In 2019, the department was nearly fully staffed. Six years and more than 20 reform mandates later, it can’t fill its own recruit classes.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
There was a time, not that long ago, when the Montgomery County Police Department didn’t have to sell itself.
In 2019, the department carried its largest authorized roster ever, 1,307 sworn positions, and only 12 of them sat empty, a vacancy rate under 1%. The department’s own union says recruit classes back then routinely drew 60 to 70 applicants. The county could afford to be picky about who wore the badge.
That county doesn’t exist anymore.
The numbers today
“The department went from just 12 vacant sworn positions in 2019 to roughly 190 by September 2025.”
By September 2025, the department’s filled sworn complement had fallen to 1,085 out of 1,275 authorized positions, a net loss of 210 officers from the 2019 peak and a 15% vacancy rate that council staff described as the lowest number of filled sworn positions in at least 15 years. Patrol, the core of day-to-day policing, was hit hardest: only 611 of 825 authorized patrol positions were filled, a 74% fill rate. The most recent council briefing, in March 2026, showed the vacancy rate holding at roughly 14%, meaning the crisis hasn’t meaningfully eased. Montgomery County now has roughly 1.17 officers per 1,000 residents, well below the 3.34-per-1,000 average for Maryland law enforcement agencies statewide, according to FBI staffing data cited in the county’s own analysis.
Some other figures from the county’s own records:
Officer turnover, which historically ran about one to 1.5 departures a month, quadrupled after 2020 to roughly four a month, and hit a 12.5% annual turnover rate in 2022.
Overtime pay climbed 54% between 2019 and 2023, according to county council staff, and now runs at roughly 12% of base payroll.
Response times for priority calls grew from 5 minutes, 11 seconds in 2019 to 5 minutes, 52 seconds in 2024, according to a council staff report.
Academy graduating classes shrank from 203 cadets in 2013-2014, to 114 in 2017-2018, to just 65 in 2020-2021, according to department records cited by WJLA.
Recruit classes that used to pull in 60 to 70 candidates now draw around 20, according to the police union.
Total crime reported to MCPD, per 100,000 residents, rose from 1,483 in 2019 to 1,648 in 2024, according to council staff.
“Recruit classes that used to pull in 60 to 70 candidates now draw around 20.”
What changed around 2020
The timing is not subtle. Council staff have themselves noted that “most attrition” began after 2019, the same year Montgomery County’s reform era began in earnest following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Between 2020 and 2021, the county’s all-Democratic County Council and the Maryland General Assembly moved fast on policing:
In July 2020, the council passed Expedited Bill 27-20, tightening the standard officers must meet to detain a suspect. The police union warned publicly at the time that it would make it harder to stop and question people matching a lookout description in an active investigation.
That fall, Council members Will Jawando and Hans Riemer introduced legislation to remove School Resource Officers from Montgomery County Public Schools. It passed, and officers left school hallways at the start of the 2021-22 school year, replaced by a “community engagement officer” model.
In 2021, the council passed its own local use-of-force law requiring officers to intervene when they witness a colleague using excessive force, on top of a sweeping statewide Police Accountability Act that repealed the old Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights and set a new statewide use-of-force standard.
The county commissioned an outside audit of MCPD’s practices, and County Executive Marc Elrich formed a Reimagining Public Safety Task Force in August 2020, funded with a $550,000 supplemental appropriation. Its February 2021 report, drafted by 45 community volunteers and 35 county representatives, ran 87 recommendations, including eliminating school-based police officers and directing the department to “lessen police presence on streets.” Some of the community volunteers who helped write it identified themselves publicly as members of the Montgomery County Defund/Invest Coalition.
Council staff have separately noted that the department was handed more than 20 distinct reform mandates in the years since the summer of 2020, on top of roughly 280 total action items the county now tracks across the task force report, the state Police Accountability Act and the MCPD audit combined.
None of that proves, by itself, that policy caused the exodus. Correlation is not causation, and the department’s own leaders have pointed to other forces too. But the sequence, near-full staffing through 2019, a wave of new restrictions and mandates starting in 2020, then a sustained climb in resignations and retirements starting immediately after, is not something MDBayNews is inventing. It’s in the county’s own staffing reports.
“Most attrition began after 2019 — the same period Montgomery County’s policing reform era began in earnest.”
What officers and their union say
Lee Holland, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35, which represents the department’s rank-and-file sworn officers, has been blunt about where he places the blame. He told Bethesda Beat in 2022 that low pay, weak benefits and a legislative body he saw as hostile to police were driving people out. Two years later, discussing the drop in recruit class sizes with FOX 5, he put it more simply: “if morale is this low, it’s because of these bills.”
Holland has specifically pointed to the county’s local use-of-force law, which he calls redundant to state law, and a “random review” unit created to audit use-of-force incidents, as sources of frustration among rank-and-file officers, arguing they generate discipline for paperwork errors rather than actual misconduct. He’s also criticized a Jawando-sponsored bill regulating consent searches, saying there’s no data behind the racial-disparity concerns it was built on.
