Scott Boggs: I think COG's go a very, very unique role in this space, and I say that because there are not many venues across the nation where you can regularly meet with your colleagues, especially at the executive level in law enforcement, fire and rescue, emergency management, and really think through what are the emerging threats? How are we managing day-to-day operations, and what can we do together that makes us stronger? We're what I always refer to as Switzerland, so we're that neutral space where folks can come together and have a candid conversation about the challenges that they're facing in that public safety realm.

Robert McCartney: Welcome to Think Regionally, a monthly podcast on Washington metro regional issues. I'm your host, Robert McCartney. COG coordinates dozens of committees in which public safety officials in the same fields, but from different counties and municipalities, share information and strategies. The committees include ones focused on investigations, intelligence, SWAT operations, and civil disturbances. But as you'll hear from our guests today, law enforcement agencies are facing a number of challenges, notably a shortage of police officers. Here's Prince George's Police Chief Malik Aziz, whose department is more than 300 officers short of its authorized level of 1800.

Malik Aziz: What is happening here in Prince George's County and even in the region. What we've seen was a national uptick in violent crime before and it had been in different categories, so recruiting and building up the police force should be a collective thought of everyone in the DMV in order to make the DMV safer because people travel back and forth across lines, and they have to be just as safe for any time that they cross any jurisdiction of anywhere from Virginia to DC to Maryland.

Robert McCartney: Public safety is a complicated topic. The issues can vary from one part of the area to another. For this episode, I want to focus on regional initiatives and discussions happening among local public safety officials. Chief Aziz talked about the steep increase in crimes related to motor vehicles.

Malik Aziz: What we're showing an increase in, is carjacking still being on the rise. We're in a battle to try to maintain an even response to last year. And then the stolen vehicles, astronomical, going through the roof. All property crime escalating.

Robert McCartney: A design flaw in some Hyundai and Kia car models made them particularly easy to steal. Videos of the methods spread on social media and spawned a kind of nationwide crime spree.

Malik Aziz: Our percentages doubled, our stolen cars doubled with Kias and Hyundais making up over half of our vehicles stolen. And this is just not a Prince George's County thing, it's not just a Maryland thing. It is happening in DC, it's happening in Virginia. It's happening in Milwaukee, California, Chicago, Dallas, all around the nation.

Robert McCartney: The two car companies have fixed the software, but progress has been slow dealing with cars already on the streets. So these vehicle thefts, are these being done mainly by individuals or by gangs, and are people doing it basically to go on a joy ride? Or are they doing it to fence the car and sell it for parts? What happens to these vehicles?

Malik Aziz: I think it runs the gamut. We've seen those vehicles being used to commit other robberies to actually rob a person of their vehicle, commit carjackings. We've seen those same vehicles end up in the ports to be transported to different countries abroad, but a lot of it really has to do with just the crime of opportunity and social media and people just want to see if they can do it and they joy ride and they do other things while they're doing it. Everything is happening with these cars.

Robert McCartney: Prince George's is one of many police departments in the Washington Metro region that have created new programs or strengthened existing ones to fight vehicle related crimes. Aziz created a new division in his force by pairing the anti carjacking operation with the Washington Area Vehicle Enforcement Program, or WAVE, which focuses on recovering stolen vehicles.

Malik Aziz: So we put those things together and with that, with the impact that they've had, they close more cases of carjacking. They've recovered more vehicles because we have this team working hand in hand to focus on the individuals who are committing stolen car rings, carjacking rings.

Robert McCartney: Since Carjackers and other criminals regularly travel back and forth across county and city boundaries, area police have stepped up cooperation.


Malik Aziz: When we have our division commanders, our WAVE team, they talk almost daily with our counterparts across the lines. I'll use MPD as an example in DC. We talk to them daily. What happens is some of the suspects will carjack or steal a vehicle on one side of the line and then go to the other side of the line believing that we are not talking, that we are not sharing information so they think that they can get away with it when all along now, for the last couple of years, we've made sure that we share that intelligence right away to actually apprehend those multiple times. Multiple times that we've been able to contact MPD, they have assisted us in to arrest and recovery and multiple times they have come across the line and say, "We have this person who did this," and our teams are able to surveil a person or make the arrest if needed immediately.

