By Adam Pagnucco.
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 35, which represents Montgomery County police officers, has released a statement on my post of yesterday about police staffing. That post notes worsening problems in police staffing and the possibility that a pension benefit increase next year will lead to additional attrition of officers.
The FOP released the following statement on X with a link to my post.
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March 18, 2024
Gaithersburg, MD- Today, the County Council Public Safety Committee held a briefing on police staffing. This update should come as no surprise to the committee members, as Lodge 35 has been extremely vocal with the public and elected officials in regards to the reduced staffing in the Montgomery County police department. During the last contract negotiations Lodge 35 bargained delayed pension enhancements in an effort to slow the attrition rate of officers electing to retire. Data produced in today’s report shows that this plan has worked as designed.
Unfortunately, the number of newly hired officers continues to be stagnant, with approximately 20 recruits per academy class. A recent Lodge 35 internal survey of the members who are eligible to receive the 20K starting bonus showed that the starting bonus was not a major factor in the decision to join MCPD. We have to be more creative and intentional in how we hire police officers in Montgomery County. We need to offer law enforcement as a career path earlier in education and use SRO’s to provide the instruction and guidance for our younger generation. We also must make the law enforcement profession attractive again by offering a wage and benefit package that is commensurate with the risk and increased demands of the job, created by the intense scrutiny by politicians. Furthermore, we have to find a way to improve morale, as morale continues to plummet and has reached an all-time low. The low morale is driven by laws, enacted or proposed, that have had negative effects on the way law enforcement officers do their job. As we stated in the past and state now, our best recruiting tool is the officers that work in this county, and when officers who work here don’t recommend our agency to others, you get the results we are seeing here in Montgomery County.
Through collective bargaining, we will continue to advocate the best method(s) to attract and retain the most professional and well trained law enforcement officers. We believe the best was to accomplish this is by increased enhancements to wages and benefits. In the meantime, it is imperative that law makers take a deep look into repealing previously enacted legislation and rejecting any newly proposed laws which dictate police policy that has negatively affected the safety of the public. We are running out of time to right this sinking ship.
Lee Holland, President
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The FOP’s statements about compensation are unsurprising. Virtually all unions try to get raises for their members. The county has made progress on police pay, with collective bargaining agreements containing combined general wage adjustments, service increments and salary scale adjustments of 13.5% in FY23, 10.5% in FY24 and 7.0% in FY25 in addition to the above-mentioned pension increase.
What I found interesting was the FOP’s call for repeal of previously passed legislation. I asked FOP Lodge 35 President Lee Holland which specific laws they would like to see repealed. Following is his reply.
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We have been asking council members to repeal the following laws:
Use of force – redundant to now state law. Different from Supreme Court standard and AG opinion couldn’t define how the new standard would apply.
Random review – created for an event that was a citizen complaint and didn’t need random review. Council’s own PAC [Policing Advisory Commission] voted to repeal. This is a two person unit that can be better used elsewhere in the department. Current reviews are only yielding minor policy violations such as not writing a report which is causing low morale. We already have mandatory review for numerous events.
New consent search bill – there is no data to suggest what Councilman Jawando is suggesting with racial disparities in consent searches. This bill like many others claims that Montgomery County police are racists which is completely false. Not only does this bill again cause morale issues, this bill will make Montgomery County less safe as illegal guns and drugs are confiscated through consent searches which are legal per the 4th amendment.
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Laws don’t get repealed by themselves. Either the county executive or county council members must introduce legislation to accomplish that. We shall see if there is any interest in either the executive or legislative branches in reversing course on their years-long path of curbing police powers.