By Adam Pagnucco.
On Monday, the county council’s Public Safety Committee discussed the latest information about police staffing which I summarized in an earlier post. Plagued by high vacancies, soaring overtime and elevated crime rates, the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) now predicts a loss of almost ten percent of its officers due to imminent pension changes.
Police staffing has seen problems nationwide since 2019, although the national picture began to improve last year. That’s not necessarily the case in Montgomery County, where county leaders removed police officers from schools (and then sent them back in), abolished nearly 30 positions in FY22, restricted use of force and introduced legislation to limit constitutional consent searches. Council Member Will Jawando, author of several bills on police conduct, has stated openly that he supports defunding police as has Council Member Kristin Mink. Last spring, both Jawando and Mink voted against two tranches of funding that expanded the county’s nationally renowned drone program into Montgomery Village, Germantown, Gaithersburg and Bethesda.
One of Mink’s defund the police social media posts from before she was elected to the council. Does Mink still believe this?
Against this background, Police Chief Marc Yamada discussed his plans for the department’s staffing. But he did not limit his comments to MCPD’s internal operations. Speaking directly to three members of the council (Sidney Katz, Dawn Luedtke and Kristin Mink), Yamada said this:
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Police Chief Marc Yamada.
I have been actively engaging in conversations with supervisors and my executive staff on trying to change our culture, our use of overtime, officer stress and how it impacts our performance, holding everyone accountable because I simply can’t do this alone. Everyone here must step up and commit. And believe it or not, everyone in this room plays a role in what we’re trying to accomplish in terms of morale, staffing and retention and that includes each of the council members.
We take part in numerous discussions throughout the year. Each of us has a voice. And each of us needs to be cognizant of the impact that voice has on our goals. Like the negative rhetoric surrounding police officers and law enforcement, the constant scrutiny and unattainable expectation that the only acceptable level of performance is perfection. And of course, pay and funding as Ms. [Susan] Farag pointed out. We truly appreciate the partnership and support we have with each of the council members and we look to that to continue into the future.
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Yamada is a cool customer so this is hardly fire-breathing rhetoric. (That’s the job of the police union.) But the fact that he is saying this directly to council members is remarkable because they control his department’s budget.
Of course, the council members don’t report to Yamada. They do report to the voters, who have seen increases in crime since the pandemic. How will the voters see all of this? It’s a key question as the next round of elections approaches.