Marc Yamada is a Montgomery County lifer. He grew up in Wheaton, where he met his wife, Kathy, in junior high school. The couple raised their four children in Olney, where they still live. Professionally, the Montgomery County Department of Police is the only home he’s known. In July, after more than three decades on the force, he became its 18th chief.
It’s been a methodical ascent for Yamada, 61, who joined the department after college so, he says, he wouldn’t have to spend his career behind a desk. Though he sits behind one now, he doesn’t complain; he says he feels privileged to lead the roughly 1,300 sworn officers and 650 support personnel in the department.
“I wanted to help the community that I grew up in, and I thought I would be out doing things as opposed to in an office somewhere,” he says from his office in January, when Bethesda Magazine spoke with him via Zoom. “Looking back on it, I can’t imagine doing anything else for 37 years.”
Yamada, the first Asian American to serve as chief (his father’s parents were Japanese), was an assistant chief before County Executive Marc Elrich tapped him for the top job. Yamada has held numerous leadership positions during his career with the department, including overseeing the Field Services Bureau and serving as the District Four commander and as captain for the Community Engagement Division.
In nominating Yamada, Elrich said he “has been a steadfast advocate for modernizing our police force, fostering community trust, and ensuring that our officers have the resources and training they need. His vision for the future of policing is rooted in accountability and a deep respect for the diverse communities we serve.” He was unanimously confirmed by the county council.
Yamada took over at a time of change in the department. Staffing shortages and recruiting challenges are a constant issue. Technology, such as the use of drones, which he has championed, continues to alter the ways officers can fight crime. While the numbers are encouraging—overall crime fell by 7% in the county last year, including a 43% drop in carjackings and a decline in homicides from 29 in 2023 to 19 in 2024, according to county data—Yamada knows the work is never done.
“I don’t have any visions of living anywhere else,” says Yamada, whose children and three grandchildren all live in the area. “I’ve never had any desire to leave, and now to be in charge of public safety for the same place that I was born and raised is just an honor.”
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What was your relationship with the police when you were growing up in Wheaton?
You know, I don’t think I had any interaction with the police department. We would hang out in the parking lot of the McDonald’s in Glenmont after a game or a school event, and if the police came, they didn’t even have to talk to us. We would just acknowledge the fact that they were there and go someplace else. It was sort of unspoken.
There just seemed to be, from our side, respect. And that is missing now. Over the years, I’ve seen it devolve to the point where we have 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kids, and an officer will drive through a parking lot in the same circumstances and kids will flip us off and tell us, ‘Make us leave,’ almost in a challenging way.
To me, it demonstrates a lack of respect. It’s disappointing to see that in our young kids because I would have never thought of doing that, nor would any of my friends when I was growing up. So how do we go about changing that? To me, that responsibility to dictate to your kids who they should be and how they should act definitely starts at home.
From a police standpoint, I would love to have officers reach out to kids at a young age. We try to be in our high schools. We have a good relationship with [Montgomery County Public Schools], so we have a presence in schools. But over the course of the last four years, it’s lessened. That’s what society dictated to us. We recognize people had concerns about police being in schools, and what our main purpose was, but to us it was always about establishing and building relationships, communicating with kids. We had a lot of successes doing that at our high schools. We didn’t get a chance to do it much in our elementary or middle schools, and I think that’s where we were missing that relationship piece with our young people. But parents were very reluctant at middle and elementary school ages to have police associate with their kids for a variety of reasons.
Why did you become a police officer?
I was attending Frostburg State University, and I had decided on a career in business. I was attending a job fair up in Frederick and I looked over and there were two Montgomery County police officers, Norman Washington and Ora Lee Murray, both of whom are retired now. They were at a recruiting table, and I said to myself, ‘I’m from Montgomery County, I’ll go over and talk to them.’ I wasn’t sure sitting behind a desk was my calling, and I had a sense of wanting to help the community that I grew up in. I just followed that path. Here I am 37 years later.
You worked as a plainclothes officer for many years. What drew you to that?
