By Tom Howell Jr.
The Washington Times
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District has enough money to reach its goal of building the Metropolitan Police Department force to more than 3,900 officers by the end of the coming fiscal year, officials said Wednesday.
Funding in D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s fiscal 2012 budget and an additional $10.8 million approved by the D.C. Council in mid-July provided adequate funding to hire 300 new officers, said council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat.
Currently, the department has “just over” 3,800 officers, according to Mr. Mendelson, chairman of the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary.
The city will put about 30 officers a month through the academy and should reach the goal of 3,900 officers by mid-2012, as long as attrition remains around 15 officers per month, said Paul Quander, deputy mayor for public safety.
Mr. Quander said an initial class of 35 recruits will begin training Oct. 4.
There had been no recruits in the system because police hiring was frozen for about a year.
Academy training will take at least eight months, so the 3,900 figure takes into account both existing officers and recruits in the system, Mr. Mendelson said.
Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police officers’ union, who has criticized recent efforts to increase department staffing, said the new plan is not good enough.
He said that even if the city can provide eight months of training to 35 new recruits per month, “that means that only the 140 hired in the first four months will be out of the academy by next October.”
He said the city will likely end up with fewer than 3,800 officers on the street for a time — a staffing level that department Chief Cathy L. Lanier has described as “trouble.”
Mr. Mendelson and Mr. Quander met with the mayor’s budget director, Eric Goulet, on Tuesday to make sure the funding was in place for the hiring efforts.
On Wednesday, Mr. Quander said the implementation of automated traffic enforcement resulted in some “efficiencies” that freed up money for recruitment.
Council member Jack Evans, Ward 2 Democrat, put the issue on the agenda of the council’s breakfast meeting with Mr. Gray to be clear about the city’s plans to create adequate police staffing, a hot-button topic that figured heavily in budget talks.
“It’s all on the public record, so there should be no issue coming back [to the council],” Mr. Evans said after the meeting.
Earlier this year, Mr. Evans introduced a bill that would require the city to maintain a police force of at least 4,000 officers.
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