Toronto Traffic cop one of city's best paid

List reveals 1,006 employees of Toronto police make more than $100,000 annually

Michele Henry
CRIME REPORTER

You may have met him at your driver's side window.

And if you went to court to fight a ticket handed to you by Const. Michael Thompson – a traffic officer with five years on the job – you could have been one of the motorists who helped him become the eighth highest-paid employee in the Toronto Police Service last year.

A list naming police service employees who made more than $100,000 last year revealed Thompson earned $161,892.35, including overtime. That's about double his base salary, which falls between $75,865 and $82,695.

"He worked extremely hard," police spokesperson Mark Pugash said yesterday. "But this is monitored on a very close basis. There are very detailed supervisory mechanisms in place."

Last year, 1,006 police employees topped the list, which is intended to shine light on public sector salaries. Among them, 628 Toronto Police Association members – ranks of staff sergeant and below – earned base salaries below $100,000.

According to reports, Thompson earned more than $150,000 in 2007. Constables Abdulhameed Virani, Alan Cohen, Eduardo Madeira, Guido Cristiano and several others have graced the list for more than one year in the recent past.

Declining to be specific, Thompson said he earned his salary through regular hours of duty plus overtime required for such things as court appearances.

"It takes a lot of hours and a lot of work to get there," he said. "The hours don't come for nothing. Nobody is giving us free money here."

Emmett O'Reilly, a technical analyst employed by the service made the list with $103,136.48. "It was a busy year," the 32-year-old said. "Feels good." Seven years on the force, he designs and reviews systems, including CCTV operations and cameras in cruisers.

The five highest-paid people in the service are Chief Bill Blair, at $299,861.11; deputy chiefs Kim Derry, Keith Forde and Anthony Warr, who each earn $214,057.19; and chief administrative officer Tony Veneziano, who pulled in $212.247.59 last year.

The number of employees on the 2008 list is up from 769 in 2007 and 708 in 2006.

Pugash said as years go by, the base pay of more and more officers nears $100,000, and it doesn't take much to push them over. Salaries for detective sergeants range from $95,000 to $102,000. Sergeants and detectives earn $86,000 to $93,000.

The $100,000 threshold was established in 1996 and is not adjusted for inflation. That amount is equivalent to about $128,000 in today's dollars, and 114 police employees exceeded that sum in 2008.

The salaries include base pay, overtime, court time and retroactive pay, acting pay and money from any other settlement, such as legal or medical. The salaries do not include paid duty, when an off-duty officer is compensated by businesses for outside work.

With files from Jason Miller