D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has proposed the city hire 120 officers next year, budget documents show, but that won’t likely be enough to prevent the force from shrinking to a size Police Chief Cathy Lanier has called problematic. “Once we go below 3,800, we’re going to have trouble,” Lanier recently testified during a D.C. Council hearing.
The city has been in a hiring freeze and, even though the council passed a bill last year requiring the force to stay at or above 3,900, the department failed to do so. There are currently 3,879 sworn officers on the District’s police force. The $9.5 billion budget proposal Gray sent to the D.C. Council last week calls for hiring 120 officers in the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.
But the budget also indicates the city is losing roughly 15 sworn officers a month through attrition. As a result, by the time the new fiscal 2012 money is available on Oct. 1, the force will likely be at 3,807.
It will take nearly a year to train the 120 officers Gray wants to hire, police union chief Kris Baumann said. During that training lag time, the force will likely continue to lose officers, shrinking by an additional 60 personnel by the end of fiscal year — lowering the total number of officers to 3,747. By the time the new officers are on the street, the force could be well below 3,700, Baumann said.
When Lanier raised concern about the rapidly dwindling force at a council hearing late last month, at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, who has oversight of the department, said, “I don’t understand how we got to this point.” He said there was enough cash in the budget to hire new officers before the freeze.
In a newsletter to constituents sent last week, Mendelson says he believes the cash for new officers dried up because the previous administration expected larger federal reimbursements for police escorts than it received.
He told The Washington Examiner that he found Gray’s budget proposal to be “structurally sound” after a quick review, but he needed to look more closely at the mayor’s proposal for the police department before commenting on it.
Lanier did not respond to a request for comment.
Baumann said Gray and the council need to quickly add officers to the force.
“We have a serious public safety issue here,” Baumann said, “and neither the executive nor the legislative branch appears to understand the scope and be willing to the steps to address the problem.”
