A Criminal Gap in Salary

Americans clearly want a war on drugs, yet agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration earn little more than half of what their counterparts make on some local police departments. The pay gap makes it difficult to recruit and retain DEA, FBI and other federal agents in expensive cities like Los Angeles, Boston and New York.

The gap begins at the entry level. All DEA agents are required to have college degrees, but the starting pay is $24,366 a year. College-educated rookies earn $38,000 in the Los Angeles Police Department; an officer with a high school diploma starts at $32,400. The DEA’s low starting salary forced one recruit to take a $4,000 pay cut from her previous job at a supermarket checkout counter.

The salary inequities are most evident on the Los Angeles Gang Task Force, where DEA agents and local officers work side by side on drug busts. The federal agents face the same dangers, but may earn less than half of the $60,000 that a narcotics detective can make with overtime.

DEA agents aren’t alone at the low end of the pay scale. The salaries of 56,000 federal law enforcement employees are under study by the National Commission on Law Enforcement. The commission is expected to report to Congress in January, and the news is not expected to be good. Early findings indicate that 92% of 700 state and local agencies pay higher starting salaries than federal agents get.

Federal agents suffer most when they relocate to expensive cities and have to find housing. Faced with 300 vacancies in New York City, the FBI boosted agents’ salaries by 25% and offered a $20,000 “housing bonus” last year. A similar pay scale is under study in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.

Some overtime would help, but a cap limits overtime pay to $6,565 per year. Congress recently approved legislation to boost the overtime cap to 25% of annual income. The increase is a start, but it is no substitute for an equitable wage.