(The Heart Sq.) – West Virginia ranked as one of many worst states to be a police officer, based on a report carried out by the monetary web site WalletHub on “2022’s Greatest & Worst States to Be a Police Officer.”
West Virginia ranked fourth to final and scored a 29.24 out of a doable 100. The research ranked every of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The one three states to carry out worse than West Virginia have been Arkansas, Hawaii and Alaska.
The state’s worst class was alternative and competitors, which appeared into the variety of officers, wages and earnings development, amongst different elements. On this space, West Virginia was the fifth worst state. It additionally carried out poorly within the legislation enforcement coaching necessities class, being the seventh worst state.
Within the third class, which measured job hazards and protections, West Virginia carried out higher, however was nonetheless effectively under common at 35. One difficulty that helped decrease its rating was having the third worst per-capita police safety spending within the nation.
“West Virginia is the fourth worst state to be a police officer,” Jill Gonzalez, an analyst for WalletHub, instructed The Heart Sq..
”It at present has a small variety of legislation enforcement officers per capita, which can stay low based on the projections for 2028,” Gonzalez mentioned. “The state additionally has a low common beginning wage for cops, solely about [$30,000] and never lots of earnings development. Plus, there are not any legal guidelines on the usage of deadly drive by legislation enforcement officers, which results in numerous individuals killed by police per capita. Different elements that contributed to West Virginia’s rating have been the massive variety of pursuit-related fatalities and the low state and native police safety bills per capita.”
Lawmakers handed laws to provide state troopers a $10,000 pay elevate earlier this 12 months, however the report primarily appeared into 2021 numbers, earlier than the pay elevate was authorized.
One of the best performing states have been Connecticut, California, Illinois, the District of Columbia and Maryland.