American policing right now is that there are more layoffs and retirements and fewer people wanting to be police officers,” he said. “So departments have had to try to incentivize.”

In at least 20 major U.S. cities, money is the top motivator. Thousands of police officers across the country have received significant pay raises since the start of 2023.

New cadets in Austin receive a $15,000 signing bonus. In Washington, D.C., the hiring bonus is $25,000.

In May, Seattle’s City Council approved a 23% increase in starting pay for its officers. In Kansas City, the 2024-25 budget included a 30% increase in police salaries.

Earlier this month, the Minneapolis City Council approved a 22 percent pay increase for officers over the next three years, costing the city an additional $9 million.

Critics in Minneapolis are angry about the increases in police pay, when the department has cost the city tens of millions of dollars in police misconduct. O’Hara says that’s exactly why they need higher pay.

“If we want quality policing, we have to pay quality wages. It’s just an extremely difficult job and there just aren’t people interested in it,” O’Hara said. “The pay, I think, isn’t the only thing, but it’s a critical part of being able to turn this around.”

Jill Snider, a retired New York City police officer, agrees.

“We chose to be police officers. People choose to be teachers, people choose to be nurses. You know what you’re getting into when you do it. But then you’re not always happy with the paycheck when you get it,” said Snider, who is also policy director at the R Street Institute, a think tank that promotes limited government.

“It would have cost a lot of money to make me stay.”

But just as there is no magic number for how many police officers a city should have, the evidence that higher salaries result in more people becoming and staying in the profession is mixed at best.

“It’s not just about money. It’s about quality of life,” Wexler says.

When the Los Angeles City Council voted last year to increase officers’ starting salaries by 13 percent, the city’s police department reported an increase in applications.

A 2024 study also found that higher salaries made some students more open to applying for the job. But it noted that nearly half of students surveyed said there was “no chance” they would apply, including many who majored in criminal justice.

Another study this year looked at burnout and psychological distress as the top reasons why officers leave. Compared to the general population, police officers are more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. They are also more likely to die by suicide.

“To be honest, a lot of times it has less to do with the money. It has more to do with the frustrations of the job,” said Colin Whittington, a former cop in Northern Virginia.

Whittington, who left the force in 2022 after seven years, says he felt unfairly treated because of the actions of other officers.

“You will be cursed at, sent nasty messages, or have notes left in your police car for an incident that happened in a faraway country, with officers I have never met, and you will be reprimanded for their actions, even though I have always held myself to high standards,” he says.

Whittington now offers career counseling and has also written a book to help police officers and other emergency workers considering making the transition from policing to another career.

Matt Rivers, a former officer in Urbana, Ill., left the force in 2017 after nine years. For him, it was the stress of the job that was creeping into his home life.

“I remember getting angry at the kids over something really small, like them dropping a spoon in the kitchen or something, and I remember thinking, ‘This doesn’t feel like me,'” he says. “It cost a pretty penny to get me to stay.”

“The goal goes beyond money.”

There are cities that are bucking the trend. According to PERF data, smaller departments have even recovered from declines and now have more officers than they did in 2020.

In Bloomington, Minnesota, a suburb of nearly 90,000 people a few miles south of Minneapolis, the department is struggling with overcrowding.

“Bloomington was definitely my first choice. I’m from here. I played sports here. I care deeply about this community,” said Officer Devon Barnum, who is 23 and has been on the job for less than a year.

On a recent afternoon patrol, he responded to call after call: a tense dispute between a mother and son. A welfare check on a woman who failed to show up for work. A traffic stop. A call to secure an apartment building.

“Every day is challenging,” Barnum says. “Of course I would say it’s an extremely stressful job, right? The things you see in this job… the average person doesn’t see them.”

He says more money couldn’t convince him to move to another police station.

“I’m not going anywhere. We have the support of our community. Our chef is great,” he says. “You don’t do this job for the money.”

To be clear, Bloomington has been raising officers’ salaries — about 3% a year in recent years. The city’s police chief, Booker Hodges, says he has no plans to raise them any more than that.

“I don’t fundamentally believe that paying these incentives works,” he says. “I want people here who are here for a purpose, because purpose goes beyond money … Purpose is going to keep people employed. Purpose is going to get you through those tough times.”

Hodges, the city’s first black police chief and former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, understands that not everyone will like the police. Instead, he strives for mutual respect, both with the community and with officers.

He says that creates a positive work environment. Otherwise, he says, understaffing, which leads to a lot of overtime, becomes a vicious circle.

“If you’re working 16 hours a day consistently, first of all, how awake are you, right? Second of all, how much quality time do you have to recharge and spend with your family, right? Are you generally your best self when you’re working that much? And the answer is no,” he says.

Hodges says you want the police who… who want to be healthy and happy, and not just for the money.