I thought about SWAT. I was an athlete in college, so I thought I could probably do SWAT. But undercover work sort of drew me. The narcotics side, drugs, things like that—I just found it really interesting. I got into our Special Investigations Division. I worked as a narcotics officer. I came back as a supervisor there.
That was really my true calling, I think. I found myself doing things that I never would have imagined having a chance to do outside of being in a movie.
Describe your relationship now with the police union.
It’s not something that you can just start once you get to whatever rank it might be. It’s something that you have to build on throughout your career, and I’ve embraced that. I’ve always had a good relationship with our union members. Once I made lieutenant, that continued with [former union leaders] Walt Bader, with Torrie Cooke, and now with Lee Holland.
Lee and Torrie reached out to me very early on in my career as an executive and said, ‘Hey, we really like the way you do things, the way you communicate.’ I just sort of built on that from there. The communication is tremendous. The support they give me is unprecedented. It’s something that my predecessors, I don’t think really had or were able to enjoy. And that’s carried through to the relationship with the council and the county executive. It’s sort of all blended together and it’s been great. If I didn’t have that or if I didn’t enjoy that type of relationship, I probably wouldn’t last very long as the chief.
How would you characterize morale in the department right now?
It’s been an uphill battle since the pandemic hit, and then with George Floyd and some other national events that were not favorable to law enforcement. Those things have carried over. Officers are one of the only ones that the only acceptable level of performance is perfection. Meaning, I can do 1,000 things right, but if I make one mistake—if I’m not nice, if I’m not courteous, if I forget to do something one time—it’s automatically a blemish on my personnel record. It’s a reprimand. It’s something negative. And that is extremely stressful. It’s worn on officers.
I’m not perfect. I’m going to make mistakes. So are our officers. But there’s no wiggle room in some people’s eyes. And that’s unfortunate. It’s something that we have to try to get out from under. That standard of perfection is impossible. So my promise is to try to do the very best we can. And when we make mistakes, we’ll own it and try not to repeat those mistakes. But I cannot promise that we won’t make mistakes. And that’s the message that I pass on to my officers. I will support them. I will stand behind them. I will stand alongside them. I will stand with them as long as we don’t do things that are egregious and unforgivable. As long as we’re able to improve from whatever mistake it is we make, I’m good with that. And I think they know that.
So how does the department support its officers from a mental health standpoint? Obviously, as you say, it’s an incredibly stressful job.
Mental health is an absolute priority for me. It’s something that I’ve recognized for years. Law enforcement has long said mental health is an issue, but I don’t know that we have taken the steps to improve, to provide resources to officers, to provide assistance and care in the ways that we should. So one of the things that I did before I even became the chief was establish a relationship with Harbor of Grace, which specializes in mental well-being for first responders. We also have dedicated space at our academy to be used as a wellness area for officers.
I’ve asked our Public Safety Training Academy to focus efforts on mental well-being, not just from a mental standpoint, but from a financial standpoint to give incoming recruits and the officers who are already with us education and financial literacy. How to make good decisions with their retirement or health care, things like that. There’s still a lot ahead, but it’s definitely a priority for me, something that I plan to continue to work on.
About
From: Wheaton
Lives in: Olney
Age: 61
College: Bachelor’s degree in business management/marketing from Frostburg State University
Occupation: Chief of the Montgomery County Department of Police
Family: Wife, Kathy; four children, ages 19 to 31; three grandchildren
What do you do to relieve or alleviate your own stress?
When I was a lieutenant, a captain, a commander, district commander, the assistant chief, I would send out emails to folks that work with me and for me. The title was ‘Checking in.’ It was just one or two lines: ‘Hey, just checking in with everybody seeing that you’re OK. Please reach out if you need anything.’ Sometimes it was around a holiday, sometimes it was just for no reason. In return, officers are now doing the same thing for me and for the assistant chiefs.
