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Laurel 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.
Laurel Police Department starts at $70,269 a year — about $33.78 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $3,584 above the median of the 2,288 agencies on this list, and $2,129 above the median for municipal agencies.
Cost of livingPrices in Maryland run about 5% above the national average, so this is worth roughly $66,949 somewhere at average prices — $3,320 less than the headline figure. Most of that is rent, at 121 against a national average of 100, where goods are 103. 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 isLaurel Police Department reported 63 sworn officers and 21 civilian staff to the FBI for 2025. That is 2.1 officers per 1,000 residents, over a population of 30,304.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 Laurel says about itself
At the Laurel Police Department, we have long been committed to serving the community and doing so in a fair and equitable fashion.
What Laurel does
The Laurel Police Department serves the city of Laurel, Maryland, an incorporated municipality in Prince George's County midway between Washington and Baltimore, from the Laurel Municipal Center at 8103 Sandy Spring Road. The FBI's law enforcement employment tables put it at 63 sworn officers serving about 30,300 people. The City hires both entry-level and lateral police officers, paying a hiring bonus of up to $15,000 to entry-level officers and up to $20,000 to laterals along with up to five years of service credit. Overtime is paid at one and a half times the normal rate and holiday work at two and a half times, with eleven paid holidays a year.
Where the figure comes from
Checked 20 September 2026. City of Laurel, Police Recruitment: "Starting salary: $70,269" — open the source document
$70,269 is the City's own annual figure and no arithmetic has been applied to it. THE NON-LATERAL TEST IS SETTLED ON THE SAME PAGE: the City says it is hiring for both entry-level and lateral Police Officers and prices them apart - entry-level officers up to $15,000 in hiring bonus, lateral officers up to $20,000 plus up to five years of service credit - so prior sworn service is rewarded separately and is not built into this figure. Trainee class: NOT PRICED - the City names no separate academy or recruit wage. Excluded from the figure: the hiring bonus, overtime at one and a half times and holiday pay at two and a half times the normal rate. CONFLICT RECORDED RATHER THAN RESOLVED: the City publishes TWO starting salaries on two live pages of its own site. /459/Police-Recruitment, the police-specific page, says $70,269; /168/Recruitment, the older general recruitment page, says $65,064. The bonus block is word for word identical on both, which is what marks /168/ as the superseded copy - and the CivicPlus page id is the only dating either page offers, 459 having been created after 168. NEITHER PAGE CARRIES A DATE. The higher, police-specific figure is the one taken, and the $5,205 gap is the exposure here. NEXT DOCUMENT: the City of Laurel salary schedule in the adopted operating budget, which would date and settle it. NOTE: the City has moved from cityoflaurel.org to laurelmd.gov and BOTH pages are live on BOTH domains, so the domain move does not date them either. NAME TRAP: Laurel is an incorporated city inside Prince George's County, whose own county police also patrol the surrounding area; there are also Laurels in Delaware, Mississippi and Montana.
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.
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How this level compares
Where Laurel 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. Laurel starts at $70,269, so $2,129 above the municipal middle.
How it ranks
Common questions
How much does a Laurel Police Department officer make?
Laurel Police Department starts a new officer on $70,269 a year, about $33.78 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 City of Laurel, Police Recruitment: "Starting salary: $70,269".
Is that good pay for a police officer in Maryland?
It ranks #7 of 29 agencies we have verified in Maryland — 22 pay less, 6 pay more in the state — and #920 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $3,584 above, and against other municipal agencies $2,129 above.
Compare with another department
Put Laurel 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 MD
| # | Agency | Level | Sworn # | Entry pay | Vs Laurel | National |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rockville City Police Department | Municipal | — | $75,256 | +$4,987 | #662 |
| 2 | Maryland Transit Administration Police Force | State | — | $72,829 | +$2,560 | #772 |
| 3 | Anne Arundel County Police Department | Municipal | 776 | $72,802 | +$2,533 | #773 |
| 4 | Frederick Police Department | Municipal | 151 | $71,351 | +$1,082 | #852 |
| 5 | Maryland Transportation Authority Police | State | 392 | $71,258 | +$989 | #860 |
| 6 | St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office | County | 167 | $71,011 | +$742 | #874 |
| 8 | Prince George's County Police Department | County | 1,343 | $70,257 | −$12 | #922 |
| 9 | Worcester County Sheriff's Office | County | 91 | $70,221 | −$48 | #925 |
| 10 | Wicomico County Sheriff's Office | County | 97 | $70,000 | −$269 | #937 |
| 11 | Gaithersburg Police Department | Municipal | 66 | $70,000 | −$269 | #940 |
| 12 | Maryland State Police | State | 1,434 | $69,360 | −$909 | #969 |
| 13 | Maryland Natural Resources Police | State | 263 | $68,673 | −$1,596 | #1,009 |
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.
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