Skokie Police Department entry pay

What Skokie says about itself

The Skokie Police Department hires both Entry-Level and Lateral Entry Police Officers.

What Skokie does

The Skokie Police Department is the municipal police agency of the Village of Skokie, Illinois, a suburb immediately north of Chicago in Cook County. It operates from 7300 Niles Center Road under a chief and two deputy chiefs heading an Administrative Division and a Field Division, and divides the village into patrol beats. The department hires both entry-level and lateral officers and staffs specialty roles including school resource, juvenile, evidence technician, canine, drone and crime prevention assignments. It also participates in the multi-jurisdictional NORTAF and NIPAS task forces.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. The Village of Skokie's own recruiting page "Apply to be an Officer", published under the Police Department section of skokie.org, states under the heading "Entry-Level Applicants" the line "Pay Range: $92,405-$126,464". — open the source document
The figure is the bottom of the entry-level police officer pay range that the Village of Skokie advertises on its own recruiting page, "Apply to be an Officer", which reads in full: "The Skokie Police Department hires both Entry-Level and Lateral Entry Police Officers. We're looking for dedicated individuals ready to serve and protect our community. $15,000 Hiring Incentive offered to eligible Entry-Level and Lateral Officers -Terms and conditions apply. Entry-Level Applicants Pay Range: $92,405-$126,464. Lateral Entry Officers Pay Range: $99,946-$126,464. Lateral hires may start at Pay Step G ($116,921) depending on experience and certification." The page does not itself say whether $92,405 is annual or hourly, and that is why a second document is needed. The Village's own employee compensation posting, published on its transparency page "Village Employee Salaries, Benefits & Contracts" as "2026 Compensation Village Employee Salary and Benefits", settles it: the table's first column pair is headed "Job Class" and "Annual Salary", and the lowest POLICE OFFICER row in that column reads 92,404, with the distinct police officer values running 92,404, 96,102, 99,946, 108,102, 116,921, 123,154 and 126,463 across 88 rows. The bottom and top of that posted set line up with the bottom and top of the recruiting range to within one dollar in each case ($92,404 against $92,405 and $126,463 against $126,464), which is ordinary rounding between the two publications and confirms both that the basis is annual and that the recruiting range is the same schedule. The gate below the figure is that there is none: 92,404 is the floor of the police officer class in the Village's own annual posting, and Skokie publishes no cadet, recruit or trainee police classification. The gate above it is the lateral track, which the Village states begins at $99,946 and may start as high as Pay Step G, $116,921, and which is reserved for applicants who have "served as a Sworn Police Officer for a period of 2 years or more without a break in service of six months or more" - that is prior sworn service, so the entry-level figure rather than the lateral figure is the correct one here. Two things could mislead a reader. The $15,000 hiring incentive is advertised on the same page but is stated as a separate incentive with terms and conditions and is not folded into the pay range, so the base figure is clean; likewise the compensation posting keeps Deferred Compensation, Longevity, stipends, Health/Dental and Life Insurance in their own columns beside Annual Salary rather than inside it. Separately, the Skokie police union contract for 2025-2028 is published by the Village but only as a scanned image with no extractable text layer, so its step table cannot be quoted directly and the recruiting page plus the statutory compensation posting are the usable primary sources.
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 Skokie 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 Skokie Police Department officer make?

Skokie Police Department starts a new officer on $92,405 a year, about $44.43 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 The Village of Skokie's own recruiting page "Apply to be an Officer", published under the Police Department section of skokie.org, states under the heading "Entry-Level Applicants" the line "Pay Range: $92,405-$126,464"..

Is that good pay for a police officer in Illinois?

It ranks #4 of 43 agencies we have verified in Illinois — 39 pay less, 3 pay more in the state — and #219 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $25,720 above, and against other municipal agencies $24,265 above.

The agencies either side of it