Alpine County Sheriff's Office entry pay

What Alpine County says about itself

Having no incorporated cities within the county, the Sheriff's Office provides full service law enforcement services to the entire area.

What Alpine County does

The Alpine County Sheriff's Office is the only law enforcement agency in California's smallest county, policing roughly 1,100 square miles of the high Sierra from Markleeville with fourteen sworn officers and no incorporated city anywhere in its jurisdiction. The County prices it on a single salary schedule that puts a Deputy Sheriff Recruit class, marked non-sworn, directly beneath Deputy Sheriff I, and adds longevity steps at five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five years above the ordinary five. A separate Bear Valley Public Safety Officer series combines police and fire duties for the resort community.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. ALPINE COUNTY SALARY SCHEDULE, approved by the Board of Supervisors 09/15/2026, "Effective to April 1, 2025 for DSA" — "DSA 42 Deputy Sheriff I 31.950 5,538 5,815 6,106 6,411 6,732 7,069 7,422 7,793 8,027 8,027", the hourly rate and Step 1 of the monthly ladder. — open the source document
$66,456.00 is the County's Step 1 monthly figure, $5,538, at twelve months; the same row prints $31.950 an hour, which at 2,080 hours gives the identical figure, so the two forms agree to the cent and the annualisation is not doing any work. THE RECRUIT CLASS IS ON THE SAME SCHEDULE, DIRECTLY ABOVE, AND THE COUNTY LABELS IT FOR US: "DSA 41 Deputy Sheriff Recruit-Non-sworn 25.660 4,448 4,670 4,904 5,149 5,406". Non-sworn in the title. Barred, and it removes any doubt about which line is the officer's. Alpine advertises the two together as "Deputy Sheriff Recruit or Lateral", so both routes are live and Deputy Sheriff I is where a certified hire lands. THE STEPS ABOVE STEP 1 ARE TIME, NOT CERTIFICATION, and the column headings say so: Steps 1 to 5, then "AFTER 5 YEARS (L1)", "AFTER 10 YEARS (L2)", "AFTER 15 YEARS (L3)", "AFTER 20 YEARS (L4)", "AFTER 25 YEARS (L5)". Excluded from the figure: everything above Step 1, which runs to $8,027 a month at twenty years; Deputy Sheriff II at range 43B; Bailiff, priced identically to Deputy Sheriff II; Detective and Corporal; and the whole BEAR VALLEY PUBLIC SAFETY OFFICER series, which is a combined police-and-fire class for the ski resort community and carries its own recruit rate at range 42A. THE SCHEDULE IS SIX DAYS OLD AT THE DATE OF THIS ROW - approved 15 September 2026 - while the DSA rates inside it are dated to 1 April 2025, which is the County saying plainly that the deputies' rates have not moved since then.
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.

How this level compares

Where Alpine County sits is partly about the agency and partly about which level of policing it belongs to. The three levels do not pay the same.

How it ranks

Common questions

How much does a Alpine County Sheriff's Office officer make?

Alpine County Sheriff's Office starts a new officer on $66,456 a year, about $31.95 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 ALPINE COUNTY SALARY SCHEDULE, approved by the Board of Supervisors 09/15/2026, "Effective to April 1, 2025 for DSA" — "DSA 42 Deputy Sheriff I 31.950 5,538 5,815 6,106 6,411 6,732 7,069 7,422 7,793 8,027 8,027", the hourly rate and Step 1 of the monthly ladder..

Is that good pay for a police officer in California?

It ranks #264 of 278 agencies we have verified in California — 14 pay less, 263 pay more in the state — and #1,162 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $229 below, and against other county agencies $2,896 above.

The agencies either side of it