Columbia Police Department entry pay

What Columbia says about itself

The Columbia Police Department is a full-service department that utilizes a Community Oriented Policing philosophy.

What Columbia does

The Columbia Police Department is the municipal police agency for Columbia, Tennessee, the seat of Maury County, south of Nashville. It is organized into three major divisions - Patrol, Criminal Investigations and Support Services - with an assistant chief overseeing the three division captains and day-to-day operations. The Patrol Division answers the city's emergency and routine calls for service and provides around-the-clock coverage. The department describes its approach as community oriented policing built on partnerships with residents, community leaders and businesses.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. In the table headed "City of Columbia Exhibit A Classification and Compensation Plan FY 2026-2027", inside the City of Columbia Annual Budget Fiscal Year 2026-2027, the columns run "Department Job Title Annual Hours Pay Grade Hourly Annualized Hourly Annualized" and the officer line reads verbatim "POLICE DEPARTMENT Police Officer 2,236 G 24.55 54,894 33.21 74,258". — open the source document
This is the minimum of pay grade G for the job title Police Officer on Exhibit A, the Classification and Compensation Plan for FY 2026-2027, which is adopted as part of the City's Pay Ordinance and printed in the appendix of the adopted Annual Budget (the budget's own contents page lists it as "PAY ORDINANCE / CLASSIFICATION AND COMPENSATION PLAN" at page 303). The plan is labelled FY 2026-2027 and the budget file is the final version dated 26 June 2026, so the figure takes effect at the start of the City's fiscal year 2026-2027, that is 1 July 2026; the exhibit carries the fiscal-year label rather than a day-level effective date. The figure is the ENTRY rate because the exhibit prints, for each job title, a minimum hourly with its annualized value and then a maximum hourly with its annualized value, and $24.55 / $54,894 is the minimum pair for Police Officer while $33.21 / $74,258 is the top of the same grade; the gate above it is promotion to a different job title rather than a step, since the next sworn rank, Police Corporal, sits at grade I on 2,236 hours at $30.80 / $68,869, with Police Sergeant at grade J and Police Lieutenant at grade K above that. Nothing sworn sits below Police Officer: the only police lines under grade G are civilian (Fleet/Equipment Coordinator, Evidence Technician and Senior Administrative Assistant at grade F), and the exhibit contains no police cadet, recruit or trainee class at all, so no trainee rate was used. On annualization, the critical point is that the City does it itself and I did not: the exhibit has an explicit "Annual Hours" column, that column reads 2,236 for Police Officer, and the City prints its own annualized figure of $54,894 in the adjacent column, which is what is published here. The arithmetic reproduces it, since $24.55 x 2,236 = $54,893.80, rounded by the City to $54,894. The 2,236-hour basis is not a clerical quirk but the sworn patrol basis: Police Officer, Police Corporal, Police Sergeant and Police Lieutenant are all carried at 2,236 annual hours, while the command ranks above them (Police Captain, Assistant Police Chief and Police Chief) and every civilian post in the department are carried at 2,080. Several things could mislead a reader. By far the most dangerous is that pay grade G is shared with civilian jobs on a different hours basis, so the very same exhibit prints "POLICE DEPARTMENT Records Supervisor 2,080 G 24.55 51,064 33.21 69,077" - identical grade, identical $24.55 hourly, but $51,064 annualized instead of $54,894 purely because the hours basis is 2,080; anyone who annualizes Columbia's police hourly rate at 2,080, or who reads the wrong row of grade G, will land on $51,064 and be wrong. The same trap exists across departments, where Street Department grade G lines also show $51,064. A reader should also note that the plan carries 1,456-hour lines for some part-time posts and a Fire Cadet at 1,456 hours, so the hours column genuinely varies and cannot be assumed. Finally, and separately from the document, the City's former domain columbiatn.com is dead and its live domain is columbiatn.gov; links to the old host will not resolve.
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 Columbia 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 Columbia Police Department officer make?

Columbia Police Department starts a new officer on $54,894 a year, about $26.39 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 In the table headed "City of Columbia Exhibit A Classification and Compensation Plan FY 2026-2027", inside the City of Columbia Annual Budget Fiscal Year 2026-2027, the columns run "Department Job Title Annual Hours Pay Grade Hourly Annualized Hourly Annualized" and the officer line reads verbatim "POLICE DEPARTMENT Police Officer 2,236 G 24.55 54,894 33.21 74,258"..

Is that good pay for a police officer in Tennessee?

It ranks #18 of 26 agencies we have verified in Tennessee — 8 pay less, 17 pay more in the state — and #1,869 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $11,791 below, and against other municipal agencies $13,246 below.

The agencies either side of it