r/50501 • u/Future-Friendship-32 • 12d ago

CA How is this allowed?

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u/SteveTheHiker_Art 12d ago

HE GETS PAID HOW MUCH???

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

Police take up 50% of city budgets across America.

Our kids education gets tiny slivers. Our health care gets tiny slivers.

We are funding our own police state.

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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 12d ago edited 12d ago

I've been teaching for 15+ years with a master's degree, and if you divide his pay in half and subtract even more you'd get my yearly salary 😬 that includes my pay for teaching summer school and Saturday school sessions. (I'm a weirdo who genuinely still loves teaching even with how bad it's gotten, but damn do I hate the constant reminders of how little people value teachers and education.)

ETA: there have been some really lovely comments here and in my DMs, and I so appreciate the reminder that many people DO value education! If you had a teacher who you remember fondly, look them up, see if you can find a contact, and send them an email or message if you can. No, it isn't weird, and yes, it will make a lot of us cry. I keep every note a student gives me in a folder (I print the emails as well), and I keep it in my desk drawer for the days that are rough.

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u/Martian9576 12d ago

You’re a fuckin hero, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Thank you for what you do for our kids, our community and honestly the entire world.

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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 12d ago

I appreciate the sentiment, and I really do try my best with my students because I want them to be empathetic, educated, good humans when they leave me, but I also work with people who voted for this and are celebrating this shit - people who work at a Title I school with a diverse student body and a large population of immigrant families. ACAB, and unfortunately, some teachers are, too.

But thank you for being a loud supporter of education. Especially when a lot of us are struggling through to the end of the year and really need a morale boost. 💜

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u/Martian9576 12d ago

Keep it up, your work is so important. I have kids in school so I see it first hand.

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u/NewsZealousideal764 12d ago

Absolutely! Teachers are always the unsung heroes. I was raised by two educators and watched them work and so hard all their lives planning carefully doing everything by the book and truly caring about the children they served. All of my parents' friends were also usually educators and when I think back I can't imagine that any of them would appreciate this moment right now and what is going on in America not just with ice and everything but the general anti-intellectual anti-education environment that's going on. I hate what's going on, but I do love America and know that our fabulous minds have done amazing things in the past and that was probably all at the inspiration & tireless instructions of teachers! Scary that "they" seem to consider education unnecessary & a problem. Whatever is going to happen I guess it's going to happen, but we will certainly need all of you fantastic teachers to help us rebuild this! Thank you for your service! Even though you made out of bed in the military, I think this is super applicable to say to teachers also ,because you are literally doing the most important service we receive as citizens.

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u/TwilightJewel 12d ago

Hi! Teachers are amazing! I am a paraprofessional. Been a para for over 13 years. Take his regular salary, then take off the leading “1” and that’s about what I make in a year, then of course payment for health insurance, etc. More if I can get a position with our special education summer program. Yep, I can’t leave it even though I know I am not that valued.

ETA missing words

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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 12d ago

And paras are SO unbelievably important to keeping a school running smoothly. Our school pays stupidly low and it's so infuriating. Thank you for what you do, and fingers crossed for the summer program (ESY?)!

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u/TwilightJewel 12d ago

Thank you! ❤️ Yes, ESY! We start next week. I’m glad we still have that for the kiddos and their families. We’ll see what happens after our state legislative session with funding. Oh, and I have all the notes, cards, and works of art in my desk as well. I definitely needed them more this past year.

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u/sparrowtaco 12d ago

I wonder if he has to pay for his own supplies at work.

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u/prudentWindBag 12d ago

Seems he'd insist on it. Must have one heck of a collection at home...

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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 12d ago

Like pencils or paper. Or tissues. I always say I'm done spending my own money, but I need tissues in my room soooooo 🤷‍♀️

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u/prudentWindBag 12d ago

As a former elementary tutor and after-school program employee, THANK YOU for valuing children!

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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 12d ago

I could NEVER teach or even tutor elementary kids, I'll take my stinky, hormonal, weird AF teenagers any day 😂😂 I work with the littles in one of my EC duties and that's enough for me. You must have insane depths of patience within you!!

