City Solutions Blog

Public safety is the largest, most important, and most expensive function for municipal governments. First responders make up the lion’s share of a city workforce, and public safety is by far the largest budgetary expense for cities. 

In the last several years, Ohio cities have made historic investments into local law enforcement to respond to the safety needs in our communities and challenges of recruiting and retaining high-quality law enforcement professionals. 

Last month, City Solutions focused on one innovative way the City of Warren is working collaboratively across the community to increase trust between its police officers and community members. This month, we are looking at what Ohio’s 6 largest cities have been doing to improve recruiting and retention of police officers over the past 3-5 years.

Since 2020, all 6 of the largest cities in Ohio – Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo – have significantly raised their starting and average salaries for police officers and trainees. 

All of these cities have negotiated significant wage and benefit increases in their most recent contracts with their police and fire unions, resulting in wage increases in the double digits for all 6 cities over the life of the new contracts.

These wage increases come with significant expenses for the cities. The City of Cincinnati’s goal in its last contract negotiation was to ensure that every police officer in the city working at the time of the new contract would be making $100,000 or more within 5 years. This will cost the city an additional $66 million over the 3 year contract. The City of Columbus will invest an additional $80 million in its public safety forces over 3 years. All together, police wage increases in these 6 cities over the past 3-5 years will result in them collectively spending an additional $82 million annually to maintain salary increases.

These are smart investments. Over the same time period, violent crime rates have dropped in Ohio cities. Over the last four years, eight of the ten largest cities in Ohio have seen significant reductions in the violent crime rate, according to the FBI Crime Data Explorer. 

From 2020 to 2024, the violent crime rate decreased in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Parma, Canton, and Youngstown. Ohio’s largest cities have averaged an over 9% drop in violent crime over the past 4 years. Cities are also using data, technology, and gun crime intelligence tools in collaboration with state and federal partners to investigate and solve crime more quickly and effectively. 

Wage increases, initiatives like Warren’s Police and Community Trust Initiative, investments in better benefits and more vacation time, and cooperative initiatives with state and federal partners to use technology to investigate and solve crimes more quickly all contribute to bringing down crime rates across the board. There is more to be done, but Ohio cities have risen to the task of investing in the men and women who keep Ohio safe. To maintain these investments and continue to compete to recruit new officers, this momentum must continue.