Police Detective

Across all employers in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area, the median wage for Detectives and Criminal Investigators — about 1,110 people — is $110,150. Boston Police Department pays a median base salary of $129,284 for this role, 17% above that figure — about the 62nd percentile of local pay for the occupation.

Computed over the 254 of 265 people in this role paid at least $25,000in base salary. The rest are part-year or part-time records, whose actual pay isn’t comparable to a full-time annual wage.

Median total compensation for this role at Boston Police Department is $213,203, which includes overtime and employer-paid benefits. The benchmark above excludes both, so total compensation is deliberately not compared against it.

Benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) covers all employers in the area — private, non-profit, and government alike — so this is a comparison against the whole local labor market for the occupation, not against private-sector pay. OEWS wages are straight-time pay and exclude overtime, shift differentials, and employer-paid benefits, so the government figure shown here is base pay on the same basis. Total compensation is not comparable to it. Job titles are matched to the closest standard occupation, so the comparison is between similar work rather than an identical job classification.

This role is reported in 2 jurisdictions. In City of Boston, the median of $213,203 ranks #2 of 2. See Police Detective across all of City of Boston →