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Norman 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.
Norman Police Department starts at $61,000 a year — about $29.33 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $6,267 below the median of the 2,053 agencies on this list, and $7,786 below the median for municipal agencies.
Cost of livingPrices in Oklahoma run about 12% below the national average, so this goes about as far as $69,442 would somewhere at average prices — $8,442 more than the headline figure. Most of that is rent, at 63 against a national average of 100, where goods are 94. 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 isNorman Police Department reported 177 sworn officers and 71 civilian staff to the FBI for 2025. That is 1.3 officers per 1,000 residents, over a population of 131,728.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 Norman says about itself
Passionately serving our community through education, innovation, enforcement, and excellence in everything we do.
What Norman does
The Norman Police Department is the city force for Norman, the third largest city in Oklahoma and home to the University of Oklahoma. It is accredited by the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police and is organised into three bureaus. The department runs its own CLEET-accredited academy, with recruits drawing full salary and benefits from day one, followed by at least fifteen weeks of field training across three shifts and a first year on probation. Specialist assignments include the bomb squad, SWAT, CIRT, crisis negotiation, K-9, crime scene technicians, criminal investigations, narcotics, traffic enforcement, honor guard and the bicycle team. Qualified officers are eligible for a take-home vehicle, and academy graduates can earn college credit through Northeastern State University and Rose State College. All commissioned personnel are represented by Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 122, which negotiates with the City annually. The department also runs a data-sharing partnership with the Ruth Knee Institute at the University of Oklahoma's Zarrow School of Social Work, and publishes an open data portal alongside weekly and monthly activity overviews.
Norman’s rotation, in BlueShifts
The department states it on both of its own sites: officers work ten-hour days, four days a week, and its recruiting site puts it in the leave section as four ten-hour shifts per week with three days off. Probationary officers rotate through three different work shifts during field training before solo assignment. Officers who meet the criteria receive shift differential pay of thirty to forty cents an hour on top of base pay, and the department counts thirteen paid holidays a year.
The rotation template screen — enter the cycle and the start date, and you are done.
DayNight24 hrsOff
Every month, already filled in — no typing, however far ahead you look.
October 2026
This cycle has its own page: how it works, and how to build it.
Four tens and three off is a clean seven-day cycle, which sounds like the easy case right up to the point where the three days move around the calendar and never sit on the same weekend twice in a row. Set it once in BlueShifts and every future month draws itself, so you can see which weekends you actually have before you promise one to anybody.
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.
Where the figure comes from
Checked 10 September 2026. Norman Police Department recruiting site (Join Norman PD), Benefits + Pay — Base Salary Progression, Entry Level at start of academy — open the source document
Read 10 September 2026 from the department's own recruiting site. The department publishes the whole officer progression and the figure is its first line: Entry Level, at start of academy, $61,000; Post-Academy Graduation at 6 months $63,438; Step 3 at 1.5 years $65,976; Step 4 $68,616; Step 5 $71,360; Master Police Officer at 4.5 years $74,213; Step 6 $77,184; Step 7 $80,270; Step 8 $83,480; Step 9 $86,820; Step 10 at 9.5 years $90,292. THE ENTRY TEST IS SETTLED BY THE DEPARTMENT'S OWN WORDING: applicants with two or more years of previous law enforcement experience may qualify to start UP TO TWO STEPS HIGHER on the same scale, and experienced officers attend the regular academy because the department is not running a lateral academy, so the Entry Level line is by construction the no-experience rate. Cadets are paid City employees from the first day of the CLEET-certified academy. Excluded from the figure: college incentive pay ($0.49 per credit hour to $39.20 a pay period, $63.00 for a Bachelor's, $77.54 for a Master's), longevity pay after five years (1 per cent of the Step 1 salary times years of service, $2,932.60 at five years), shift differential of $0.30 to $0.40 an hour, $50 a pay period for special teams (HDU, CIRT, SWAT), $50 a pay period bilingual pay, $2.50 an hour FTO pay, the $60 a pay period uniform allowance and 13 paid holidays. The department notes that pay is negotiated annually with FOP Lodge 122 and that proposed increases were awaiting final approval when the page was read, expected to be retroactive to 1 July.
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 Norman 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 | $68,786 | $163,619 | 1372 |
| County | $35,000 | $64,438 | $132,263 | 459 |
| Special jurisdiction | $31,200 | $60,204 | $107,954 | 71 |
| State | $33,994 | $65,400 | $110,916 | 144 |
| 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 $4,700 more than the middle municipal agency and about $9,100 more than the middle county agency and about $13,300 more than the middle special jurisdiction agency and about $8,100 more than the middle state agency and about $45,300 more than the middle territory agency. Norman starts at $61,000, so $7,786 below the municipal middle.
How it ranks
Common questions
How much does a Norman Police Department officer make?
Norman Police Department starts a new officer on $61,000 a year, about $29.33 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 Norman Police Department recruiting site (Join Norman PD), Benefits + Pay — Base Salary Progression, Entry Level at start of academy.
Is that good pay for a police officer in Oklahoma?
It ranks #7 of 16 agencies we have verified in Oklahoma — 9 pay less, 6 pay more in the state — and #1,375 of 2,053 nationally. Against the national median it is $6,267 below, and against other municipal agencies $7,786 below.
What shifts do Norman Police Department officers work?
The department states it on both of its own sites: officers work ten-hour days, four days a week, and its recruiting site puts it in the leave section as four ten-hour shifts per week with three days off. Probationary officers rotate through three different work shifts during field training before solo assignment. Officers who meet the criteria receive shift differential pay of thirty to forty cents an hour on top of base pay, and the department counts thirteen paid holidays a year. That is the agency's own published wording; the pattern is drawn on this page.
Compare with another department
Put Norman 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 OK
| # | Agency | Level | Sworn # | Entry pay | Vs Norman | National |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Broken Arrow Police Department | Municipal | 168 | $72,004 | +$11,004 | #746 |
| 2 | Moore Police Department | Municipal | 107 | $70,796 | +$9,796 | #824 |
| 3 | Edmond Police Department | Municipal | 126 | $68,481 | +$7,481 | #941 |
| 4 | Oklahoma Highway Patrol | State | 789 | $67,900 | +$6,900 | #982 |
| 5 | Oklahoma City Police Department | Municipal | 1,108 | $67,735 | +$6,735 | #990 |
| 6 | Yukon Police Department | Municipal | 53 | $63,058 | +$2,058 | #1,269 |
| 8 | Tulsa Police Department | Municipal | 836 | $60,611 | −$389 | #1,396 |
| 9 | Tulsa County Sheriff's Office | County | 223 | $60,000 | −$1,000 | #1,437 |
| 10 | Bartlesville Police Department | Municipal | 76 | $57,450 | −$3,550 | #1,574 |
| 11 | Enid Police Department | Municipal | 96 | $56,243 | −$4,757 | #1,621 |
| 12 | Lawton Police Department | Municipal | 167 | $56,118 | −$4,882 | #1,624 |
| 13 | Muskogee Police Department | Municipal | 79 | $55,266 | −$5,734 | #1,659 |
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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