Summerville Police Department entry pay

What Summerville says about itself

As members of the Summerville Police Department, it is our mission to: Exhibit the highest standard of professional ethics, understanding that integrity and fair play are the foundation of public trust.

What Summerville does

The Summerville Police Department is the municipal law enforcement agency for the Town of Summerville, South Carolina, a community in the Charleston metropolitan area spanning parts of Dorchester, Berkeley and Charleston counties. The department provides patrol, investigative and community policing services and is led by a chief of police. Its uniform patrol division handles calls for service and routine patrol across the town. The department publishes its own graded step pay scale covering ranks from patrol officer through chief.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. The Summerville Police Department's published SPD Pay Scale, a departmentally branded step table headed "SUMMERVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT", carries a Non-Exempt block in which Grade 112, rank "PTL", shows an "Annual" row beginning "$44,357.22" in the MIN column (step 1) and an "Hourly" row beginning "$19.95" in the same column. — open the source document
The figure is the step 1 base rate for a Summerville patrol officer: $44,357.22 a year, which the same table restates as $19.95 an hour. I re-opened the schedule and read it directly rather than relying on the earlier run, and both numbers read exactly as previously recorded. The table is published as an image on the department's own SPD Pay Scale page, the image itself being served at https://www.summervillepolice.com/ImageRepository/Document?documentId=5533. Its structure is a grade-and-step grid: each grade occupies two rows, one labelled "Annual" and one labelled "Hourly", with ten step columns running from MIN (step 1) through MAX (step 10). Grade 112 is the lowest of the non-exempt sworn grades and carries the rank abbreviation PTL, the patrol officer rank; the grades above it in the same block are 113 PFC, 114 FTO, 115 Corporal/Detective, 117 Sergeant/Inspector and 200 Lieutenant/Chief Inspector, so PTL step 1 is the bottom of the sworn ladder and the entry rate. Nothing above $44,357.22 is reachable without either time in grade or a different rank, and nothing in the table conditions the figure on prior sworn service, so there is no lateral or experience gate sitting beneath it. Pay basis is not in doubt here, which distinguishes this agency from two of the others in this batch: the document prints the words "Annual" and "Hourly" as explicit row labels, so it states its own basis rather than leaving it to inference. The table carries no printed effective date. The two images on the page are named for screenshots taken on 20 June 2024, which points to the fiscal year beginning 1 July 2024, but a filename is not a statement of effect and I have not converted it into one. The one thing that could mislead a reader is the block of Pay Plan Rules printed beneath the grid, which lists education incentives, a prior military experience supplement, a secondary language supplement, a $1,500 night shift differential, and special team stipends for SWAT/CDT/Motor Unit, crisis negotiation and honour guard. Those do not contaminate the base figure, and the schedule says so in terms: rule 1 reads that incentives will be tracked as additional pay on top of the base step rate. A second caution is that the MIN column is the step 1 column; a reader skimming across to the MID or MAX columns would pick up a mid-career or topped-out rate rather than the entry rate.
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 Summerville 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 Summerville Police Department officer make?

Summerville Police Department starts a new officer on $44,357 a year, about $21.33 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 The Summerville Police Department's published SPD Pay Scale, a departmentally branded step table headed "SUMMERVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT", carries a Non-Exempt block in which Grade 112, rank "PTL", shows an "Annual" row beginning "$44,357.22" in the MIN column (step 1) and an "Hourly" row beginning "$19.95" in the same column..

Is that good pay for a police officer in South Carolina?

It ranks #27 of 27 agencies we have verified in South Carolina — 0 pay less, 26 pay more in the state — and #2,219 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $22,328 below, and against other municipal agencies $23,783 below.

The agencies either side of it