More than 5 percent of its 3,800 officers have left the Metropolitan Police Department in the last two years, a trend that incoming Police Chief Cathy Lanier has said she must stop.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the police union are alarmed over an exodus of 2 percent of the city’s finest, but in D.C., an annual loss of twice that amount has been “business as usual,” said union President Kristopher Baumann.
With the District hoping to add 100 police officers a year for the next five years, Lanier is climbing a hill that is slipping under her. The department is getting poached by high-paying federal positions and by county police departments that offer better benefits, such as Montgomery County in Maryland and Fairfax County in Virginia, Baumann said. Some officers leave because they say they’re unfairly punished by a disciplinary system that has more people investigating its own officers than it does investigating homicides, he said.
Former MPD officer Ed Farris said the breaking point for him came last year, when he was accused of using excessive force by a girl who was injured in the crash of a stolen car. An investigation found no wrongdoing, Farris said, but he was punished anyway because he was accused of filing improper paperwork.
“That was the final straw,” Farris said. He left and received a $15,000 pay raise to become a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
Former MDP officer Vlad Bortchevsky said he took a $17,000 pay cut when he left in 2005 to become a detective with the Calvert County Sheriff’s Department.
“But I have a peace of mind at home and at work,” said Bortchevsky, who worked for the Capitol Police before working for MPD for six years. “We see a lot of stuff that would shock the conscience of a normal person, and you need to have a police department that provides moral support and logistical support.”
Bortchevsky worked the 3 to 11 p.m. shift. When he made an arrest he’d have to be in court by 7 a.m., where he’d stay up to five hours doing paperwork and consulting with prosecutors.
At Calvert County, Bortchevsky said, he works four 10-hour days a week and drives a take-home police cruiser. In D.C., he said, he’d spend up to two hours each day waiting at the station for a patrol car.
Lanier hasvowed to fix the court paperwork issue that she says pulls hundreds of officers off the streets. She also has said she favors allowing patrol officers who live in the city to take home cruisers.
