About 1,600 Georgia police officers and another 1,600 bailiffs, jailers and correctional officers are paid so poorly that they've qualified for food stamps, a study says.
The Georgia Sheriffs Association wants to fix that by raising the starting pay of all police officers and sheriff's deputies in the state to $46,000. That's where the state has set the starting salary for state troopers, a 20 percent raise after years of paying them miserable wages.
If it’s good enough for the State Patrol, the sheriffs say, it’s good enough for us!
The problem: most cops and deputies are paid by their local city or county government, not by the state. And most city councils and county commissioners are more frightened of raising taxes than they are of facing a group of armed and unhappy people.
