Missed Opportunities to Keep Our Communities Safe
Community safety is at the top of many neighbor’s minds. We all deserve to live in safe, stable, and secure communities. Yet, we’ve seen DC Council leadership that fails to act consistently based on data or seek data-driven solutions. Our local government has missed opportunities to make sure our government agencies are performing well and in service of residents.
Whether it’s the failure to act on the DC Auditor’s recommendations to assess staffing and utilization for the Metropolitan Police Department or failure to timely and meaningfully implement the Police Reform Commission’s recommendations, the DC Council can use data to inform legislation that best supports our communities and keeps them safe.
I’m dedicated to promoting public safety based on facts and data. And I will lead based on those principles every day.
We Don’t Know the Numbers
What is the best number of Metropolitan Police Department officers to keep our communities safe? This isn’t a new or novel question, and the DC Council had the opportunity to take action several years ago.
In 2011, former disgraced Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans introduced legislation to increase the Police Department’s staffing to a minimum of 4,000 officers, based in part on a recommendation from then Chief of Police, Cathy Lanier, that the Police Department should not fall below 3,800 police officers. The bill did not move forward. In 2017, several Councilmembers introduced emergency legislation that would have increased the number of police officers to 4,200. The bill was voted down. Mayor Bowser and others have periodically called for increasing the number of police officers, including most recently to 4,000.
Most of these efforts have stalled, in part because the calls for a specific number of police officers are not rooted in data. As Martin Austermuhle has noted, “unlike in many other U.S. cities, there hasn’t been a comprehensive assessment of what all of MPD’s officers are doing — and whether they could be doing things better.” Members of the Police Reform Commission have asked: “Why 4,000? Where did that number come from? What will these extra officers do?”
What’s notable here is that the need for additional data was made clear by the DC Auditor in 2017, and the DC Council failed to take action. At that time, the DC Auditor recommended a staffing study for the Metropolitan Police Department after a limited assessment finding that police officers spent a smaller portion of their time on calls for service than other comparable cities.
That bears repeating: In 2017, the DC Auditor recommended a staffing study to determine police officer utilization because our police officers were spending less time helping residents than officers in other cities.
The calls for more data have continued. In 2021, the Police Reform Commission similarly recommended an independent audit to determine the Police Department’s “staffing, duties, and responsibilities, including which functions can be shifted from sworn to non-sworn positions.” Recently, the Washington Post Editorial Board said: “More data would help assist D.C. in answering the question of whether it needs more police and, if so, what the right number is.”
It’s not a new idea to use data to understand our city’s needs. While the current Council Chair very recently called for such an audit, it was irresponsible for Council leadership to sit on recommendations for important data that can help us make informed decisions about public safety. This is also not the first time, too, as I noted in my piece on DC’s 911 center, where a recommendation for an audit from the National Transportation Safety Board wasn’t acted on for years until additional deaths and pressure from Advisory Neighborhood Commissions like mine forced it to happen.
Our residents deserve clear, consistent, and data-driven leadership, not shifting positions based on which way the political wind blows.
Failure to Act on Police Reform Commission Recommendations
The current Council Chair has also failed to use existing research, data, interviews, and analysis from the Police Reform Commission’s report or act on their recommendations.
The Commission started its work in the summer of 2020, following George Floyd’s murder. It was tasked with “examin[ing] policing practices in the District and provid[ing] evidence-based recommendations for reforming and revisioning policing in the District.”
In March 2021, the 20-member body released a detailed, 259-page report with 90 recommendations that would “lead to far greater investment in services and supports to address the root causes of crime and disorder, both individual and systemic; and to a smaller, more appropriate and constructive role for police.” These recommendations include strengthening the social safety net and decriminalizing poverty, decentering police and shifting collective focus and resources to invest in community-centered programs that prevent harm, and ensuring police accountability (among many other recommendations).
The Police Reform Commission’s recommendations amplify the calls from my Advisory Neighborhood Commission in a Resolution we approved in June 2020. In classic political gamesmanship, the current Council Chair has tried to paint our recommendations as radical while touting the work of the Police Reform Commission and failing to acknowledge that the DC Council — and the current Council Chair himself — also called for decentering the police and not continuing to increase police funding in 2020. He either supports the work of the Police Reform Commission (which echoes the work of my Commission) or he doesn’t.
This is emblematic of the current Council Chair’s inconsistent and unclear leadership. As he recently said: “while the Council’s response in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder made sense at the time, we must now put more resources into the Metropolitan Police Department.” Our residents deserve clear, consistent, and data-driven leadership, not shifting positions based on which way the political wind blows.
While the current Council Chair is happy to claim credit for the work of the Police Reform Commission, the vast majority of the Commission’s 90 recommendations have gone unaddressed and not a single piece of permanent legislation has been passed. The broad and impactful work of the Commission should not and cannot go to waste. It is not enough to be proud of recommendations from a body you created, it is also imperative to act on the best advice possible to keep our communities strong and safe.
Data Can Drive Us
We can do better to support our communities and provide for public safety based on data.
We need data-driven solutions for public safety. That’s why my DC Council Accountability Plan calls for increased use of the Auditor’s office. We know that the DC Council is one of the worst offenders in terms of acting on Auditor recommendations. It’s not just calling for an audit that matters, but also engaging with and acting on the results of that audit. Ultimately, the DC Council should have acted in 2017 on the DC Auditor’s recommendation for further examination of police officer staffing and utilization, and we’d have more data to inform our decisionmaking now.
A focus on process and oversight may seem unrelated to the safety concerns we face in our communities, but our experience shows that acting promptly with foresight and integrity is critical to ensuring safety. Instead we see the current Council Chair’s shifting positions untethered to data and outcomes and fearmongering to capitalize on our residents’ real and meaningful need for safe, stable, and secure communities. It’s this type of poor leadership that led to mass incarceration with devastating impacts in the 1990s.
I’m dedicated to promoting public safety based on facts and data. And I will lead based on those principles every day.