“If morale is this low, it’s because of these bills.”
— Lee Holland, FOP Lodge 35
The other side of the ledger
To be fair to county officials, they haven’t hidden from the numbers, and their own analysts have cautioned against a purely local explanation. A council staff briefing put it directly: “the police staffing shortage is not new, it is national, and it persists,” driven in part by a generation less interested in policing as a career. Departments from Dallas to Philadelphia to New York have loosened hiring standards for the same reason MCPD has: not enough applicants, period, regardless of local politics.
That context matters. It just doesn’t erase the local decisions layered on top of it.
How the county is trying to dig out
“Montgomery County is spending real money and political capital just to get back to where its police department stood six years ago.”
Faced with a shrinking applicant pool, Montgomery County has done something that would have been unthinkable in the department’s 2019 heyday: it lowered the bar to get in.
This fall, the department scrapped its longstanding requirement that recruits have 60 college credits, a standard state police and neighboring Howard and Anne Arundel counties don’t impose. Capt. David Reed, director of the police training academy, told Bethesda Magazine the requirement had cost the department candidates who ended up hired elsewhere instead, saying, “We have turned away very good candidates.” The county has also been pushing, so far unsuccessfully, to loosen Maryland’s rule requiring recruits to be cannabis-free for three years before applying, a restriction stricter than D.C.’s three-month rule and Virginia’s, which has none.
Other moves:
A $20,000 signing bonus for new and lateral hires.
Increased base pay, still under negotiation with the FOP.
A new partnership with the University of Maryland Global Campus letting recruits earn college credit through the academy itself.
Exploration of hiring civilian staff to handle report processing and evidence work currently done by sworn detectives.
A pension enhancement now under discussion, which county analysts warn could ironically accelerate retirements among officers already eligible to leave. Roughly a third to 40% of the sworn force has been eligible for some form of retirement in any given year since 2022, according to council staff reports.
Taken together, it’s a department spending real money and political capital just to get back to where it stood six years ago. And according to its own union, it’s still fighting local policy headwinds while it does it.
“In 2019, Montgomery County could afford to be picky about who wore the badge. Today, it is lowering barriers just to find enough applicants.”
Why this matters for November
Will Jawando, the Democratic nominee for county executive, was one of the two council members who introduced the bill removing police from schools, and he’s the sponsor of the consent-search legislation Holland has criticized by name. If elected, Jawando would inherit direct oversight of the same department whose staffing collapse began during his tenure on the council that passed these bills. Republican nominee Esther Wells has made public safety a recurring theme of her campaign, including her attendance at this week’s contentious Gaithersburg community meeting on policing, a meeting Jawando skipped.
It’s worth noting the reforms passed with support well beyond Jawando alone. The council that passed Bill 27-20 and the local use-of-force law did so unanimously, and Elrich, not Jawando, was the executive who signed off on the broader “Reimagining Public Safety” push. This was a countywide, one-party policy direction, not the work of a single lawmaker. But Jawando’s specific sponsorships put him closer to the center of that record than most.
What to watch
Whether the FY27 county budget, due next spring, includes further pay increases for MCPD or additional civilian positions to relieve sworn staff.
Whether the Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission acts on the county’s request to loosen cannabis restrictions for applicants.
Whether Jawando or Wells offers a specific plan to close the roughly 190-position gap between authorized and filled sworn positions.
Whether the pension changes under negotiation trigger the retirement wave county analysts have warned about.
Sources:Montgomery County Council Public Safety Committee staff memoranda from February 2023, October 2023, March 2024, December 2024, November 2025 and March 2026, prepared largely by legislative analyst Susan Farag, available through the county council’s Granicus records system. The county’s Office of Legislative Oversight report “Successful Strategies from Other Jurisdictions to Increase Police Officer” staffing, published May 2026. Bethesda Magazine’s reporting on police staffing (February 2023, February 2021 task force coverage), the December 2024 staffing outlook, and the October 2025 report on the department’s removal of its college-credit requirement. FOX 5 DC’s reporting on the November 2025 and December 2024 staffing briefings, and its 2024 and January 2025 reporting on marijuana policy and recruitment. WJLA/7News’s April 2022 reporting on academy graduation trends and retirement eligibility, and its March 2026 reporting on the department’s continuing vacancy rate. Montgomery Perspective’s 2023, 2024 and November 2025 posts compiling council staffing data and FOP statements. The Washington Post’s June 2021 reporting on the county’s police reform legislation and external audit, and its August 2021 reporting on the removal of school resource officers. Maryland Matters’ November 2020 and February 2021 reporting on school resource officer legislation, and WTOP’s February 2021 coverage of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force report’s release. Montgomery County’s own Reimagining Public Safety Task Force records and timeline, published on montgomerycountymd.gov. NBC4 Washington and Police1’s reporting on marijuana-policy recruitment barriers, January 2024 and January 2025. FOP Lodge 35’s public statement on Council Bill 27-20, July 2020.
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