By Adam Pagnucco.
One of the biggest problems in county government is the issue of police staffing. I have written many times about critical levels of understaffing, rising response times, rising vacancies, the county’s partial withdrawal from Gaithersburg and Rockville and related problems with public safety. As I write this, pension changes creating a police staffing bomb could cost the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) almost ten percent of its officers. County leaders are well aware of these problems and are trying to deal with them. One of their tactics has been to increase overtime.
For each of the last three years, MCPD has released annual statistical reports showing many data points, including staffing and overtime. The table below shows authorized sworn positions, filled sworn positions and overtime hours, the latter shown by police district.
Over this period, while authorized sworn positions have hardly changed, filled sworn positions have fallen by 6 percent. During that time, overtime hours have more than doubled. Districts 5 (Germantown) and 6 (Montgomery Village) have seen mindboggling increases in overtime. For reference, the map below shows MCPD’s police district boundaries.
MCPD’s police districts.
The last line shows overtime hours divided by filled sworn positions. In 2024, MCPD officers on average recorded the equivalent of close to a full month of overtime. Since that’s an average, that means some officers recorded even more. Being a police officer is hard enough, so how much harder is it when they are working that much overtime?
One final question. Due to pension changes requested by the county executive and passed by the county council, MCPD expects to lose almost ten percent of its officers to retirement. If MCPD can’t replace those officers with recruits, what happens then?
If county leaders don’t have an answer to that question, the criminals surely will.