California Police Forces Are Becoming More Diverse. But Wages Have Declined

As for what has been driving these changes, PPIC’s report pointed to the national “30×30” campaign — a program focused on increasing female recruits to 30% by 2030 — and cited “changing demographics” as the engine behind the growth in Latino officers.

But as diversity steadily increases, the report found that salaries have been tumbling. It said that between 2011 and 2023, the average “base pay” for a California police officer declined from $116,000 to $110,000 — after adjusting for inflation. Although significantly higher pay than the national average for police officers, the report noted that salaries are still not keeping pace with California’s steep cost of living.

Conversely, overtime pay grew from $10,000 to $25,000 per officer. One of the report’s authors and a senior research associate at PPIC, Brandon Martin, said at an event on Tuesday that this contrast likely comes from departments’ attempts to cover staffing shortages.

“While there is research out there that shows a relationship between hiring additional officers and a reduction in crime, there’s not research out there that shows what the optimal level of staffing might be,” Martin said. “That might vary for a number of reasons across communities.”

San Francisco has been making a concerted effort to boost police numbers. Evan Sernoffsky, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department, identified several reasons for low headcount, saying that the “COVID pandemic coupled with the climate generally around policing in the United States made for very difficult recruiting and retention for us.”

But from where Sernoffsky is sitting, that trend “has turned around completely.”

“Support from the public has been at the highest we’ve seen in probably a decade,” he said.

San Francisco’s last four police academies have met their 50 cadet capacity. In 2025, they saw their first net positive increase in officers since the pandemic, and in early May, the police union signed a new contract that offered increased pay and bonuses.

San Francisco still needs to hire over 650 more officers to meet the levels recommended by Proposition E, which voters in 2020 approved to enact regular evaluations of police presence and community needs.

“All of our patrol is being supplemented with overtime, so that’s leading to officer burnout: working conditions that are not sustainable for a staff of our size,” Sernoffsky said.