The Montgomery County police department continues to deal with understaffing and lagging recruitment, but despite those challenges, “we have a very safe county,” police Chief Marc Yamada said Monday during a District 18 Democratic Breakfast Club meeting at Parkway Deli in Silver Spring.
“That’s due in large part not to me, but the men and women who work here and provide for community safety,” Yamada said. “We have consistently, over the years, done more with far less.”
According to the department’s 2024 Annual Report on Crime and Safety, the number of crimes in 2024 dropped 5% when compared to 2023. In 2024, homicides dropped 31%, from 29 in 2023 to 20, the report states, and opioid overdoses in the county decreased by 58% in 2024.
Speaking to a group of about 25 people Monday morning at the deli, Yamada discussed his first year as the county’s police chief and new officer mental health initiatives he launched, and answered questions from the audience about various local and national crime issues. In July, Yamada took over from former chief Marcus Jones, who retired and was appointed as chief of the Department of Security and Compliance for Montgomery County Public Schools.
Like other police departments locally and nationally, the county police department has been dealing with understaffing, low recruitment and retention issues. In December, the department, with a vacancy rate of about 13%, expected to lose more than 100 officers at the start of 2025 due to retirement.
The department is authorized to have 1,275 sworn employees, according to police spokesperson Shiera Goff. In May, there were 1,086 sworn employees, 678 of whom were patrol officers, Goff said in an email to Bethesda Today. The current staffing level represents a vacancy rate of 14.8%.
Last fall, the department launched a new recruitment website for police officers and public safety communications specialists who staff the county’s Emergency Communications Center. A Nov. 26 police press release said the website was a “critical component” for the department to address its recruitment and retention challenges.
Yamada said recruiting has become more difficult due to the “constant scrutiny” that officers are under and the expectation of “perfection.”
“Everyone wants to look at law enforcement, and rightfully so in some instances, under a lens of we want law enforcement to be better. I want us to be better, but I cannot be perfect,” Yamada said. “I’m not and neither are my officers.”
Yamada said the department and its officers are held to a “standard of perfection” that doesn’t allow for mistakes – which can impact officers’ careers, retirement or prospects for another job.
“Who wants that job?” Yamada asked.
While the department has fewer resources than he would like, new initiatives have been helpful with responding to service calls and investigations, he said. MoCoConnect, a security camera sharing program that allows community members to share or integrate their private security system with the department, and the Drone as First Responder program, which operates in downtown Silver Spring and Wheaton, Gaithersburg and Bethesda, are two such initiatives.
In addition to recruiting new officers to the force, Yamada said the department was having a “hard time” recruiting and retaining experienced officers. Currently, the department has a $20,000 hiring bonus for new recruits and higher starting salaries for officers with prior experience.
“When I bring more young officers in, I need officers like myself, with 37 years on … to provide them with training,” Yamada said. “It’s not just a matter of hiring new officers, it’s how do I keep officers who have that experience that can train officers to be the law enforcement agents that we want?”
Focus on officer mental health
As the department struggles with staffing, Yamada has turned his attention to officer wellness and mental health.
“We in law enforcement have long recognized mental health and well-being as being an issue for our first responders, but I think we have failed to take any significant steps,” he said.
In the last year, Yamada said he opened a wellness room in the department’s police academy at the county’s public safety headquarters in Gaithersburg. The space has various seating options and areas to lie down or have privacy, he told Bethesda Today. Officers who visit the room can receive counseling from mental health professionals. The room is open to all of the county’s first responders, including Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service employees.
In late December, the department dealt with a public situation involving an officer in crisis. The officer was discovered to be in distress in a police cruiser at Tennis Lane and Falls Road in Potomac. The roads were closed for 15 hours as law enforcement and county support teams communicated with the officer to bring the situation to a safe resolution.
“We don’t really have resources internal to the police department where we get help for our first responders,” Yamada noted during Monday’s meeting.
That’s why the chief has created a partnership with a wellness center, Harbor of Grace Enhanced Recovery Center, in Havre de Grace, Maryland. At the center, county officers can receive counseling, treatment for alcohol and substance abuse and inpatient and outpatient treatment, according to the center’s website.
“We’ve sent no fewer than 10 to 12 officers there who were in trouble, in crisis, and were asking for help,” Yamada said. The officers have “been able to get a tremendous amount of counseling assistance. It’s really righted the ship as we’ve established our more robust wellness program for officers.”
