Police Reform Must Happen From The Top Down: Montgomery Co. Exec

ROCKVILLE, MD – A day after the Montgomery County Council introduced a declaration to declare racism a public health crisis, County Executive Marc Elrich said that systematic changes must be made among local law enforcement agencies from the top down.

Elrich, speaking during his weekly media briefing on Wednesday, anticipates the measure to be passed unanimously by council members. But as unrest has broken out around the country surrounding issues of police brutality and social justice, Elrich said the process of making sweeping changes designed to determine how policing is done in Montgomery County has been a continuing discussion.

While recent events – including the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day in Minneapolis, have brought police brutality among individual officers to light – Elrich insists that the problem is much bigger than the actions of individuals. Instead, he said procedures being used by law enforcement agencies like the Montgomery County Police Department must be addressed.

“There are things we absolutely have to change,” Elrich said.

In recent weeks, Montgomery County — a minority-majority jurisdiction with roughly 1.1 million residents — has played host to a number of peaceful demonstrations in which protesters demanded police accountability and justice for Floyd, whose fatal arrest was recorded on a bystander's now-viral cellphone video.

Elrich said he had previously instructed the department and Police Chief Marcus Jones to bring in an outside resource to re-evaluate everything within the agency from hiring practices to officer discipline.

Elrich said a task force has been working on decriminalizing homelessness, but he said that officials are looking at reforms within the department when it comes to use of force regulations, the duty to intervene and other practices that Elrich said must be investigated. He said that locally, traffic stops - especially involving people of color - have included questionable practices, but that often, it was an officer following the direction of a superior officer in how the stop was conducted.

Such behavior, the county behavior said Wednesday, must change.

“When it comes to the actions of the police, we all focus on the actions of individuals, but these individuals and these departments have been trained to do a lot of the things that people find problematic,” Elrich said.

He added: “It seems like an officer problem, but I assure you this is an institutional problem. (Officers) do largely what they’re told. …if we’re going to fix this, it starts (from the) top down in terms of what we direct our officers to do.”