Home › Police pay › Alabama › Montgomery Police Department
Montgomery 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.
Montgomery Police Department starts at $55,168 a year — about $26.52 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $13,222 below the median of the 1,681 agencies on this list, and $16,096 below the median for municipal agencies.
Cost of livingPrices in Montgomery, AL run about 10% below the national average, so this goes about as far as $61,515 would somewhere at average prices — $6,347 more than the headline figure. Most of that is rent, at 64 against a national average of 100, where goods are 96. Based on price levels for this metropolitan 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 isMontgomery Police Department reported 259 sworn officers and 159 civilian staff to the FBI for 2025. That is 1.3 officers per 1,000 residents, over a population of 194,775.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 Montgomery says about itself
The mission of the Montgomery Police Department is to strive to reduce crime and build relationships with the community and businesses by providing a professional police partnership with the people.
What Montgomery does
Montgomery Police Department was established in 1820 and polices Alabama's capital, some 156 square miles and over 200,000 residents, from headquarters on North Ripley Street downtown under the motto Honor, Duty, Loyalty. It is organised into divisions covering patrol, criminal investigation, special operations, traffic, administration, the municipal jail, and training and recruiting, each commanded by a major. Special Operations takes in the SWAT unit, traffic division, school enforcement bureau, K-9 and the River District; the traffic bureau handles collision investigation and reconstruction, traffic enforcement, escorts and the Traffic Safety Unit. The department runs its own police academy and is a CALEA accredited agency with a public comment portal on its compliance.
Where the figure comes from
Checked 15 August 2026. Montgomery Personnel Board — Pay Plan for the City of Montgomery, MPD Sworn Officers Pay Plan, effective 1 October 2025 with revisions to 6 April 2026 — open the source document
Montgomery police officers are paid on the Personnel Board's MPD Sworn Officers Pay Plan. A Police Officer Trainee starts at $45,093; on graduating from the academy the officer moves to grade PD1 step 6, $55,168 a year. The Police Officer class occupies PD1 steps 5 to 15, rising to $96,737 at the top of the grade. Lateral transfers enter above the starting step by length of prior service, from one step under two years to a minimum of four steps for more than ten years.
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 Montgomery 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 | $35,006 | $71,287 | $163,619 | 1046 |
| County | $36,492 | $65,374 | $132,263 | 416 |
| Special jurisdiction | $31,200 | $60,195 | $107,954 | 69 |
| State | $33,994 | $64,998 | $102,692 | 143 |
| 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 $2,200 more than the middle municipal agency and about $8,100 more than the middle county agency and about $13,300 more than the middle special jurisdiction agency and about $8,500 more than the middle state agency and about $45,300 more than the middle territory agency. Montgomery starts at $55,168, so $16,119 below the municipal middle.
How it ranks
Common questions
How much does a Montgomery Police Department officer make?
Montgomery Police Department starts a new officer on $55,168 a year, about $26.52 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 Montgomery Personnel Board — Pay Plan for the City of Montgomery, MPD Sworn Officers Pay Plan, effective 1 October 2025 with revisions to 6 April 2026.
Is that good pay for a police officer in Alabama?
It ranks #6 of 21 agencies we have verified in Alabama — 15 pay less, 5 pay more in the state — and #1,420 of 1,681 nationally. Against the national median it is $13,222 below, and against other municipal agencies $16,096 below.
Compare with another department
Put Montgomery 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 AL
| # | Agency | Level | Sworn # | Entry pay | Vs Montgomery | National |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madison Police Department | Municipal | 88 | $60,195 | +$5,027 | #1,226 |
| 2 | Huntsville Police Department | Municipal | 432 | $58,614 | +$3,446 | #1,300 |
| 3 | Shelby County Sheriff's Office | County | 147 | $57,408 | +$2,240 | #1,362 |
| 4 | Alabama Highway Patrol | State | — | $56,726 | +$1,558 | #1,376 |
| 5 | Madison County Sheriff's Office | County | 184 | $55,390 | +$222 | #1,415 |
| 7 | Baldwin County Sheriff's Office | County | 174 | $53,768 | −$1,400 | #1,476 |
| 8 | Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office | County | 112 | $51,888 | −$3,280 | #1,521 |
| 9 | Prattville Police Department | Municipal | 96 | $50,679 | −$4,489 | #1,544 |
| 10 | Mobile County Sheriff's Office | County | 236 | $50,526 | −$4,642 | #1,551 |
| 11 | University of Alabama at Birmingham Police Department | Special jurisdiction | — | $49,920 | −$5,248 | #1,577 |
| 12 | Fairhope Police Department | Municipal | 44 | $47,840 | −$7,328 | #1,601 |
| 13 | Jefferson County Sheriff's Office | County | 466 | $47,736 | −$7,432 | #1,604 |
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