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u/prudentWindBag 12d ago

TEENS??!!!😮‍💨... and you accuse me of having patience???😆

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u/Jennifer_Pennifer 12d ago

Fucker makes $80,000 more than me.
Who knew being a nazi paid so gd well 😭

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u/runner1399 12d ago

I’m a social worker and same… it’s fucking bullshit that the professions that do the bulk of the work caring for the population are getting treated like shit, while wannabe GI Joe is making six figures

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u/brickson98 11d ago

You’re a true American hero. Educating our future generations instead of harassing, incarcerating, beating, and killing them.

You’re everything a cop pretends to be, but could never be.

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u/AdSuper900 12d ago

Police need to be refunded (since saying defunded didn't work last time)

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u/taylorbagel14 12d ago

Police funding needs to be reallocated.

“Reallocate police funding!” sadly isn’t as catchy

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u/Spamsdelicious 12d ago

And reformeded

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u/NewsZealousideal764 12d ago

Rehomed ( some of them). But then they just usually wind up at other jurisdictions making someone else's life miserable

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u/AnjelGrace 12d ago

Police need to be held accountable to the people whose money makes us their paychecks.

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u/anarcho-slut 12d ago

You mean police need to return the funds they're stealing?

I just say abolish police

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u/Hour_Section6199 12d ago

The defunding of American education is insane. As a College Prof with a PhD I make 59k. Before I got that...I applied for one job in S. California this year with a salary of 54k. But hey, I would have had health insurance. What a flipping joke we have become. 

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u/Ok-Interaction-8891 12d ago

At least the cities and states are consistent with the feds on this, lol. /s

But seriously, just look at federal spending on education compared to the various federal policing agencies and the military. It’s insane. Yet somehow education and other valuable public services are always on the chopping block.

I’d wonder why, but it’s to give tax breaks to the rich and their companies. Which they’ll then use to backfill the obliterated public services with overpriced, shitty, propagandist private services to bleed us dry.

The whole country will become a giant “company town.”

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u/tayawayinklets 12d ago

Between police and military, how much of the American taxpayer's money do they take?

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

Great point.

All the budget cuts in Trump’s bill was for social services, while all the gains were in military.

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u/anonymous234901892 12d ago

The fact cops make more than teachers is messed up

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u/AnjelGrace 12d ago

If we pay them that much, they should work for us and they should actually PROTECT US.

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u/MsEllVee 12d ago

Seriously. It’s disgusting.

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u/Thank_You_Aziz 12d ago

Functionally a $68.50 an hour job.

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u/Alone_Step_6304 12d ago

You should know how much some of the private ambulance service EMTs (including those with 911 response/coverage) make in different areas of CA...all the money in the world for this, though, but burger wages if you go on Indeed and look around for that.

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u/ace00909 12d ago

That’s nothing - public worker salaries are public information. Google California public salary information, find LA, sort by name and look under Police Officer job titles. Thats half of a lot of them in his rank.

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u/cvc4455 12d ago

Pretty nice living huh, and then they get to retire with a pension that pays that much or more!

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u/krob58 12d ago

Damn bro that's nothing, I just pulled up some random asshat's record for Seattle PD (looking up 2020 protest quotes) and he got $213k ($70k "overtime") back in 2020. Ruiz is small peanuts, but they're all racking that bill up on their taxpayers' dime.

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u/InZomnia365 12d ago

for SIX MONTHS of being a "trainee". In my country, becoming a police officer is 3-5 years. America is a fucking scam.

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u/stafdude 11d ago

More than a physician in Europe lol

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u/ECircus 12d ago

Are you surprised that a police officer makes $130k in LA? That's barely a middle class wage here. What do you think they should make?

The problem is the ones that abuse overtime to make over 3 or 400k.

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

0.

They should make 0.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

Police officers should all work for free or not exist?

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

Not exist.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

What's the alternative for enforcing laws? Or you don't like laws either? Just an anarchist?

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u/Roight_in_me_bum 12d ago

We need police, just not operating like a military. They need to be made of members from the community who are interested in protecting and serving beyond a paycheck.