Not everybody asks me how I’m doing or if I’m OK. But now I do get officers walking through the door of the chief’s office and saying, ‘Hey, just making sure everything’s good. Do you need anything?’ And that’s very comforting. It makes me realize what I’ve been doing is probably well received.
I reached out to my senior executive assistant not too long before the holidays and said, ‘No more meetings for the next two weeks.’ I’ve had the county executive and others say to me, ‘What do you need, Marc?’ And I go, ‘Well, I need time to run the police department.’ I need to make sure I’m taking care of myself and everybody else. So I have to designate time, set it aside. Unfortunately, I can’t unplug totally like I really want to. The big hindrance to me is this phone that I have in my hand. It goes off all the time. And I answer it. My emails go off all the time. Even when I’m on vacation. Last year I took three days of vacation. I need to make sure I take a little bit more time than that so I can spend time with my kids.
Let’s talk about the size of the force. You’re facing the impending loss of 100 officers this year and, as of January, there was a vacancy rate of about 13%. Are you comfortable with the overall size of the force?
No. If you look at agencies of similar demographic communities nationwide, it’s usually around two officers per 1,000, and we’re at half of that. Here in Montgomery County, we have some brilliant, outstanding folks, both sworn and non-sworn. P.G. County was above 100 homicides this year. D.C. [had 187]. Violent crime is literally 100 yards away depending on where you are in Montgomery County. Our violent crimes are down, and that’s due to the work that the men and women of this agency do. And we do it with far less than what you might see on a national average. It’s going to bite us at some point. We’re going to see increases. We might see further staffing losses.
My message to the council, to the community groups that I talk with, is you all play a role in us maintaining our staffing levels and not creating an environment where officers would lean toward retirement or lean toward going to work somewhere else as opposed to Montgomery County. You all play a huge role in our ability to maintain staffing and ultimately keep the public safe.
What about the diversity of the force? Are you happy with it? And why is that important, if you do consider it important?
It’s absolutely important to me. It’s a priority. We don’t have enough women. We don’t have enough minorities, whether it’s Black, Hispanic, Asian. You name the race other than white, and I would like to see our numbers increase.
How do we do that? A lot of it centers on our ability to recruit. And we are exploring ways to have our department better reflect the demographics of the communities that we serve. So I need more women. I need more minorities. Even internally, I need more women executives. I need more minority supervisors and executives. We’re looking at new ways to do our promotional processes. There’s nothing that’s off the table right now, and it’s definitely something we’re looking at.
The county recently had its first conviction using evidence from a drone. How does the department use drones and why are you such a proponent of them?
It was something that we explored when I was the assistant chief in field services. We sent some folks out to California—Chula Vista and Beverly Hills, to name a few—where agencies were sort of pioneering the use of drones. They do it a little bit differently than we’re doing it right now. We’re drone-as-first-responders, so we respond to calls for service with our drone program. We’re not flying around patrolling the streets without a call for service attached to it. That’s what they do out on the West Coast, and that meets their community wants and needs. That’s not something that we are doing here.
So we took the good, the bad and the ugly, and we came back here, we refined it, and then we spent six or eight months speaking with the county council, speaking with all the community groups about what this program is or was going to be, and then, more importantly, what it was not going to be. It is not surveillance. It’s not Big Brother. It’s not facial recognition. It’s not any of those things. It’s de-escalation.
It’s utilizing the drone to gather information more efficiently, more effectively, in a much quicker way, and getting that back to officers, which allows them to do what everyone else wants them to do, and that’s to make the best decision possible when responding to a call for service. It’s been a huge success. I’d love to expand it to all six of our districts. Right now it’s a matter of funding and personnel. Everybody that I take to put into our drone program comes off the road, so we have to balance everything out as we move forward.
How important do you consider body cam footage to be?
It’s hugely important. It’s something that has definitely told the story that we expected it to tell—that our officers here in Montgomery County do exactly what we want them to do and how we want them to do it. It has emphasized that our officers abide by constitutional policing, that they do everything that they’re trained to do and nothing outside.
