Campus Security Exec. Pay Increases 5%
Campus police chief and security director salaries increased in 2009, according to results from Campus Safety magazine’s fifth annual salary survey and industry census. Reversing a three-year downward trend, the average salaries for these executives increased nearly 5 percent from $73,321 in 2008 to $76,800 this year.
“Considering so many in our nation are being laid off, having their wages cut or are being forced to take unpaid days off, this statistic is a pleasant surprise,” says Campus Safety Executive Editor Robin Hattersley Gray. “Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for novice sworn and nonsworn officer pay.”
The average annual starting income for sworn campus public safety officers dropped by a little more than 2 percent from $33,114 in 2008 to $32,443 in 2009. Nonsworn average starting salaries dropped by nearly 4 percent, from $23,944 to $23,024. (Visit the Campus Safety Yearbook for more statistics.)
“Sadly, this decrease eliminated the 3.6 percent increase nonsworn officers experienced between 2006 and 2008,” adds Gray.
On the bright side, an overwhelming majority of survey respondents rated their job satisfaction as either good (53 percent) or excellent (36 percent).
Other highlights of the survey include:
- Health insurance and retirement benefits are the most common incentives offered to officers (56 percent for sworn officers and 71 percent for nonsworn officers)
- 68 percent of campus sworn officers are armed with lethal weapons, less-lethal weapons or both
- The top five concerns of campus protection professionals are 1) budgets/availability of resources (69 percent); 2) appropriate staffing levels (52 percent); 3) administration apathy and/or naïveté regarding campus safety and security (44 percent); 4) emergency preparedness (42 percent); and 5) not enough electronic security equipment (CCTV, access control, fire and/or intrusion detection) (26%).
The results of the survey were released Dec. 1 and appear in the publication’s inaugural Yearbook issue, which also includes a directory of more than 400 vendors and associations, as well as how-tos on every thing from metal detection to mass notification.
To view the statistics, click here. Additional statistics can be found here.
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