City of San Jose / Police / Police Sergeant
Job-title file
Enforce laws and maintain public safety — patrol, respond to incidents, investigate crimes, and make arrests.
180 employees hold this title in Police. Median total compensation for the role is $389,959, above the department median of $204,814.
What the records show
How total compensation varies among the 180 people in this role. Even for one job title, pay differs with seniority, step, overtime, and tenure. Each bar is a pay range; the far-right bar collects the highest earners.
Compared with the local labor market
Across all employers in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area, the median wage for First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives — about 370 people — is $163,700. Police pays a median base salary of $194,622 for this role, 19% above that figure — about the 66th percentile of local pay for the occupation.
The bar is the range of annual wages for First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives across every employer in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area, from the 10th to the 90th percentile, with the middle 50% highlighted. The marker shows Police’s median base salary for this role. Both figures are base pay only.
And across the country
Nationwide, the median wage for First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives — about 154,610 people — is $106,040. Police’s median base salary is 84% above that national figure, above the 90th percentile of pay for the occupation nationally.
Local and national wages differ for reasons beyond how well a job pays — cost of living, the mix of employers, and local demand for the occupation all move the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA range relative to the national one.
Computed over the 177 of 180 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 Police is $389,959, 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.
Compare jurisdictions
This role is reported in 21 jurisdictions. In City of San Jose, the median of $389,959 ranks #1 of 21. See Police Sergeant across all of City of San Jose →
Median total compensation for comparable Police Sergeantroles in other jurisdictions. Titles are matched by normalized name across sources, not identical job classification, and pay is not cost-of-living adjusted. Each bar links to that jurisdiction’s page for the role.
Record list
Page 1
Police Sergeant/Police
Source-specific fields
Denise Mullen works as a Police Sergeant for Police. Denise earned $226,411 in 2025.