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Wilmington 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.

Wilmington Police Department starts at $49,546 a year — about $23.82 an hour on a 2,080-hour year, before overtime. That is $18,844 below the median of the 1,681 agencies on this list, and $21,719 below the median for municipal agencies.

Cost of livingPrices in Wilmington, NC run about 4% below the national average, so this goes about as far as $51,384 would somewhere at average prices — $1,839 more than the headline figure. Most of that is utilities, at 88 against a national average of 100, where goods are 97. Based on price levels for this metropolitan 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 isWilmington Police Department reported 225 sworn officers and 93 civilian staff to the FBI for 2025. That is 1.8 officers per 1,000 residents, over a population of 127,752.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.