If we do identify an issue in the use of force, there are mandatory reviews. It goes up the supervisory chain; it starts with a sergeant, then the lieutenant, then the captain or the director, then ultimately the assistant chief, and if need be, me. So there are multiple layers of review. We can identify problems. We can identify training issues that we need to go back and revisit with officers.
So it’s hugely beneficial. The officers definitely like it because more often than not, 99 times out of 100, it shows that the officer did exactly what they were supposed to do. And if you were to file a complaint, we can go back and look and say here’s the proof on video that we did not call you a name or we did not smack you in the face or something like that.
Some violent crimes like homicides and carjackings decreased in 2024. To what do you attribute that?
I might be biased here, but it’s due to the great work of our officers out there. Our crime analysts … play a big role of identifying areas that we need to focus on and problem issues within the community. We now have the use of our real-time information center, our camera program, and all those things provide information back to the officers on the street, to our detectives, and allow them to address the crime before it happens.
Some of it is we’re a bit lucky. Other times it’s great work. Other times it’s the technology that we leverage. But it comes down to ultimately the work of the officers on the street, whether it’s the detectives or the patrol officers answering the calls. And we get a lot of support from our community as far as reporting crime, being part of a neighborhood watch or now participating in our camera programs and things like that. So it’s a group effort.
At the same time, crimes like shoplifting have increased. What can you do to turn that trend around?
We’ve seen a big increase in that. People will go in groups with a bag and basically clean off a shelf, put it in the bag, and run out of the store. We have a really good working relationship with John McCarthy in the state’s attorney’s office, so when we bring these cases to court, we’re able to see them through and prosecute them appropriately. But a lot of times, stores have an individual policy. It might not be you as the manager, but it’s the corporate policy coming down saying, ‘Hey, if somebody gets caught, all we want is the property back. That’s it.’ They look at the officers and they’re like, ‘We’re not looking to come to court. We don’t want to prosecute anybody.’ That presents problems sometimes. If there are no consequences to someone’s actions, what do they do? They just come back the next day or go to another store.
So it’s taken some education with our retail establishments, and we’ve had really good successes with Federal Realty down at Pike & Rose making sure that we follow through with prosecution, that there are consequences. And we’ve seen some positive results, but others are bigger, larger corporate entities, and sometimes they’re just not interested in the prosecution piece of the problem.
You’ve spent basically your whole life living in Montgomery County. Why is it such a special place for you?
I loved Wheaton when I was growing up. I like the people. I love the school system. It’s where I met my wife. My wife and I went to the same junior high school and high school together. We started dating right after I graduated, and I’ve been with her now almost 40 years. We’ve raised all four of our kids here. My second oldest son now resides in Washington, D.C., but he’s the only one that is not still here in the county. And I have three grandkids. They’re all here.
I’ve lived in two places: Wheaton and Olney. It’s changed from Georgia Avenue being two lanes to three on each side. Physically, the stores and the way the apartments are all set up, it’s changed greatly. But the people here have basically remained the same. We’re more diverse now, which is a good thing. It’s a wonderful place to live.
What are some of your favorite spots in the county?
Growing up, I hung out in two places, either Lake Needwood or [Triadelphia Reservoir]. I loved to fish. And then I played golf, starting when I was 10, at all the local golf courses. RedGate, which is no longer there, but Northwest, Needwood, they’re still around.
I don’t venture too far away from Olney a lot of times. I hang out at the Olney Grille or Sol Azteca, GrillMarx. We found Biscotti, which is on Redland and Muncaster. That’s an awesome Italian joint, really small. My wife and I like real quiet and quaint, which tells you that I’m getting old.
Speaking of which, why don’t you have any social media?
I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of time for it. My kids are on it constantly. But I listen to the news, and when I’m in my car, it’s WTOP. The social media thing just never caught on with me, I guess. I still get The Washington Post delivered to my house. I read it on my front porch. I’m old school.
Mike Unger is a writer and editor who grew up in Montgomery County and lives in Baltimore.
This appears in the March/April 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
