Youngstown Police Department entry pay

What Youngstown says about itself

The officers of the Youngstown Police Department are committed to reducing crime and improving the quality of life for all who live in, work in, and visit the City of Youngstown.

What Youngstown does

The Youngstown Police Department is the municipal police agency of Youngstown, Ohio, the seat of Mahoning County. Its patrol officers are represented by the Youngstown Police Association, affiliated with the Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, in a bargaining unit recorded by the state at 83 members. The department runs patrol on three bid turns and maintains a traffic division, investigative assignments and a prisoner conveyance function under its current labor agreement.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. Appendix A, the wage schedule of the 2024-2027 collective bargaining agreement between the City of Youngstown and the Youngstown Police Association (YPA)/Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (OPBA), filed with the Ohio State Employment Relations Board as case 24-MED-09-1106, carries the heading "For the year 2025 (4.0% general increase)" over the columns "Step Years Hourly Annual" and the Step 3 line "$22.8800 $47,590.40"; a Memorandum of Understanding in the same agreement states that "for duration of the collective bargaining agreement the City will not hire at a rate less than the Step 3 rate under Appendix A". — open the source document
This figure is what the City of Youngstown is contractually bound to pay a newly hired police officer, and it is deliberately NOT the line in the wage schedule labelled "Entry". Both numbers come from the same document: the City of Youngstown / YPA-OPBA collective bargaining agreement that SERB holds as case 24-MED-09-1106, a three-year agreement running from December 1, 2024 through November 30, 2027. Appendix A is laid out as three year blocks with the columns "Step Years Hourly Annual". In the 2025 block the lowest line reads "Police Officer 1 Entry $21.8400 $45,427.20", Step 2 at one year of service pays the identical $21.8400, and Step 3 at two years pays "$22.8800 $47,590.40". Read on its own, the schedule looks as though a new officer starts at $45,427.20. A Memorandum of Understanding attached to the same agreement, headed "WAGE SCHEDULE ADMIINISTRATION/RETRO CALCULATIONS" (the misspelling is the document's own), overrides that: it states that "for duration of the collective bargaining agreement the City will not hire at a rate less than the Step 3 rate under Appendix A", and further provides that on execution every officer then sitting in Steps 1 or 2 is elevated to Step 3. Steps 1 and 2 are therefore dead letters for the life of this contract - nobody can be hired into them and nobody can remain in them - so the rate an officer actually starts on is the Step 3 rate of $22.8800 an hour, $47,590.40 a year. The pay basis is stated by the schedule's own column headings, "Hourly" and "Annual", so no annualisation was needed. Two other things in this document can mislead a reader. The first is the cadet rate: a Letter of Understanding headed "CADET/RECRUIT RATE - TRAINING COST - BENEFITS" allows the City to hire police cadet/recruits "compensated at a rate of $16.4931 or other rate approved by City Council and receive applicable benefits as a non-bargaining unit employee", and says that on appointment as a full-time police officer "these individuals will be entitled to receive the entry rate under the parties' Agreement". That $16.4931 is a training rate outside the bargaining unit and is not the figure. The second is the effective date of the middle year: Article 27 ties the 2025 and 2027 increases to the first full pay period following January 1 of each year, but ties the 2026 increase to "the first full pay period following execution", and the signature page in SERB's scan has the day and month left handwritten and illegible, so the 2026 date cannot be read from the document. Nothing above the entry step is gated on anything but time served, so no prior sworn service is required to reach the published figure.
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 Youngstown 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 Youngstown Police Department officer make?

Youngstown Police Department starts a new officer on $47,590 a year, about $22.88 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 Appendix A, the wage schedule of the 2024-2027 collective bargaining agreement between the City of Youngstown and the Youngstown Police Association (YPA)/Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (OPBA), filed with the Ohio State Employment Relations Board as case 24-MED-09-1106, carries the heading "For the year 2025 (4.0% general increase)" over the columns "Step Years Hourly Annual" and the Step 3 line "$22.8800 $47,590.40"; a Memorandum of Understanding in the same agreement states that "for duration of the collective bargaining agreement the City will not hire at a rate less than the Step 3 rate under Appendix A"..

Is that good pay for a police officer in Ohio?

It ranks #53 of 53 agencies we have verified in Ohio — 0 pay less, 52 pay more in the state — and #2,160 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $19,094 below, and against other municipal agencies $20,550 below.

The agencies either side of it