Asheville Police Captain Earned $308,000 in 2024, Outpacing Police Chief

Jonathan Brown wasn't the city manager, the city attorney, or the police chief. He was a police captain, and in 2024 he was the highest-paid employee on Asheville's entire municipal payroll, collecting $308,247 in total compensation, $177,000 of it in overtime.

City payroll documents obtained through public-records requests show Brown's earnings exceeded then-Police Chief Mike Lamb's total compensation by $115,000. Lamb, a 26-year APD veteran who accepted the permanent chief role after serving as interim since December 2023, earned just over $193,000. Six sworn officers in all, including three lieutenants, out-earned the department's own top executive that year.

Brown was not alone at the top. Jacquelyn Stepp, now serving as the department's interim chief, earned $226,753 in 2024, including more than $50,000 in overtime while she was deputy chief. Five of Asheville's top 10 city earners were police officers. Across the five-year span from 2021 through 2025, both Brown and a fellow officer, Silberman, accumulated more than $1 million each in total compensation.

The overtime surge was structural, not incidental. APD's sworn force ran roughly 30 percent understaffed from 2021 through 2025 as officers left in large numbers, leaving those who remained to absorb the gap in hours. In April 2021, the department responded by expanding overtime eligibility: captains, previously classified as exempt from overtime compensation, became eligible for time-and-a-half for most extra-hours work and double time for certain downtown duties. That policy decision turbocharged the paychecks of the officers who took the shifts.

Tropical Storm Helene accelerated the trend further. The storm killed 43 people in Buncombe County in September 2024, and the emergency response requirements spiked officers' hours through the end of the year, pushing captains' overtime to its peak. A 2025 policy change subsequently capped some hourly overtime rates, and Stepp, after becoming interim chief, tightened restrictions further.

The fiscal toll is visible in budget lines. APD's salary and wage budget climbed from approximately $16.1 million in fiscal year 2022 to more than $21 million, a jump exceeding 30 percent, while the overall city budget grew by roughly 27 percent over the same period. At its worst, the department had 87 openings out of 238 sworn officer positions, a vacancy rate surpassing 36 percent. Nationally, about 70 percent of law enforcement agencies reported difficulty hiring in 2024, and Charlotte, which offers higher base salaries and lower housing costs, remained a direct competitor for the recruits Asheville needed.

The overtime model kept patrol shifts covered in the short term, but the payroll records raise a harder question for City Council and the City Manager's Office: when a captain's overtime check alone exceeds what the police chief earns in base salary, the department is no longer managing a staffing problem. It is financing one.