Upstate NY Police Chief Out Earns Highest Paid Governor
When police Chief Raymond McCullagh retired as head of the police department in Clarkstown, NY in April 2021, he made $292,228.
That’s more than the $225,000 New York Gov. Kathy Hochul makes as the highest paid governor in the country.
McCullagh’s salary is according to the payroll records for Town of Clarkstown in upstate Rockland County, with a population of 86,000.
The acting police chief, Jeffrey Wanamaker, made $275,109 in 2021 as police captain, according to the payroll records. That also exceeds the New York governor's salary.
The average 2021 pay in the 162-member police department was $152,557. Including McCullagh and Wanamaker, eight police made over $200,000 in 2021.
Then-chief Peter Noonan made news in 2010 with his $301,000 salary. At the time, he was the highest paid municipal employee in all of New York State.
Clarkstown isn’t exactly a hotbed of violent crime. It has been rated one of the safest towns in America, and Noonan's salary dwarfed that of then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who earned around $200,000.
Noonan’s police force was 170 officers for about 84,000 residents, while Kelly commanded about 35,000 officers for more than 8 million residents.
Currently, NYPD officers get a starting pay of $42,500, with salary jumping to $85,292 after 5 ½ years. In NYC, police not only die fighting actual violent crime, but are targeted and killed as victims themselves time and time again.
That’s far from the picture painted of Clarkstown. That’s great for the people who live there and the police that patrol there.
But in a town with as little crime as there is, the town’s long history of high-paid police should come to an end.
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