Robert McCartney: The Safe Roads Task Force coordinated through COG is widely seen as one of the most successful examples of regional collaboration on public safety. It has significantly reduced the number of illegal, so-called road rallies in which large numbers of drivers race against each other at high speeds on public streets or perform other dangerous stunts such as blocking intersections and driving in tight circles known as donuts.

Malik Aziz: What we have done is that Maryland State Police, Virginia State Police, DC MPD, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, we all work together by sharing information. We monitor social media, no bells and whistles here. There's no secret software to find out anything. These are all open source things. We look at social media and someone will post car rally or they'll say, "Meet up here for these cars." And it's the same players over and over, same groups, and if we hear that they're going to a specific place now in Prince George's County, we share that information or vice versa with Maryland State Police, with other police departments in Maryland across the way so that we can actually get ahead of these events where they have become, I mean, 100s, 200-300 vehicles sometimes are involved into that magnitude in these street races or the spectators, people who are following it.

Robert McCartney: While such cooperation helps, it cannot fully compensate for the challenge of what the police chiefs and others across the country say is an inadequate number of uniformed officers. Five years ago, the nation's police forces had a total of about 900,000 officers. Today the number is estimated to have dropped to 800,000 or lower.

Malik Aziz: There are many of my counterparts, my peers from major cities across the nation who believe that this won't ever change anytime in the next 10 to 15 years. They believe we are where we are now and we are going to have to evolve policing and rethink how we police due to the severe shortage of personnel.

Robert McCartney: Another local police chief concerned about low staff levels is Russ Hamill, who heads the force in the city of Laurel and also is chair of the COG Police Chief's Committee. Hamill blames difficulties in recruiting and retention in part on a tarnished reputation suffered by police in recent years owing to some notorious individual incidents of police misconduct.

Russ Hamill: There events occurred across the country that were horrific to watch, horrific to learn about, and we see that and it paints a broad brush across law enforcement where ...

Robert McCartney: You're talking about the George Floyd incident.

Russ Hamill: And other incidents like that, not just George Floyd, but that tends to be the one people look at. But there's been other incidents across the country, not just that one, and they're horrific incidents. And people looked at that and it really gave law enforcement in general a bad name. And mind you, this isn't the sole reason, but it created an environment that was less desirable for people to become police officers and families were less encouraging of their younger members that are going into the workforce to become police officers.

Robert McCartney: Hamill said that while such reluctance was understandable, it was not fair to tire all officers with the same broad brush.

Russ Hamill: Look, I'm not Pollyannish, and so yes, there are issues out there. Police departments have issues with some of the people that have been hired. We hire from the human race and there's going to be deficiencies, there's going to be hiccups and there's going to be mistakes, but we have programs in place, administrative programs, accountability programs in place for us to properly address that and it's incumbent upon us as police leaders to hold ourselves, our agencies, and our members accountable to make sure we're doing the right thing out there, what our communities want us to do. But putting this in a nutshell, this has been part of the reason we have trouble with recruiting and retention.

Robert McCartney: A shortage of officers is by no means the only challenge that police chiefs cite as they seek to reverse the rise in crime. Both Hamill and Aziz said some prosecutors, judges, and elected officials have become too reluctant to hold wrongdoers accountable for some crimes. They said that many sentences and other deterrents were too light, especially for nonviolent crimes against property or for those in which the defendants are juveniles. They believe this was partly to blame for the sharp increases in retail theft and other property offenses.

Russ Hamill: Some prosecution officers are deciding to not prosecute these types of crimes and more towards overall theft here. All of this leads to a lack of consequences for criminal action, and then it can spur on similar behavior, in my viewpoint. I'm all for giving people breaks. I think you talk to most police chiefs, we all understand people are going to make mistakes and we have complete understanding for that, but that doesn't mean in giving a break we don't have accountability as part of the piece.

Robert McCartney: Hamill cited as an example, a recent case in which a Montgomery County police Sergeant Patrick Kepp lost both his legs. Kepp was struck by a vehicle driven by a 19-year-old who had a lengthy record of deliberately baiting police into pursuing him in high speed chases. The reckless driver did not have a driver's license but was driving alone with only a learner's permit.

