By Adam Pagnucco.
A new analysis prepared by county council staff paints a grim picture of public safety in Montgomery County. The basic message is two-fold: crime continues to rise as the police department remains “critically understaffed.”
Council public safety analyst Susan Farag begins her analysis of the county executive’s recommended FY24 police budget with this opening statement.
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The FY24 Recommended Operating Budget provides a 7% expenditure increase, primarily to fund compensation, but it also reflects a net service reduction. The Department remains critically understaffed, impacting service delivery. Service reduction is more likely to widen racial disparities in community safety.
The Department has had more than 20 police reform mandates placed on it, and the Executive has begun implementing reform recommendations from the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the ELEFA Departmental Audit.
The budget adds 12 new civilian positions to support audit recommendations and school safety. Recruiting and retention challenges remain.
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Let’s examine some of Farag’s key points.
Crime keeps rising
Back in February, I used the county’s crime database to demonstrate that both violent and property crime have risen in recent years. Farag finds that this trend has continued, writing:
For the first quarter of 2023, both violent and non-violent crime have increased. Violent crime has increased by 7.2% for the first quarter of the year, compared to the same time last year. Non-violent crime has increased by 3.7%. Firearms recoveries are down three percent from the same time period last year, with 323 gun recoveries, of which 32 are privately manufactured firearms or PMFs (ghost guns).
She also printed the chart below comparing the first quarters of the past five years.
Elrich’s budget actually reduces police service
The executive’s recommended budget adds 12 civilian positions but no sworn positions. It contains $2.5 million in positive service impacts, but they are more than offset by $3.6 million in negative service impacts. Farag posted the table below to illustrate this balance.
Most of the increase in the recommended police budget is comprised of $24 million more for compensation. Elrich is recommending raises for police union members of 7.0-10.5% plus $1,500 lump sums.
Vacancies are rampant
Farag writes:
In order to assess department budgets for potential personnel savings, Council requested a vacancy run by department. As of March, the Department had 274 total vacancies, which represent about $30 million in personnel costs. Ninety-eight of these positions have been vacant longer than a year. It is noted that these vacancy totals differ from information provided by the Police Department during recent Public Safety Committee briefings. For example, the vacancy run shows 166 vacant sworn positions, rather than the 108 most recently provided by the Department.
The patrol district vacancy rate is 12% overall and is highest in Wheaton’s fourth district (17%) and Bethesda’s second district (16%).
Farag listed 46 positions as being vacant for more than two years. Thirty of them were Senior Public Safety Emergency Communications Specialists. Farag does not make this connection explicit, but I wonder if these long-term vacancies are related to the increasing average response times shown below since these positions are located in the 911 Emergency Communication Center.
Farag concludes: “If the Department cannot increase both recruitment and retention, it faces a 239-officer shortage by 2025.” That’s up from 166 sworn vacancies now. The county currently has an authorized sworn complement of 1,281.
People of color and young people are more likely to be victims of violent crime
Back in February, I found that rates of violent crime and property crime were higher in zip codes with high Black and Latino population percentages, implying that people of color were more likely to be crime victims. Farag confirmed that hypothesis using geographic analysis of police districts and police reporting areas. She also printed the table below on demographics of violent crime victims in 2022.
Let’s do some math. According to the 2021 1-year American Community Survey (ACS), residents under age 18 accounted for 23% of the county’s population but were 35% of the county’s violent crime victims in 2022. And Black and Latino residents accounted for a combined 39% of the county’s population in 2021 but were 62% of violent crime victims in 2022.
This is a powerful indictment of the Defund the Police movement.
It will take a long time to rebuild the police department
Farag writes:
The recommended budget does not include any new sworn positions; however, Executive staff is hopeful that proposed signing bonuses and compensation increases make the Department more competitive with other regional police departments, that they will increase applicants and help retain current staff. If the Department sees meaningful increases in recruitment and retention, service delivery to the community will increase. Unfortunately, the County will not realize the impact of any additional staffing for about 12-18 months, as that is the length of time it takes to move applicants through the hiring and training process.
Let’s remember that Farag has been issuing warnings about police staffing for years. The county is thankfully no longer abolishing police positions as it did in FY22 but one of its senior managers admitted “the realities of a large number of existing vacancies and the long lead time to train and deploy new officers.”
So here is the big question. Assuming that the county’s big raises, new recruit bonuses and proposed police pension improvements eventually ease the police department’s staff shortage, will crime get even worse before that happens?