Crime & Safety

Montgomery Police Detectives Stretched Thin

As the county continues to look at police staffing levels for the next budget season, the Montgomery County Police Department's investigative services bureau is feeling the strain.

The lack of adequate staffing is taking a toll on the Montgomery County Police Department’s ability to investigate and close cases, according to Chief Tom Manger.

Issues with county police staffing has required the department to shift resources to cover spikes in crime, leaving some areas understaffed and with few resources, . Part of this shifting has left the investigative services bureau under Assistant Police Chief Russell Hamill scrambling for detectives to work a growing number of cases.

It is a particular issue with the closure of the county’s burglary cases, which are on the rise as county crime overall trends down.

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"We flat out need more detectives in each of our sections,” Hamill said. “There's no quick fix to this. I know [Police Chief Manger] isn't going to send 50 detectives through the door July 1. I know that's not going to happen, but we can make inroads over the next three or four years."

The latest figures show that Montgomery County’s burglary rate is up from 2009, with 3.4 burglaries reported per 1,000 residents in 2010, according to a CountyStat report. The report shows that 2009 had a little over 3.1 burglaries per 1,000 residents.

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“In Montgomery County there are over 3,000 burglaries,” Manger said of more current numbers. “That's 10 a day.”

The increase remains less than the burglary rate in 2006, which saw 4.1 burglaries per 1,000 residents. Montgomery’s figures are also lower than those of the surrounding jurisdictions of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Prince Georges and Fairfax counties.

"The most recent spike was—Chevy Chase,” Manger said. "This department is not staffed to be able to react to spikes like that without robbing Peter to pay Paul. Without moving resources [from] where they really are being used."

Burglaries are a large investigative drain on the department’s resources, Manger said, and the major obstacle to closing these cases is a department where detectives are spread too thin.

The department doesn’t have the resources to multi-investigate, Hamill told the council committee. For example, if a detective is working on the investigation of a robbery and gets a call for a missing person, he must drop the robbery case to help find the missing person. This can sidetrack a detective for days.

"It's about being able to properly serve the community. It’s being able to properly investigate the cases that you're assigned to and investigate them in a methodical manner and a timely manner," Hamill said. "When you take that week off of a case you have to come back in and catch up, you've taken four or five days to jump on something else."

The latest figures also show that police department’s robbery case closure rate has dropped from 34 percent in fiscal year 2008 to 24 percent in FY11, according to a CountyStat report. Of 824 robberies in FY11, only 201 have been closed. Other violent crimes such as homicide and rape have high closure rates in FY11 at 88 percent and 66 percent, respectively.

Hamill pointed out a few issues that have contributed to the drop in closure rate, including an increase in “uncooperative victims” such as those involved in drug rip-offs. Another issue has been an increase in transient victims who move on without pressing the case, leaving the police at a dead end, even if an arrest is made, Hamill said.

According to the CountyStat report, opportunistic crimes like robberies are difficult to close because they happen so quickly and often the victim does not have the chance to see the assailant. Still, the department says, expanding the detective ranks would help.

"Everybody is sharing the pain in terms of vacancies," Manger said.


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