It seems to now be a daily occurrence. Another shooting. Another robbery. Another carjacking, or assault, or act of violence.
Having not previously read or explored the Reimagining Public Safety task force recommendations, I was curious to see which recommendations might be contributing to this culture. Started in 2020, some of the task force recommendations have had the opportunity to be implemented, but all of the recommendations have had the opportunity to impact the culture and morale of the police community – and in turn impact the safety of the community.
In reviewing, I focused in on those recommendations that were prioritized as “high” as they would give a good indication of the task force’s mindset and priorities. There were 35 high priority recommendations (out of 87). 18 of these recommendations have been accepted, 9 are currently being reviewed, and 5 are to be reviewed.
Below I have pulled out a handful of recommendations that 1) show a priority of something other than public safety, 2) could clearly contribute to prohibiting an officer from protecting others or themselves, and/or 3) create a policing culture that does not prioritize the surveillance and apprehension of individuals that commit crimes. Commentary is provided in italics for each of these.
- Review MCPD’s current training programs for any connection to outside agencies that also train military personnel. These contracts should be eliminated altogether or shifted to third parties that do not engage in any military training or promote “warrior” behavior. How is military training being defined? Military training is expansive and covers everything from martial arts, cover and move, maintenance and care for weapons, etc. And what is “warrior” behavior? How would contractors be reviewed to see if they exhibit “warrior” behavior? The misconception that an agency that might also train military personnel would be inappropriate or not be able to properly train a police force is absurd. It would be the equivalent of saying an organization that engages in training of entrepreneurs is ill-equipped to provide training to fortune 500 companies.
- Eliminate SRO programs and corresponding budget lines, including equivalent FTEs. This funding, totally roughly $2.9 million, should be shifted directly to youth programs or a funds allocation transfer outside of the normal MCPS budget process that would specifically direct these funds to youth counseling and development programs. This is clearly not about the safety of children at school. And it is based entirely on the belief that SROs are unable to establish healthy relationships with the student body – talk about bias! Schools are certainly not becoming places where less violence is occurring either (Montgomery County experienced its first school shooting this year). During the 2021-2022 school year there were 357 calls for police at schools:
- Rapes: 13
- Sex Offense: 97
- Assault: 115
- Mental Transport: 62
- Weapons: 66
- Bomb Threat: 4
- Ensure that policing by consent, community policing, the “guardian” culture, and accountability are institutionalized as defining characteristics of the department. Institutionalize “guardian” culture in MCPD through the incorporation of explicit language in the organizations mission, vision and values. I don’t even know what any of this hogwash actually means. It sounds worse than the branding of the Space Force though. Policing by consent is an absurd ideology – police do not need voluntary approval by the public to do their job – that sounds like 1920 mob Chicago.
- Revise policies and review training personnel service records to ensure no officer with a record of multiple complaints, infractions, or other problems serves in a training position……prohibit the utilization of field training field training personnel that have a record of multiple complaints and infractions around bias, excessive use of force, or other problems that indicate an unreadiness to enforce constitutional policing. Will the existence of a public complaints on other county employees disqualify them from training colleagues? This would be a terrific recommendation to implement at the County Council level. This recommendation needs its policies to be published.
- Eliminate pre- textual stops for all minor offenses and revise Selective Traffic Stop Enforcement. What this recommendation actually tells the police force is that because you are racist bigots, we are going to remove an important tool from your toolbox in protecting public safety. It undermines their professional training, judgement, and surveillance capacity. It also undermines public safety. Read an essay on pre-textual stops here.
- Consider whether the MCPD should continue to act as the agent for public and private properties in enforcing trespass law. Evaluate policies, agreements, memoranda of understanding, and practices of MCPD acting as agents for private properties to enforce the property rights of the owners, make on-site trespass arrests, and issue stay away orders. Enforcement of property rights, whether under contract or as a function of public duty, why would Montgomery County want to eliminate this? It seems that many of the recent hate crimes would have leads if trespass laws were strengthened through surveillance, not weakened.
- Require all officers and other emergency personnel to receive CIT training. As well, the recommendation calls for MCPD to seek out or develop a police training model that prioritizes problem-solving, crisis intervention, mediation and basic mental health triage as its core competencies, rather than as supplemental to violence interruption and compliance. Why would we want the police force to not prioritize violence interruption and compliance with laws? This will fundamentally change the training model used and while potentially adding some needed skills, to do so be deprioritizing violence interruption and compliance but the public at risk.
- Ensure that all agencies and organizations in the continuum, including all members of the CJCC, have implicit bias training that builds their cultural competence and ability to effectively serve Montgomery County’s diverse citizenry…..The approach to implicit bias training should be is rigorous and intentional and designed to have training participants examine, acknowledge and understand their own biases. This is just ironic in that the entire report is rooted in bias.
- Provide better Community Policing. Prefaced by the understanding that Group 5 is not calling for more policing or more police contact in the community, better community policing practices are key, with the charge to MCPD that their role is to ensure the wellbeing of the community. Specifically, the recommendation calls for MCPD to utilize Procedural Justice practices and problem-oriented policing strategies that build legitimacy when engaging the community, as opposed to stop and search tactics and other policing practices that have a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color. The recommendation builds on the procedural justice notion of earned legitimacy. The workgroup literally says the silent part out loud in this recommendation, making it clear that they do not want or support more policing or more police contact in a community.
