Home › Police pay › Ohio › Akron Police Department
Akron Police Department entry pay
What this agency pays a new officer to start, and how that compares with the rest of the country.
Entry pay onlyEvery salary here is what an officer is paid on day one, out of the academy — base pay on a 40-hour week, with no overtime, shift differential, specialty or education pay counted. Nobody stays on it.
Akron Police Department starts at $63,669 a year — about $30.61 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $3,016 below the median of the 2,288 agencies on this list, and $4,471 below the median for municipal agencies.
Cost of livingPrices in Ohio run about 7% below the national average, so this goes about as far as $68,628 would somewhere at average prices — $4,959 more than the headline figure. Most of that is rent, at 73 against a national average of 100, where goods are 94. Based on state-wide price levels, because this agency is not tied to a single metro area, from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2024. The salary above is what the employer publishes; this line is our arithmetic on it, and nothing on this site is ranked on it.
How big the department isAkron Police Department reported 450 sworn officers and 36 civilian staff to the FBI for 2025. That is 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents, over a population of 189,545.A rate is only meaningful for a city department, where the population served is the city’s own. Reporting to the FBI is voluntary, so a count can reflect a partial return as easily as a small agency, and the FBI asks that agencies not be compared on staffing. Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, Full-time Law Enforcement Employees, 2025.
What Akron says about itself
Our Mission is to serve the community of Akron in a collaborative effort to enhance the quality of life through crime prevention, enforcement of laws, promotion of safety and reduction of fear.
What Akron does
The Akron Police Department is the municipal force for Ohio's fifth city and is organised into four subdivisions, each under its own deputy chief: Uniform, Investigative, Services, and a Community Relations and Crime Prevention subdivision added when the department created a fourth deputy chief post to put more weight behind community engagement. That newest subdivision gathers the information desk, community relations, backgrounds and recruitment, the Community Engagement Team, the public information office, court liaison and building security, school resource officers, and the Office of Professional Standards and Accountability. Patrol works through zone commands. The department publishes a Transparency Hub carrying its operations, practices and interaction data, along with its procedures and its internal professional standards manual, and runs a gun violence reduction unit under the Project Safe Neighborhoods framework.
Shifts at Akron
10 Hour shifts with every other weekend off.
The agency publishes the shift length but not a named cycle. These are the 10-hour rotations departments most often build on it: 4/10.
Ten-hour shifts with alternate weekends off is a fortnightly promise, not a weekly one - the weekend you get back moves, and it is the first thing anyone at home wants to know. BlueShifts draws the pattern you are actually given and marks which weekends are yours months ahead.
Where the figure comes from
Checked 27 August 2026. Police Officer starting pay of $30.61 an hour on 2,080 hours, City of Akron police careers page. — open the source document
STARTING PAY $30.61 AN HOUR THROUGH A 26-WEEK PAID IN-HOUSE ACADEMY, $63,668.80 on 2,080 hours, with a $2,000 sign-on bonus. TOP POLICE OFFICER PAY $76,607.29, published on the same page, so the whole officer range is visible without a promotion. A CITY NEWS RELEASE OF 28 MARCH 2025 GAVE $31.53 AN HOUR for the cadet class whose applications closed that May; the live careers page gives $30.61, and the live page is the figure carried here on the same reasoning applied to Buffalo - an announcement tied to a closed application window is not a current rate. Also published: a $1,225 uniform allowance a year, 80 hours of vacation from the start, 15 paid holidays, paid parental leave, and FREE STARK STATE TUITION under the city's workforce development policy. Entry is open from 20.5 to 45 years of age on the closing date, with a high school diploma or GED, and officers must be able to hold OPOTA peace officer certification.
Entry-level base salary only. Overtime, bonuses, education incentives, shift
differentials, locality pay and lateral rates are excluded, so most officers earn more
than this.
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save your shift schedule once and BlueShifts fills the rest of the year in.
How this level compares
Where Akron sits is partly about the agency and partly about which level of policing it belongs to. The three levels do not pay the same.
| Level | Lowest | Median | Highest | Agencies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Municipal | $33,280 | $68,140 | $163,619 | 1549 |
| County | $35,000 | $63,565 | $132,263 | 516 |
| Special jurisdiction | $31,200 | $60,204 | $107,954 | 71 |
| State | $33,994 | $65,166 | $110,916 | 145 |
| Federal | $70,477 | $73,502 | $86,530 | 5 |
| Territory | $16,640 | $28,236 | $43,354 | 9 |
Federal agencies pay the most to start
The middle federal agency starts at $73,502 — about $5,400 more than the middle municipal agency and about $9,900 more than the middle county agency and about $13,300 more than the middle special jurisdiction agency and about $8,300 more than the middle state agency and about $45,300 more than the middle territory agency. Akron starts at $63,669, so $4,471 below the municipal middle.
How it ranks
Common questions
How much does a Akron Police Department officer make?
Akron Police Department starts a new officer on $63,669 a year, about $30.61 an hour on a 2,080-hour year. That is base salary before overtime, bonuses, education incentives, shift differentials and locality pay, so most serving officers earn more. The figure comes from Police Officer starting pay of $30.61 an hour on 2,080 hours, City of Akron police careers page..
Is that good pay for a police officer in Ohio?
It ranks #43 of 53 agencies we have verified in Ohio — 10 pay less, 42 pay more in the state — and #1,337 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $3,016 below, and against other municipal agencies $4,471 below.
What shifts do Akron Police Department officers work?
10 Hour shifts with every other weekend off. That is the agency's own published wording; the pattern is drawn on this page.
Compare with another department
Put Akron Police Department side by side with any other agency on the site — the two salaries, what each is worth once local prices are counted, and which comes out ahead.
The agencies either side of it
Other agencies in OH
| # | Agency | Level | Sworn # | Entry pay | Vs Akron | National |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Westlake Police Department | Municipal | — | $88,712 | +$25,043 | #291 |
| 2 | University Heights Police Department | Municipal | 29 | $82,259 | +$18,590 | #421 |
| 3 | Powell Police Department | Municipal | 21 | $81,426 | +$17,757 | #444 |
| 4 | Springfield Police Department | Municipal | 123 | $80,764 | +$17,095 | #468 |
| 5 | Stow Police Department | Municipal | 45 | $80,288 | +$16,619 | #486 |
| 6 | Cincinnati Police Department | Municipal | 971 | $79,359 | +$15,691 | #513 |
| 7 | Hilliard Police Department | Municipal | 63 | $79,248 | +$15,579 | #515 |
| 8 | Kettering Police Department | Municipal | 79 | $79,227 | +$15,558 | #517 |
| 9 | Canfield Police Department | Municipal | 21 | $79,002 | +$15,333 | #522 |
| 10 | Mentor Police Department | Municipal | — | $77,849 | +$14,180 | #563 |
| 11 | Dayton Police Department | Municipal | 342 | $77,411 | +$13,742 | #575 |
| 12 | West Chester Township Police Department | Municipal | 92 | $77,027 | +$13,358 | #584 |
Base pay is only part of the year
Whatever the figure above, the rotation is what decides your year — which weekends you lose, when the changeovers land, what you can plan around. Save yours once and BlueShifts shows it a year ahead, with the off-duty jobs you take and what each one paid.
Scan to install
