Most Long Island Cops Make Over 100K a Year

Newsday reports:

Seven of every eight county police officers on Long Island -- a total of 4,587 -- earned more than $100,000 in salary, overtime and other pay last year, records show.

While average county police pay was nearly $106,000 in 2002, by last year it had climbed by 30 percent to $137,858 in Nassau, and $136,985 in Suffolk for sworn officers of all ranks, according to records provided by the two county comptrollers.

Long Island workers brought home an average wage of $49,010 last year -- an increase of about 20 percent since 2002. Managers made $121,950, 19 percent more, federal statistics show. But even rank-and-file county cops made management wages, earning an average of $121,065.

Seventy percent of rank-and-file county cops in Nassau, and 94 percent in Suffolk, made more than $100,000, records show. More than one in four sworn officers, or 1,421, made more than $150,000. That pay has resulted from leapfrogging arbitrations that gave each county's police big raises to match the other's last contract.

Government workers like to vote for politicians that can pay them.