A civic accountability infographic series · Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester police pay and the city’s missing taxpayer accountability.
Worcester’s highest-paid police officer earned 4.3× the city’s median household income in 2025 — in a city where 17.6% of residents live in poverty. Nine panels on how a $60.5 M police budget becomes a $68.8 M payroll, and how that payroll lands in a Gateway City whose fiscal capacity is catastrophically mismatched to what it pays for.
One officer. 4.3× the median household.
Worcester’s highest-paid police officer’s 2025 gross pay, compared to the city’s median household income in the same year.
The budget says $60.5M. The payroll says $68.8M.
Actual 2024 Worcester PD compensation across regular pay, private details, overtime, and other channels. The voted budget line stops short of the full bar.
How an $80k base becomes $265k.
A representative top-paid officer’s 2024 compensation, layer by layer. Pensionable layers compound into a lifetime pension; overtime and detail pay do not.
One in six WPD. One in a hundred Worcester residents.
86 WPD employees cleared $200,000 in 2024 — roughly 13× the rate at which Worcester residents do.
One budget, two choices.
Worcester and Springfield spend nearly the same on police. Springfield fields 46% more sworn officers for the money — so Worcester pays ~43% more per officer.
Bay Area prices, Central Mass economy.
Top reported officer pay across US cities of roughly Worcester’s size, plotted against the national BLS benchmarks. Worcester sits nearly 3× the 90th-percentile line.
17.6% poverty.
The people paying the bill and the people cashing it live in separate economic realities.
The salary is one number. The pension is another.
Published gross is about $129K. Employer pension normal cost, family health, and retiree-health OPEB push true annual cost to ≈1.4× that number.
$4.8M in settlements. $0 on the budget line.
Misconduct settlements paid from the Worcester general fund since 2006 — none of them visible in the $60.5M WPD budget.