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St. Louis scrambles to pay fire department after high-ranking police officers get raises 52%
By Rachel Lippmann0%
6/18/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Pessimism Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 29.2% saturation with 191 hits. Analysis detected 1,258 faulty-reasoning hits from 654 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 51.5% and a BS Rank of 52% (9,947 of 20,517 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 51.50% of the article peer group.
The command staff of the St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department is going to see a major pay increase.
The state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners on Wednesday voted 4-1 to approve raises of up to 22% for lieutenants, captains, majors and lieutenant colonels, which will take effect on June 28.
Mayor Cara Spencer was the lone no vote.
While lower-ranking officers had secured raises of 7% in 2025 and 2026, commanders had not seen a pay increase since a small raise in 2023.
“This is human-being deferred maintenance right now that’s happening right now,” said Chief Robert Tracy.
“I’ve talked to my colleagues about the salaries and the compression that this police department has endured over the last several years.
This is nothing short of remarkable at how bad it is and how we've let it go for so long.”
According to data put together by the police department, some SLMPD sergeants can make as much or more than a lieutenant in a year because sergeants are eligible for overtime.
That leaves people uninterested in getting promoted because they would make less money, Tracy said.
In addition, all but seven of the department’s lieutenants and all of its captains, majors and lieutenant colonels have 20 years with the department, which means they can retire and go work elsewhere while still getting benefits from the SLMPD.
“That’s a lot of talent that can leave right now because they’re not getting compensated right,” Tracy said.
“Some are talking about that right now.”
Most commanders will still be paid less than their counterparts in St.
Louis County and Kansas City with the approved raise.
The approval of the pay hikes triggers identical raises for higher-ranking members of the St.
Louis Fire Department, setting off a mad scramble by the city to find the $1.45 million needed to cover those salary costs in the budget that starts July 1.
The police board had delayed a vote on the raises to give Spencer and her administration time to start those conversations, but her anger with the timing was still palpable on Wednesday.
“Policing doesn’t happen well in a vacuum, and unfortunately the decisions of this board are happening in a vacuum,” Spencer said.
“They’re not happening in concert and collaboration with the other city departments that we, as a community, rely on in order to have a safe and healthy and successful city.”
Spencer said after the meeting that voting against the raises was “heartbreaking.”
“I work with so many of the leadership in our police department, but really how this came about is so just wildly disrespectful to the process of the budget that the city has to go through every year,” she said.
The city’s fiscal oversight board, Estimate and Apportionment, will meet Thursday morning to make the needed changes to the fiscal year 2027 budget.
Spencer said the city had identified a “couple of one-time sources of funds to get us through this year,” but did not provide any details.
“I’m not ready to talk about them tonight,” she said, but added, “it’s not going to be easy on anyone, including the police department.”
The other members of E&A, aldermanic president Megan Green and Comptroller Donna Baringer, did not respond to questions about how they would like to fund the fire department raises.
Though the police department is able to fund the command staff raises with the $220 million they are expected to receive in the upcoming budget, officials continue to assert they are still receiving $30 million less than required.
Under state law, the police board officially outlines its expenses to the city in February, and the city is obligated to appropriate that much money.
Spencer said she was concerned the police board might take legal action to force a larger appropriation of money, but said she would wait and see what happens.
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