"Cops" is a broad term. For police officers in general, $120K/year base salary is extremely high, and not representative of the average. To get your conclusion you have to compare the highest paying jobs for police officers with the average paying jobs for software developers.

Here are more details from the BLS about 'Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers' for 2013: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

mean annual wage - $58,720
50 percentile - $56,130
90 percentile - $90,700
New Jersey mean wage - $88,220
California mean wage - $86,040
San Francisco mean wage - $99,000

A lieutenant falls in the category "first-line supervisors of police and detectives": http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes331012.htm .

mean annual wage - $82,710
50 percentile - $79,190
90 percentile - $126,320
New Jersey mean wage - $121,670
California mean wage - $122,680
Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $139,980
New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division - $110,580
San Francisco mean wage - $134,600

(It's very likely that your relative works in one of the major metropolitan areas, as those are almost the only ones with a mean salary around or above $120K/year.)

For "Software developers, Applications" see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm :

mean annual wage - $96,260
50 percentile - $92,660
90 percentile - $143,540
California mean wage - $112,180
Washington mean wage - $111,380
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $131,270
San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City mean wage - $114,400
Seattle-Bellevue-Everett mean wage - $112,990

The states with the lowest mean wage for software developers (ID, ND, AR, KY, etc.) pay $49,620 to 80,470. This is comparable to the national mean wage for police officers.

For "Software Developers, Systems Software", see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151133.htm the wages are higher:

mean annual wage - $104,480
50 percentile - $101,410
90 percentile - $150,760
California - $119,180
New Jersey - $114,630
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $132,030
Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $119,810

Now that there are numbers, I'll evaluate your claims:

1) "Cops make crazy money"

I don't know what "crazy money" is, but it's clear that only around 15% of first-line supervisors of patrol officers, and only a handful of patrol officers, make 120K/year. Your relative is on the very high end of a lieutenant's base salary, and probably lives in one of the major cities.

2) "Unless you work for some hick department"

I don't know what constitutes a "hick department". The 75 percentile for patrol officers is $73,710 and the 75 percentile for first-line supervisors is $102,600. There are about 6 officers for each supervisor, so I'll say that non-hick cops make around

(73710*635380 + 102600*101320) / (635380 + 101320) = $77,683/year.

There are also higher paying police officer jobs, but I think this covers enough of the category "cops" to be meaningful.

It's hard to say what overtime might bring in on top of that. I don't know how many police officers get overtime.

3) "coders outside of the Bay Area"

I don't know what you mean by "coder". I chose "software developer" in the above. There's also "computer programmer", but the BLS says that there are only 6,000 computer programmers in the Silicon Valley area, and 28,980 "software developer, applications" (and a further 23,810 "software developer, systems software"). There are other categories as well, but those seemed the best fit for your statement.

The BLS doesn't list "outside of the Bay Area", but it does show that California pays the most of any states, and it lists the total number of software developers (I'm using the "applications" one) in California, in the US, and their mean wage. This is enough to figure out the average non-California mean wage:

(643830*96260 - 95510 * 112180) / (643830-95510) = $93,486/year

If I further remove the second highest state, Washington, I get $91,612/year.

I trust that this is a close enough approximation to your statement?

4) "a cop will easily make more than 80% in coders outside of the Bay Area"

That does not appear to be the case. While certainly some cops will make more than 80% of coders, in general, coders will make about $15K/year more than police officers.

Again, overtime may change these numbers, but not enough to say that "cops" as a general category get paid "crazy high" income compared to software developers working the same number of hours without overtime.

5) "unlike in software, you don't get nuked when you get old"

The BLS doesn't have those numbers. The career paths are different. To get the $120K/year job requires being at least a first-line supervisor. A software developer is not a supervisor.

For example, a software developer might become a "Computer and Information Systems Manager", which has a mean wage of $132,570, and the 90 percentile is above $187,199/year. (It's off the BLS charts, which stops at $90/hour.) The mean wage for the 10,660 such managers in Silicon Valley is $183,870.

It's therefore very hard for me to figure out the career numbers. I would love to see the analysis you did to draw your conclusion.