The Montgomery County police department – which saw a slight decrease in its sworn officer vacancy rate this year – is anticipating more staffing challenges in 2025 due to the potential loss of more than 100 officers through retirement, according to a report presented Monday to the County Council’s Public Safety Committee.
Department officials warned that “tough decisions” will be coming in the face of the potential exacerbation of the department’s current staffing shortage – highlighted by a sworn officer vacancy rate of 13%, according to the report by council legislative analyst Susan Farag. Some of those decisions will come in the form of a staffing plan underway for next year, police Chief Marc Yamada told the committee Monday.
“Our approach has been purposeful and intentional. None of this has been done randomly,” Yamada said during the meeting. “I have given great consideration to officer wellness and work-life balance and I have leveraged my solid relationship with both of our unions in formulating different aspects of this plan.”
The anticipated loss of officers stems from an “enhanced pension benefit multiplier” that will take effect in January, according to the committee report. The pension multiplier will allow “eligible officers to retire sooner and receive a larger benefit” and the department estimates it could result in a loss of more than 100 officers out of 1,278 officers, the report said.
The news comes more than six months after the committee met to discuss the department’s highest vacancy rate of sworn officers in 10 years, at 14%, with 179 vacancies at that time. As of Oct. 31, the vacancy rate had decreased slightly to 13%, with 166 vacancies.
It also comes less than a week after the department launched a new recruitment website for police officers and public safety communication specialists who staff the county’s Emergency Communications Center. According to a Nov. 26 press release, the website is a “critical component” for the department to address its recruitment and retention challenges.
After hearing the update from police officials, Councilmember Sidney Katz (D-Dist. 3), who chairs the committee, emphasized the need for the department to stay competitive among other area law enforcement agencies, especially when it comes to salaries. Katz was joined by council and committee members Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5) and Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7) at Monday’s meeting.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to hire some of the people that they’re able to attract,” Katz said. “Why aren’t we able to attract them as fast?”
He noted that increasing pay by a few thousand dollars was a “small investment” that could make “a big difference” in helping the county match its competitors from outside jurisdictions.
At the county police department, the starting rate for new hires is an annual salary of $66,815 with a $20,000 signing bonus, according to the report. In Anne Arundel County the starting rate is $70,000 with a $10,000 signing bonus; in the District of Columbia, the starting rate is $66,419 with a $25,000 signing bonus; and in Prince George’s County, the starting rate is $62,911 with a $10,000 signing bonus, according to the report.
Luedtke praised the department for investing time in community policing efforts and making improvements despite staffing challenges. Some of those improvements include a decrease in response times compared to 2023 and lower rates of violent crime, according to the report and Yamada.
“I commend the fact that you’ve had improvement, even with more limited resources, you’ve continued to have positive trends,” she said. “And I think it’s largely because of the time that has been spent that we have allocated to those types of community outreach and engagement efforts.”
Results of the current shortage
Since 2019 — when the department had its largest “authorized sworn complement” of 1,307 positions with just 12 vacancies — 25 officer positions have been cut and several others have been converted to civilian jobs, according to the report. Now the department has a sworn complement of 1,278 officers, mirroring 2016 levels.
Since March, the department has filled 11 positions and lost two sworn officers, according to the report. Despite the slight increase in staffing, the department’s shortage is directly impacting response times and the use of overtime by officers, the report said.
Countywide, response times for priority calls increased 41 seconds from 5 minutes and 11 seconds in 2019 to 5 minutes and 52 seconds in 2024. For routine calls, the county has seen a 53-second increase in response times, from 12 minutes and 21 seconds in 2019 to 13 minutes and 14 seconds in 2024.
In addition, the use of overtime has “increased substantially” in the past two years for the entire department, the report said. For the fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, the department spent nearly twice the budgeted amount for overtime, with $11.6 million being allotted and $19.9 million spent.
Staffing plan in the works
According to Yamada, his upcoming staffing plan – which he did not provide a timeline for – will consider several proposed solutions including:
- An officer redeployment plan;
- Exploring the possibility of redrawing police district boundaries to “equalize the workload between districts.” This would be with a pilot plan for the third (Silver Spring) and fourth (Wheaton) districts;
- Considering the use of one deployment plan for all police districts instead of two; and
- Assigning an executive officer to oversee daily staffing for the entire county and to monitor overtime.
Mink told police department officials that their idea of having an executive officer in charge of staffing and overtime “makes a lot of sense.”
“The commanders are responsible for crime levels in their district and that has to be their first priority,” Mink said. “I’m sure that’s what the public wants to be their priority and so having somebody who’s able to step back and, you know, their role is to bring that together with looking at how of staffing is deployed, makes a lot of sense.”
She also noted that it would be important for the department to evaluate the number of officers required for patrol as it deals with shortages.
While Yamada did not directly address the upcoming change in retirement benefits, he acknowledged that there would be “difficult decisions” that lay ahead.
“This would include things such as consolidating specialized and investigative units, reevaluating follow-up investigations, reevaluating true workload, much like we did during the pandemic, assessing our response to calls for service,” he said.
Yamada also noted that amid the ongoing staffing shortage, the department would continue to evaluate the use of AI and other technology such as the Drone as a First Responder program, automated traffic enforcement efforts and the MoCoConnect security camera program.
“All of this supports patrol and our primary focus of answering calls for service,” Yamada said. “Our tech efforts serve as resource multipliers, improving de-escalation, diverting calls for service to other agencies like [the Department of Health and Human Services] and allowing officers to make the best decisions possible by getting information as quickly as possible.”
Assistant Chief Darren Francke, who also attended the meeting, echoed Yamada’s sentiment about the department’s upcoming difficulties.
“There’s some tough decisions to be made, especially when you get into a bigger staffing deficit because there will be less service to the community,” Francke said. “We don’t want to, but the reality of the numbers that are coming and without some miraculous event to turn around our hiring … our chief is doing to make difficult decisions on what investigations get followed up.”