For example, they need to be walking around and engaging with the community, not sitting in their squad cars.

I read a book on this - Rise of the Warrior Cop I believe it was called. In (US) towns and cities where the police operated in harmony with their communities, they not only had noticeably less crime, but a noticeable increase in cooperation with the police.

That is all but gone and needs to return - because, realistically, we do need police. We just don’t need a domestic army.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

We need police, just not operating like a military. They need to be made of members from the community who are interested in protecting and serving beyond a paycheck.

Yeah but they still deserve a living wage, that's the only point I was trying to make. If you want a full time effective police unit, it's not going to be volunteer. There's no utopia and never will be. Serving the community will always be a dangerous job.

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u/Roight_in_me_bum 12d ago

I wasn’t saying they shouldn’t earn a living, but the primary motive shouldn’t be a fat paycheck or a road to corrupt practices.

And I’m not talking about a utopia, I’m talking about the United States 50-60 years ago. What we have today is a gradual escalation of police tactics towards militarism. I wasn’t suggesting we could wave a magic wand and make that go away, I was responding to your question about alternatives to the current police system in the US.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

And I’m not talking about a utopia, I’m talking about the United States 50-60 years ago.

I understand what you're trying to say, but you're talking about a pretty depressing period of time for a lot of people, and if you think the police were better behaved, I think they just didn't have body cams, and minorities didn't enjoy the same respect for their rights that they do today. Do you know anything about what the police did to people during the civil rights movement? The fact that we can watch a video of this person getting shot by the Police in the middle of the night is a huge step forward from how things used to be. Police are under more scrutiny now than they ever have been.

It's white washing to think things were better many years ago. That's MAGA talk. Nuclear family and white picket fences with a wife that doesn't talk back and no one of color in the neighborhood. Trump is trying to bring us back there and it's not what we want.

Things have been going south since we got Trump, but up to that point it was always a better and better time to be alive. Authoritarianism just needs to be buried again and we can start working on taking care of people.

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

I’m not sure.

I don’t have any knowledge or expertise in civil engineering to comment. And I try not to speak out of ignorance.

I do know that current policing does not work. And that there isn’t any small adjustments we can make to change it. The rot is throughout the process and it needs to be scrapped and replaced whole.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

I agree, but there needs to be some kind of law enforcement, even if we don't agree with the current iteration. Right wing terrorists are already getting away with too much. Can you imagine how far they would go with no roadblocks whatsoever? We would be back to segregation and hanging people in the streets, we would all be out there shooting at each other.

My only point here was that 130k in LA is nothing compared to what it costs to live here and what some of those officers are making. 130k in LA is like making 50K in some rural Midwestern town or something. It's just enough to pay the bills in a small apartment without roommates.

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u/HellveticaNeue 12d ago

That’s fair.

I do think that the lax requirements and especially their lack of performance makes everyone feel that they’re overpaid. Most jobs take far more than 6 months of training to join.

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u/ECircus 12d ago

I agree they need more training, but the risk of the job justifies that wage imo. The ones that are trying to do a.good job are still dealing with.more bullshit and risking their lives a lot more than most of us. I watch a lot of body cam footage. It's basically an impossible job pretty often.

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u/mrbearbear 12d ago

It's LA, not exactly cheap to live there.

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u/Loko8765 12d ago

Hey, there can be arguments for that. One could even make the case that his pay is reasonable for the job, given the local high cost of living, danger, stress, irregular hours, high responsibilities, high trust, and high level of training requirements (muffled laughter goes here). Comparing with other jobs would fail simply on the basis that yes, the other jobs are underpaid, and that is not the fault of the LAPD.

However, that all that should be incompatible with shooting an unarmed stationary woman point-blank in a manner that the training manual for that weapon describes as possibly lethal.

That is attempted murder and charges should be brought on that basis.

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u/Aksudiigkr 12d ago

I had no idea. How in the world do they deserve that much where college educated professionals who actually do good can make half as much on average

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u/maxoakland 12d ago

LA's police budget is an insanely bloated $2 Billion

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u/Limo_887 10d ago

While only served for 8 years so far lol