D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier will expand her much-publicized All Hands on Deck program, flooding the city’s streets with extra officers and cadets at least eight times in the coming year.
In a memo Tuesday to her staff obtained by The Examiner, Lanier said she was bringing All Hands back because of “last year’s successes.”
“The purpose of the … initiative is to have positive interactions with citizens, address community concerns, provide a physical presence in neighborhoods throughout the city, arrest offenders of the law, and to reduce crime and the fear of crime,” Lanier wrote in the memo.
It’s the third year that Lanier will flood the streets with uniformed cops for weekends. The previous two years, there have only been five All Hands events.
Critics say the program is more about public relations than public safety.
“If it isn’t a failure, why are homicides up two years in a row here, when Philly and Baltimore aren’t just down, but have actually plunged?” police union Chairman Kris Baumann said.
Homicides have increased in D.C. the past two years, for the first back-to-back increases since 1989-91, when D.C. was “murder capital” of the nation.
All Hands has also been blamed for leaving the police shorthanded on days following the surges. On Halloween 2007, violence spiked in the District. There weren’t enough officers to answer calls because an All Hands on Deck the previous weekend had given officers the right to take Halloween off.
Baumann said the police department hasn’t been able to hire and keep enough officers to maintain minimum safety. He said that if it was important enough to have thousands of officers on the streets once in a while, it ought to be important enough to hire enough cops to “have All Hands on Deck every day.”
“Why isn’t that the No. 1 priority of this administration?” Baumann said.
Lanier couldn’t be reached for comment.
There will be All Hands events — most on the weekends — from May until August and then again in November and December, Lanier’s memo states.
