Legislation to make changes to the police department is on the way in Montgomery County.
Police use-of-force policies, disciplinary procedures and changes in the structure of responding to emergency calls will be — or is expected to be — taken up by the County Council in the coming weeks.
As protesters across the nation push for local governments to defund police departments, county officials are seeking ways to improve police procedures and policies.
The general intent behind the “defund the police” movement is to reallocate some funds from police departments to increase investment in other critical community services.
On the idea of moving funding away from the Montgomery County Police Department to bolster other services, the majority of the council has not taken a position, but wants changes in policing methods.
They agreed that the county should put more money into services that address community needs for mental health, food security, housing stability, youth development and education.
A proposed bill to limit police officers’ use of force was introduced at the council’s meeting on Tuesday. Every council member was a lead sponsor or co-sponsor. A public hearing and vote on the legislation has not been scheduled.
Council members say more legislation is coming — including changes for disciplinary procedures for police officers and establishing a mobile unit of social workers and psychologists to respond to emergency calls for mental health crises, homelessness, and other situations.
Council Member Will Jawando used the social media hashtag “#defundthepolice” in a Twitter post calling for police reform and an end to racism. He told Bethesda Beat last week that he supports defunding the police in the sense of removing the responsibility for police officers to respond to calls about homelessness or mental health crises.
“We don’t need our police officers responding to people who are experiencing a mental health crisis,” he said. “We need to have mental health professionals and first responders — those types of people — responding.”
That might require more county funding or reallocating funds from the police department to create a different system for responses, he said.
“If we can relieve some of that burden and have a new model, then it would make sense to take [police] funding for that,” he said.
Jawando spearheaded the proposed use-of-force legislation and said police brutality is a problem in policing culture. Racial biases can lead to profiling, he said.
“When that is the incentive structure, and that’s what people are promoted and given accolades for, then you’re creating an environment where people are going to go out and use their internal biases and go out to where they think they’re going to find crime in communities with Black and brown residents,” he said.
Instead of being incentivized for the number of tickets issued or DUI arrests, officers should be rewarded for attending community events, de-escalating situations, and other positive outcomes, Jawando said.
“We need guardians, not warriors,” he said.
Mental health is a focus
The majority of council members also support having mental health professionals and social workers take the lead in responding to some emergency calls.
Council Vice President Tom Hucker said “defunding the police” isn’t a new idea.
“If people’s basic human needs are being met, communities that provide that source of opportunities generally have much less crime,” he said. “If you do those things well, you need much less police for much less crime.”
Montgomery County has a Mobile Crisis Team that responds to calls made directly to the Crisis Center or when the police request its assistance. There are two people on the team, which can respond to one call at a time.
At the council’s meeting on Tuesday, an appropriation for more than $592,000 will be introduced to add six social workers to the Mobile Crisis Team. The county would develop an enhanced mobile crisis response plan over eight weeks.
Hucker said 911 operators would be given different scripts for calls and would be directed to dispatch the appropriate responders to situations.
“If you can do that, you’ll need fewer police [officers] in the future,” he said.
Hucker said he would be open to appropriating less money in the police budget in favor of using more money for critical services in future budgets.
“I think all of our budgets should be driven by need. The fact is we need more affordable housing. We need more health care. We need more early education and after-school programming,” he said. “Crime is down, considerably. It hasn’t been eliminated. The police budget should reflect trends like that.”
Council Member Gabe Albornoz said he would like to see social workers, with years of training, aligned with law enforcement efforts.
“I think it’s important to have mental health professionals to work with them hand in hand to de-escalate situations. … so they can do everything possible to prevent the loss of life,” he said.
Council President Sidney Katz said the term “defunding the police” is “not as clear as it should be.”
“We need to look at how things are being done and of course, we all know that we need to be funding mental health and social workers, and people to actually deal with the concerns in a timely manner,” he said. “When someone has a mental health crisis, we need to get someone there to help that person as quickly as we can.”
The county needs to hire as many people as it can to respond to mental health crises in place of police officers, he said.
Council Member Craig Rice said he doesn’t use the term “defund the police” because he considers it to mean a largescale removal of funds from the police department.
“It’s not surgical in terms of what you want to fund and what you don’t want to. … What we should be doing is spending the right amount of money on the things we need to in order to address the issues,” he said. “The needs that we have when it comes to funding [for community services] are much larger than the entire police budget.”
Rice said legislation to create crisis intervention teams with mental health specialists and social workers who would respond to emergency calls would be introduced in the next few weeks. The county is asking police officers to do too much, he said.
On June 13, Rich Madaleno, the county’s budget director, sent a memo to county departments to direct them to find 6% in savings for a revised spending plan for fiscal year 2021. Montgomery County Public Schools and other agencies were asked to find savings, but weren’t provided a specific percentage.
The revised spending plan is in response to financial strains and an expected loss in revenue of up to $600 million between the current and next fiscal years.
Rice said he is concerned about cutting services to education, transportation, and health and human services.
“How can you realistically have a conversation about racial equity and justice, when you’re also, at the same time, reducing that amount of service to those very same people [in communities of color]?” he said.
Council Member Andrew Friedson agreed with the need to focus on the right cuts.
“I believe that there should be prioritization in the cuts that are proposed and we should make sure we’re not harming our most vulnerable and putting [them] at risk — needs that are critical, especially at this moment,” he said.
The council has received more than 3,000 emails from residents commenting on the idea of “defunding the police,” Friedson said.
“The conversations are not just about moving money out of the police department and into other parts of the budget, but also within the police department,” he said.
Creating strategies to analyze policing
On Friday, the council closed applications for its Policing Advisory Commission, which will review policy and process guidelines, training and practices. It would also increase community engagement with the police department.
On June 13, County Executive Marc Elrich sent plans to the County Council for developing another group, called the Reimagine Public Safety Task Force, that would also look at policing policies.
Elrich told Bethesda Beat that the county needs to take a look at what is done and should be done in policing.
“Frankly, now there is an appetite to do this,” he said. “We all have gone along funding things for years, knowing that there were social services that went unmet.”
Elrich said the state needs to work with the county to fund responses to mental health problems.
“I think it could be an exciting time if we do this right,” he said. “We’ve had moments in my lifetime where this whole issue of racism in policing has come to a head and every [time], we’ve backed away from the things that need to happen.”
As far as changing police funding, Council Member Hans Riemer said he favor spending less on police and more on education, child care, school programming and positive youth development.
Unarmed officers could be sent to certain calls, he said, and the School Resource Officer program under MCPS could be a place to start for finding savings for other needs.
“That’s an opportunity for savings for sure. It doesn’t mean that they would be laid off. They wouldn’t be,” he said. “But I think they could be put to better use. Generally speaking, I think we need to improve our priorities and we need to figure out a better way to keep people safe that is actually keeping them safe.”
Council Member Nancy Navarro has heard the calls for “defunding the police” and said there is “room to examine” an additional focus on positive youth development, education and other services.
That could include reallocating money from the police for other needs, she said.
She requested the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight to analyze 911 calls to see how many could be handled by mental health professionals.
Navarro noted that the council has an advantage because it’s already focusing on racial issues and policing with the creation of a racial justice and equity law and the Policing Advisory Commission.
Whatever the council decides on policing, the community needs to be involved, Council Member Evan Glass said.
“I would rather we invest directly in homeless service providers and mental health service providers, so we can more directly assist those in need,” he said. “Our police officers are tasked with many different things in our community. We need to rethink how we use their services.”
Briana Adhikusuma can be reached at briana.adhikusuma@moco360.media.