A comprehensive reorganization of the District’s systems of law, order and crisis response is needed to enhance community policing efforts and reform emergency medical services, advisers to Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty said Thursday.
Fenty’s public safety task force, one of 19 transition teams working in various key-issue areas, presented a detailed report covering recommendations for the Metropolitan Police Department, fire and emergency medical services, homeland security, domestic violence and corrections.
The suggestions ranged from improving reporting technology to reorganizing the MPD into separate police and support forces. The group recommended separating fire and emergency medical services into two agencies, developing EMS into an “independent, medically driven, patient-centric, third-service agency.”
“I think there’s a lot of great, nontraditional out-of-the-box things we can do here,” MPD Cmdr. Cathy Lanier, the incoming police chief, said during the online presentation.
Fenty has said repeatedly that increasing the number of police officers on patrol is key to his public-safety strategy. But Kristopher Baumann, head of the D.C. police union, said the MPD fails to effectively recruit and retain its officers, and those who do stay are drowned in paperwork.
To that end, Baumann recommended computerizing reports, implementing 10-hour, four-day shifts, supporting 20-year retirement, reforming the disciplinary system, offering educational incentives, expanding the take-home car program, helping officers purchase homes and sharing case burden among all detectives.
On EMS and fire, the task force recommended splitting the single agency into two departments — a lengthy process. In the meantime, said Erik Gaull, team leader for emergency protection, Fenty should name an interim assistant chief of EMS, move the EMS medical director to the Department of Health and train police officers to provide medical first response.
