Pros
Benefits. Good Health insurance. Fair amount of time off if your supervisor lets you put it in or you accumulate enough time to get seniority to be able to use it on the days you want.
Cons
Awful treatment by most supervisors although most of those old school men and women are probably on their way out. Toxic abusive behavior, especially if you’re in a specialized unit, your bosses will want stats and will constantly threaten you with “going back to patrol” if you don’t constantly arrest everything that moves. That mindset still persists but hopefully with time those people will leave and more educated and reasonable people will move into management positions. The department eats itself alive. You will be charged for any minuscule mistake or even for the mistakes of people around you. If you are a proactive officer you will get sued, people (criminals and crazy anti police leftists) will try to tarnish your reputation even when you’ve never even bent the rules and work with the utmost integrity. The department will treat you like just another number and you will be used to fill shorting staffages, your days off will be cancelled, requests for days off will be denied. If you’re a hard worker you will be rewarded with your days off spent in court. There is a culture of working overtime in the department- where overtime is treated better than time off, and you will be guilted into working all the time, The Baltimore Police Academy is a joke. Luckily I went to a real police academy in another jurisdiction score coming to Baltimore. It had just started become a bit more professional- but basically everyone that was hired before 2020 went through a complete half assed academy where they graduated people who don’t know the law, and don’t know what the hell they are doing. You will be working with those people, and they will be a liability to you.