Paper 4, Draft 3.

Police officers, the protectors of our city. The ones we call upon first when there's a disturbance in the peace within the society. Police officers assist, protect and defend those in our community and are willing to risk their lives to do so everyday. So the question is, are they really paid enough to do the job they risk their lives to do? Some would argue yes, they are extremely underpaid. There are some who counter-argue that and believe some police are over-paid for their job.

The average salary of a police officer in the United States this year is $30,000 a year. Most commonly a police officer will work a 12 hour shift a day. Of course the day to day beat of an officer can have all types of activity happen within it, whether it be a high risk situation or a simple traffic stop or even directing traffic, law enforcement faces potential danger everyday. They are constantly on the move. Why are their salaries so relatively low for all that they do? Many factors go into this, the fact that there are so many police officers can usually make it a more difficult task to pay all of them. The taxes of American citizens are what pays our law enforcement. There are also the pay of other government employed jobs such as firefighters and teachers who make similar salaries as law enforcement in America.

In America, it has always been a big debate on whether or not law enforcement officers are underpaid and whether or not they should be paid more. Though many citizens believe that our police are very much so underpaid, there are some who believe the government may be overpaying the officers or that they are simply paid appropriately for the jobs they conduct on a daily basis. Those who do not support the raising of law enforcement salary argue that some tax payers cant afford to pay more for our police to have a higher salary. “So many police officers guard our cities, with nothing to do. We don't need as many as we have and they are quite overpaid for what they do” (debate.org, “are police officers underpaid”).

Our cities do have very many officers and many of them may not have much to deal with on a day to day basis but this does not mean a dangerous life threatening situation will not occur at some point in an officers career. Paying officers more for what they do is an appropriate gesture in todays society. Lowering the roster of officers is not an appropriate move just to pay them more. Lowering the level of defense against crime in a city would only make for more danger to the police in a community. Police should be paid more and the ranks should remain the same.