A police officer walked into a man’s home — mistaking it for her own — and killed him, police say...

That's part of the problem. The most fulfilling and important jobs to our society - teachers, cops, social works, etc. - are underpaid (and many times undertrained) for their work and importance which adds another layer to issues with corruption within those respective fields.

The city hired a police chief for over 200k and pay their starting cops 38k while abusing the pension fund. DPD has some of the best training for the surrounding cities. Some of the surrounding suburbs start their cops at 50k+. What she did was wrong, but they are overworked and underpaid by corrupt politicians who are elected and reelected by the cities' inhabitants. There is a lot of blame to go around.

I agree with you about police officers pay Cpl. Near 25 or 30 years ago the head of HR devised and I do mean devised a new pay scale for police and fire. Some called it a pay scale others called iit a pay scheme that overall would bankrupt the city sooner or later. Which is near the truth. So the city with their infinant wisdom ( yeah right) refused to adhere to that f'ed up pay system. The Mayor and the whole City Council saw it for it was. Why Miss HR didn't get fired I'll never know. She sure screwed the City. And to add insult to injury that same HR Division Mngr was made City Manager. She had a hand in ensuring that Dallas Cowboy Football team not come to Dallas. Which has cost the City hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Enough to pay police aand fire. In the late '80's when realestate took it's great loss thus affecting the tax base the City had no funds to give police and fire a raise. So to that end every City employee was denied a pay raise for 3 years. On the 4th year the City actually took 2% of our pay. Police and Fire got their raises but off the backs of us the other workers. Maybe few people outside the City knew what was happening if Police and Fire knew they never on let on. No thanks no acknowledgement nothing. Those years without raises the takeaway of 2% affected the lives of hundreds and hundreds of lives. It effected my retirement pay to this day. A city employee's retirement is based on his three highest consecutive earning years. If I. would have had those 4 years pay added to my pay I know my monthly retirement would be higher. Yes, police pay should be higher but should it be done the way Dallas did it?? Off the backs of all the other employees.