Russ Hamill: He has been charged repeatedly with this, the offender, with these types of offenses. I understand he's had tickets according to the local press of over 130 miles per hour. Yet there's been no consequences thus far for his actions. There should have been accountability before this. Before now we're at a stage where it's an attempted murder charge.

Robert McCartney: We've already talked about the Safe Roads task force at its success in reducing illegal road rallies. The region also runs a database that requires all pawn shops in the Washington area to report any property that they receive. That makes it harder for someone to steal a necklace in, say, Fairfax, and pawn it in the district without detection. A separate mutual aid agreement among local, state and federal police departments meant that there were few delays in summoning reinforcements from Virginia, Maryland, and federal police departments to help repel the January 6th, 2021 storming of the US capitol. That was not true for the National Guard, which was not part of the agreement and was slower to arrive. Here's Scott Boggs again.

Scott Boggs: I don't think that any of our law enforcement partners or fire and rescue that responded to that incident had any hesitation because they knew and understood that we built this agreement and we do this on a day-to-day basis. So as a result of that on January 6th, the requests were made and there was no hesitation when it came to finding resources and getting them to the capital as quickly as possible.

Robert McCartney: The region has been looking at some practical ways to address the challenge of filling the ranks in police forces.

Scott Boggs: I think one of the things that we have been working with our police chiefs on is trying to identify what are the barriers to recruiting and retaining law enforcement officers. Everything from addressing the needs of the individual officers, things like making sure that we have a coordinated or at least a collective approach to mental health to support the officers themselves. I'm not talking about responding to mental health emergencies. I'm talking about making sure that the officers have the mental health support that they need in order to deal with the issues and things that they see on a day-to-day basis. One of the other initiatives that is relatively new that we're looking at trying to do is find a way to provide childcare for those officers that are working these odd shifts and do that in an affordable way that would be provided for law enforcement, but also give them a space where they feel comfortable leaving their child and not something somewhere that, for instance, they might be targeted because their parent is a law enforcement officer.

Robert McCartney: Boggs is also working to respond to police chief's concerns that the judicial system has become too lenient in handling some property related and other crimes.

Scott Boggs: Yeah. Well, I can tell you what we're aspiring to do, and that is we're we are looking to bring together the prosecutors from the region and talk about this particular issue, identify the challenges. What are the things that are creating the greatest challenge for them when it comes to prosecuting these crimes? I completely understand political pressures across are different across the national capital region, but also give them a forum where they can potentially identify solutions to how we can do a better job of prosecuting these crimes.

Robert McCartney: Now I'll share some of my own observations. The key thing to remember is that successful policing always requires maintaining a balance. The need to arrest and convict criminals must be tempered by the requirement to protect civil liberties and promote rehabilitation. We've heard a lot from our guests about the current challenges facing policing. Regional collaboration is one tool that can help police forces protect communities. Technological advancements allow for greater information sharing than in the past. That means agencies can alert each other in real time about incidents that threaten the public's wellbeing. Recruitment and retention remain a critical issue. Open discussions can help area police departments learn not to compete for personnel, but instead learn from each other and attract perspective officers from across the country. Any strategy should include steps to alleviate poverty and other social ills that contribute to crime. We address many of those issues in other episodes of this podcast, such as those focusing on COG's efforts to advance economic and racial equity. Finally, even if some recent trends are worrisome, it's important not to be defeatist. Here's a positive forward-looking appraisal from Chief Aziz.

Malik Aziz: I'm optimistic. I'm not pessimistic by any means. Sometimes change comes very slow, but as long as we're moving towards that change as seconds tick on a clock, I'm good with that. If I sit here, it may not be realized in my tenure, but it could be realized a couple of years down the road. But by no means do I think that the police have the only solution to this problem. I think that are many solutions to the problem, and I think that we have many capable entities that need to sit at a table in a multidisciplinary team type of way, and be for the people and do what the people request us to do, not what our own whims and opinions may call them. We work for the people.

Robert McCartney: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. We welcome your feedback. Please email comments to ThinkRegionally, one word, @mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Lindsey Martin, Steve Kania, and Amanda Lau. This is your host Robert McCartney urging everyone as always to think regionally.