Washington DC Council Members Who Froze Police Hiring Now Call For More Officers: City Administrator

Washington, D.C., police cruisers parked on K Street on Feb. 5, 2012. (Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images)

Washington’s city administrator says it is ironic that the city council reduced the police department budget and froze the hiring of police officers for two years, but continues to request more law enforcement presence on the capital city’s streets.

“The very same council members who voted to freeze hiring, also call the chief every week asking for more cops in the streets, and that’s the irony of it,” said City Administrator Kevin Donahue.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city’s Metro Police Department (MPD) is down 500 officers because of the council’s budget decisions two years ago and the fast rate of police retirement.

“The city administrator already mentioned that we are about 500 fewer officers now than when I started eight years ago, and part of that is because, for two years, we weren’t permitted, because of budget actions, to do any hiring in MPD,” said Bowser.

Bowser and Donahue made the comments as part of a virtual townhall meeting for seniors on Feb. 8. The townhall was the first in a series of budget engagement forums that give residents a chance to share their priorities before the mayor sends her fiscal year 2024 budget to the DC city council.

Mayor, City Council Differ on Crime Reform

Bowser has been openly critical of the city council’s soft-on-crime approach. The council pushed through a fundamentally revised criminal code last month over the mayor’s veto.

The Epoch Times reached out to a number of DC city council members for comment.

According to data from the Metropolitan Police, as of Jan. 18, there had been 11 homicides and six cases of sex abuse in 2023 compared to the first 18 days of 2022, which had six homicides and two cases of sex abuse. Violent crime, as a whole, decreased by 7 percent, but overall crime increased by 25 percent.

“Over the past two years, DC has had a skyrocketing crime rate,” the DC Police Union said in a statement condemning the city council’s action.

“Homicides are now regularly over 200 per year. There are nearly 500 carjackings, 2,000 robberies, and 800 shootings per year. These numbers are almost double what they were two and three years ago. Only a decade ago the homicide rate was below 100,” the police union said.

Replenishing the MPD

Donahue said the city has implemented hiring incentives to increase the police force, including hiring bonuses, housing incentives, and a higher education tuition initiative, all of which have helped.

He said its most successful program, however, has been the police cadet program, in which the city hires DC high school graduates, most of them from Wards 7 and 8, and many of them female.

The cadet program has grown from about 25 cadets when Bowser took office, to about 150 cadets today, Donahue said.

“They get a civilian job at MPD for about two years, they go to UDC [University of the District of Columbia] free of charge to be able to get a degree, and then at the end of those two years, they can choose and they have no obligation to stay [with MPD],” said Donahue.

“We’ve been working very hard with incentives to hire the right people to join our department, and we try to hire as many as we can,” Donahue added.

Senior Citizen: ‘It’s Really Dangerous Out Here’

Margaret Miller, a senior living in Ward 7, urged Bowser to get more police officers to patrol the streets. As a senior citizen riding public transport, she has observed crime getting worse.

Miller doesn’t feel safe.

“I’m just concerned about more police force out here because—we’ve always had crime but it’s escalated and escalated and that has gotten to be more on the subways and the buses ... and it seems to me like it’s really dangerous out here,” Miller said during the budget engagement forum. “It seems to me like it’s increasingly getting worse. And I was just wondering whether is there something they could do as far as maybe getting more policemen on the force or getting back to where police would walk the streets?”

The MPD has gotten national attention in recent weeks because of back-to-back shootings, one in a DC Metro subway station.

“We are working with our partners at Metro, to support them. They don’t have enough police to be on every bus or on every train or even at every train station. And we don’t have enough police to do it for them,” said Bowser during the forum.

“It’s very important that you feel safe,” continued Bowser. “While we’re concerned, especially about the very, very unfortunate event at Potomac Avenue Metro, we know that we have a clean and safe system, and we’re going to work together to make sure you see more police on the system.”

Bowser was referring to a shooting rampage on Feb. 1 in which a man shot three people, killing one.

Bill Pan contributed to this report.