Birmingham Police Department entry pay

What Birmingham says about itself

Our mission is to provide the highest quality police services to impact crime, build community trust, and improve the quality of life for all. The Birmingham Police Department strives to provide a safe and sustainable community that fosters relationships, trust, and reduced crime - provided by the highest level of police services.

What Birmingham does

The Birmingham Police Department polices the largest municipal government in Alabama, in a city founded on 19 December 1871. It is organised into four bureaus - Administrative Operations, Field Operations, Investigative and Special Operations - and patrols through geographic precincts, the West Precinct alone covering about 65 square miles and 37 neighbourhoods, and the East Precinct about 50 square miles and 81,000 residents with a further substation at Fred Shuttlesworth International Airport. The department runs a digital forensics unit and an unmanned aircraft unit flying certified pilots for critical incident response, search and rescue and traffic management, and was a partner in the 2015 National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice with the US Department of Justice.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 12 September 2026. Police Officer - City of Birmingham, posting R0013857 published by the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, the statutory civil service authority that classifies and hires for the City under Act No. 248 of the Alabama Legislature of 1945 — open the source document
STARTING PAY FOR A NEW RECRUIT $28.78 AN HOUR, $59,862 a year on 2,080 hours, rising through the same class to $38.57 an hour ($80,225). An APOSTC-certified officer starts anywhere in that band depending on experience, so the $28.78 floor is the no-prior-service rate. BIRMINGHAM DOES NOT SET ITS OWN ENTRY PAY ALONE: the department hires through the PERSONNEL BOARD OF JEFFERSON COUNTY merit system, which classifies Police Officer at Grade 19 and publishes a salary schedule for each member jurisdiction - the same arrangement as Wisconsin's fire and police commissions, one county board hiring for the city, the county sheriff and a dozen smaller municipalities at once. PAY IS THEN STACKED ON TOP: an associate's degree adds 5% and a bachelor's 10%, with a $10,000 recruitment and sign-on bonus, a $10,000 annual retention payment and a $5,000 relocation payment for applicants living more than 80 miles away who move inside the city limits - though the city states these enhancements depend on the current fiscal year's approved budget and are not guaranteed beyond it. ENTRY REQUIRES either an associate's degree from a SACS-accredited institution or a high school diploma plus a pass in the ACT WorkKeys assessment for law enforcement officers, and the minimum age is 19. Leave accrues at 8 hours of vacation, 8 hours of sick and 8 HOURS OF MENTAL HEALTH OBSERVANCE LEAVE each month. VERIFIED 12 SEPTEMBER 2026 AGAINST BIRMINGHAM'S OWN ADOPTED SALARY SCHEDULES, AND THE FIGURE SURVIVED A SERIOUS CHALLENGE. The posting names PAY GRADE 19, and both City of Birmingham schedules approved by the Personnel Board on 26 June 2025 and effective 1 July 2025 disagree with it: the Public Safety schedule prices grade 19 step 1 at $25.12/hr ($52,249.60) to step 10 $38.97 ($81,057.60), and the Regular schedule prices the same grade at $20.66 step 1. NEITHER SCHEDULE CONTAINS $28.78 AT ANY GRADE OR STEP - both are a single 5 per cent geometric series ($9.94 base regular, $19.68 base public safety) and $28.78 falls between the series values $27.69 and $29.08. So the posting is not mis-transcribing a grid rate. WHAT SETTLES IT IS THE POSTING'S OWN ARITHMETIC: it states 5 per cent step progression, and $28.78 compounded at 5 per cent six times is $38.57 to the cent - exactly the top of the range it quotes. That is a self-consistent seven-step police ladder, which the generic grade grid is not, and the City states $28.78 as the rate for a NEW RECRUIT in terms. Two softer figures were weighed and rejected as older and looser rather than contradictory: protectbham.com, the department's own recruiting microsite, says 'Earn a starting salary of $50,000+', which is a floor phrase and not a figure; and the City's own news release of 8 October 2024 on birminghamal.gov reports a starting salary of about $51,000 AFTER a 15 per cent rise, which predates the $15.8 million recruitment and retention plan that same release announced. SOURCE RE-DESCRIBED RATHER THAN RE-POINTED: the Personnel Board of Jefferson County is not a jobs portal in the sense the source audit means. It is the employer-side civil service authority created by statute, publishing the City's own compensation text on its own site, which is the civil service notice route. The word 'portal' in the old src was my loose label and it is what tripped the flag, not the source.
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 Birmingham 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 Birmingham Police Department officer make?

Birmingham Police Department starts a new officer on $59,862 a year, about $28.78 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 - City of Birmingham, posting R0013857 published by the Personnel Board of Jefferson County, the statutory civil service authority that classifies and hires for the City under Act No. 248 of the Alabama Legislature of 1945.

Is that good pay for a police officer in Alabama?

It ranks #3 of 35 agencies we have verified in Alabama — 32 pay less, 2 pay more in the state — and #1,588 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $6,823 below, and against other municipal agencies $8,278 below.

The agencies either side of it