DC police reform commission recommends shrinking size of force

The D.C. Police Reform Commission released a 259-page report with dozens of recommendations on Thursday, including educing the size of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department. 

The group recommended that a congressional mandate that requires the city’s police department have at least 3,000 officers be done away with.

“Decentering police requires shifting our collective focus and resources to invest far more in community-centered programs that prevent harm, while simultaneously realigning and reducing the size, responsibilities, and budget of MPD in line with a narrower scope of work for police,” the commission wrote in its recommendation.

“This shift must occur strategically: a smaller MPD does not guarantee a more community-responsive, less harmful, and ultimately more effective department,” it wrote.

Other recommendations included reducing the police presence in schools and calling for the use of behavioral health care professionals for certain crises.

The commission worked on its report titled “Decentering Police To Improve Public Safety” for around seven months. 

The report “as a whole, reflects the views of the overwhelming majority of Commissioners,” the 20-member group wrote.

Apart from how to handle crises, the commission also made recommendations on how to prevent them from happening, such as expanding safety nets for vulnerable people.

“The District needs to expand and create community-based services and other resources that meet people’s underlying needs and thus improve the quality of life for District residents and prevent many emergencies from arising in the first place,” the commission wrote.

Christy Lopez, a former Department of Justice official and a co-chair of the commission, told DCist that the commission was instructed to “re-envision policing and public safety.”

“We didn’t want to have a set of anodyne recommendations that were of kind of boilerplate. We wanted to make sure that our commission report didn’t just talk about policing, but the entire public safety infrastructure,” Lopez said.

Lopez acknowledged that there will likely be some pushback and hesitation to the recommendations, but said she believes many officers and department heads will agree with the commission’s report.

“The Metropolitan Police Department has a history of embracing independent review and analysis of agency practices to implement positive change,” acting Deputy D.C. Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Chris Geldart said in a statement to DCist.

“We appreciate the time and effort that the D.C. Police Reform Commission members have invested in this,” Geldart added. “We will be ready to work with Mayor Bowser, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the council in determining the best steps forward for the District.”