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Virgin Islands 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.
Virgin Islands Police Department starts at $40,953 a year — about $19.69 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $27,437 below the median of the 1,681 agencies on this list, and $12,717 above the median for territory agencies.
What Virgin Islands says about itself
The VIPD mission is to protect people and property.
What Virgin Islands does
The Virgin Islands Police Department is the single territorial force for St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix, run as two districts - St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix - under a Commissioner of Police. It states six departmental objectives: preventing crime, deterring it, apprehending offenders, recovering and returning property, moving traffic, and public safety. The department also runs the territory's Office of Highway Safety, and publishes its federal consent decree material on its own site.
Where the figure comes from
Checked 19 August 2026. Virgin Islands Police Department — Join the VIPD, current Police Officer vacancy announcements for St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix — open the source document
Their source is effective 1 June 2018.
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.
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How this level compares
Where Virgin Islands 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. Virgin Islands starts at $40,953, so $12,717 above the territory middle.
How it ranks
Common questions
How much does a Virgin Islands Police Department officer make?
Virgin Islands Police Department starts a new officer on $40,953 a year, about $19.69 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 Virgin Islands Police Department — Join the VIPD, current Police Officer vacancy announcements for St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix.
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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