Prescott Police Department entry pay

What Prescott says about itself

We are dedicated to providing our community with superior Public Safety services.

What Prescott does

The Prescott Police Department serves the city of Prescott, Arizona, the seat of Yavapai County in the state's central highlands. It states its values as Integrity, Courage, Accountability, Respect and Excellence, and runs Patrol Operations, Investigations, a Special Operations Bureau, a Support Bureau, SWAT, K9 and bicycle patrol, traffic safety, animal control, records and property and evidence. It also operates the Prescott Regional Communications Center, which the Department says covers approximately 5,254 square miles and dispatches for four police departments, thirteen fire departments and an EMS transport company. New officers attend a twenty-week, 800-hour academy and remain on probation from their date of hire until the first anniversary of graduating.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 20 September 2026. Prescott Police Department, Recruitment — Police Officer compensation: "Minimum: $33.87/hr. - $70,463.93 annual" — open the source document
$70,463.93 is the Department's own annual figure and no arithmetic has been applied to it; it prints the hourly equivalent, $33.87, beside it. The Department publishes the band in three points - Minimum $33.87/$70,463.93, Midpoint $42.34/$88,079.92, Max $50.81/$105,695.89 - and the midpoint and max are ceilings on the way up, not entry steps. Trainee class: NOT PRICED - the Department names no separate academy or recruit wage, and its own probation rule shows why there is none to name: police officer recruits are on probation from their DATE OF HIRE until the one-year anniversary of the date they graduate from the academy, so they are on the officer scale throughout. The academy is a 20-week, 800-hour course. The $5,000 hiring bonus the Department lists for Recruits confirms recruits are hired onto this band rather than a lower one, and is itself excluded from the figure, along with the $3,000 annual bilingual incentive, the $150 boot allowance, 40 hours of paid time off at hire, and the shift differentials of $0.35 an hour on swing and $0.50 on graveyard. THE WEAKNESS, SAID PLAINLY: the band minimum carries no experience qualifier of its own and the Department prices no lateral rate, so the entry test rests on the probation rule and the recruit bonus rather than on a direct statement. THE FIGURE CARRIES NO EFFECTIVE DATE. NEXT DOCUMENT: the City of Prescott pay plan or adopted budget. NAME TRAP: Prescott, Arizona is NOT Prescott Valley, which is a separate town with its own police department a few miles away, and NOT Prescott, Arkansas or Wisconsin.
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 Prescott 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 Prescott Police Department officer make?

Prescott Police Department starts a new officer on $70,464 a year, about $33.88 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 Prescott Police Department, Recruitment — Police Officer compensation: "Minimum: $33.87/hr. - $70,463.93 annual".

Is that good pay for a police officer in Arizona?

It ranks #16 of 36 agencies we have verified in Arizona — 20 pay less, 15 pay more in the state — and #912 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $3,779 above, and against other municipal agencies $2,324 above.

The agencies either side of it