D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier responded Tuesday to a recent surge in violent crime by suspending virtually all training across the department and pushing officers to the streets.
With the exception of firearm recertification, Lanier wrote in a departmentwide bulletin, “all training currently scheduled at the Metropolitan Police Academy and throughout the Department is hereby suspended until further notice.”
“In an effort to maximize the numbers of members on patrol within the District of Columbia, it is imperative that the Metropolitan Police Department make adjustments in the deployment of its personnel,” the chief said.
Traci Hughes, Lanier’s spokeswoman, denied that there is a crime emergency and bristled at the suggestion that the MPD was unprepared for the annual surge in summer crime. Lanier reinstituted her Neighborhood Safety Zone checkpoints last weekend following a series of shootings and robberies in the Trinidad neighborhood of Northeast.
“As many bodies as we can get on the streets the better,” Hughes said.
The announcement comes on the heels of a milestone of sorts: The MPD says it has eclipsed 4,000 sworn members, short of the overall goal of 4,200 but still “astounding,” as Lanier described it, given long-standing attrition problems. The force had reached 4,017 as of July 14, 153 more than the same time last year, according to figures detailed in a weekly MPD human resources report.
“When highlighted against the backdrop of an exceedingly competitive recruiting environment and our greater standards of hire, these numbers reflect an astounding achievement,” Lanier wrote in the June 18 edition of The Dispatch, an internal communique to the force.
Officers comprise only two-thirds of the total sworn strength, however, and the larger force has still not deterred the seemingly inevitable summer crime wave. Suspending officer training is no way to respond, said Kristopher Baumann, head of D.C.’s police union.
“We have to stop panicking,” Baumann said. “Canceling training for officers doesn’t affect the department for the next two months. It affects it for years.”
D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety committee, called training “critical to quality assurance and control.” Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells, meanwhile, said a larger police force “increases expectations that we’re going to see more officers” on the beat.
“This news means no excuses,” Wells said. “We want to see more police on foot patrols and on bicycles.”
mneibauer@dcexaminer
