Chief Smith announces MPD's new strategic plan

Some good ideas but notable gaps

Acting Chief Smith testified before the DC Council on Wednesday as part of her nomination process. In her remarks she alluded to a new strategic plan document that has now been shared with Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, staff and the public. MPD has gone through a number of “strategies” or “initiatives” over the years so it’s critical to monitor the actual implementation and outcomes of this (and any) plan. Even so, this document is important context to understand what MPD is doing:

• The strategy provides insights into how MPD thinks they can influence crime

  • It’s especially important to note where Chief Smith is driving changes

• How rank-and-file officers feel about the strategy has some bearing on morale and retention

  • Everyday working conditions and experiences are more important but belief in the overall organization’s direction is a component of morale

• Knowing MPD’s strategy can help policymakers and residents better conduct oversight and advocacy

Bottom Line: There is a lot to like about this document. It generally aligns with policing best practices and cites some of the best research on crime in DC. Where it falls short is in how to improve officer recruiting/retention and MPD’s collaboration with prosecutors. Organizationally the plan has three sections:

• “Prevention & Intervention — The best way we can make our communities feel safer is to prevent crimes before they even happen.

• Accountability — We cannot prevent every crime, but we can work to ensure those who commit them are held accountable.

• Sustainability — This is challenging work, and we cannot do it alone. We must recruit new officers to join us, make sure our members stay healthy so they can fight crime, and look for ways to use technology and partnerships to expand our reach and impact.”

Note the use of “we”; this is a document where the audience is the officers and staff of MPD. Within each section it breaks out several concepts (confusingly called “strategies”) and then each “strategy” has various “initiatives” or other specific actions.

Prevention & Intervention:

• People and Places: This section covers MPD’s efforts to focus resources on the small number of places and people that drive a disproportionate share of crime in DC. It’s a positive development that this is first on the list given MPD’s history of instead assigning a disproportionate number of officers to wealthy, low-crime neighborhoods where they couldn’t do much good. This section also describes how MPD’s Violent Crime Suppression Division (VCSD) prioritizes the small number of individuals who are “Drivers of Gun Violence” and specifically mentions monitoring their social media accounts to build cases.

• Deployment of Resources: This sections covers the “Community Focused Patrol Unit” and “Robbery Suppression Unit” (RSU) which generally deploy to higher-crime areas and the RSU is specifically focused on DC’s most common violent crime. One shortcoming is this section only talks about “specialized units” rather than prioritizing “regular” patrol resources to higher-crime areas.

• Keeping Our Youth Safe: This sections leads with the Juvenile Curfew Enforcement Pilot to “to get youth off the street to reduce their risk of becoming a victim of or getting involved in violent crimes.” There’s mixed evidence about youth curfews and DC’s current enforcement efforts are a pilot where we don’t yet have much data. It’s notable that MPD is listing a pilot ahead of its ongoing youth efforts and suggests that MPD leadership thinks the curfew is a top priority. This section also describes a consolidation: “The new School Safety & Engagement Division combines previously distinct units, including the School Safety Division, Youth Intervention and Prevention (YIP), Side by Side Band, and community affairs/events.” It will be interesting to see how this changes day-to-day operations.

• Data and Research: The section covers how MPD is working with the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) to refresh DC’s “Gun Violence Problem Analysis” which was first done by an outside vendor in 2021. More importantly, the vendor is training CJCC staff how to do this analysis on an ongoing basis. This is incredibly important because this methodology is how DC identified the specific 200-500 highest risk individuals that drive 60-70% of gun violence in DC. This list of persons who are “Drivers of Gun Violence” is whom MPD’s Violent Crime Suppression Division prioritizes for “investigation and apprehension.” This is a critical capability that DC has not had in the past and this focus on these individuals is aligned with recent comments from the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO). It’s also important to note that the original “list” of “Drivers of Gun Violence” was intended to be used to enroll these individuals into the “People of Promise” program to get them training/care/jobs to turn away from crime. That program was understaffed and many of the intended program participants didn’t trust it enough to voluntarily enroll. A MPD/USAO crackdown (like they did on the Kennedy Street Crew) will likely make it even harder for government-affiliated persons to connect with these “Drivers of Gun Violence” since there was already a lot of (understandable) anxiety about being on a “government list.” However it’s also possible that a more credible threat of arrest, prosecution and incarceration will make some of these highest-risk individuals reconsider DC’s programs. This “carrots and sticks” approach is in line with DC’s old Homicide Reduction Strategy that I wrote about here:

  DC passed a crime bill. What should we do now?

Overall the “Prevention and Intervention” section is the strongest part of this strategy document. It is at least saying MPD thinks about crime in a focused, data-driven and clearly prioritized way. Chief Smith has been consistent in this messaging as well. This prioritization of the highest-risk criminals also should help MPD be seen as focusing on specific criminals and not “Young Black Men” as a class. The highest-risk “Drivers of Gun Violence” are an incredibly small and unrepresentative share of the population.

When done right (a big caveat), intelligence-based policing like in this plan is the opposite of widespread stop-and-frisk, “mass incarceration era” tactics. We should have no illusions that a strategy document can reverse years of poor MPD-Community relations but at least this is pointing in the right direction.

Accountability:

• Investigations: This section contains a lot of encouraging (but very early stage) ideas about leveraging technology to solve more crimes. MPD has correctly identified that being able to analyze more video and physical evidence (with accredited crime labs whose testimony can stand up in court) is critical to solving cases and securing convictions. One gap is that this section doesn’t say anything about tips or witnesses and the only mention of either is a later blurb about the “Gun Tip” program. MPD should have a strategy about how to get more tips and cooperating witnesses since those also help in investigations.

• Partnerships: This section is a major disappointment because it doesn’t mention prosecutors like the USAO or DC’s Attorney General (OAG) at all. The USAO is the decision-maker for prosecuting most adult crimes in DC and has been declining to prosecute a large share of MPD’s arrests. The USAO is probably MPD’s single most important partnership and the fact that the strategic plan gives this relationship so little attention is a glaring oversight. Chief Smith has talked about some ways the USAO is working with MPD to remind officers of proper arrest techniques and improve report-writing. This kind of training may help reduce the share of cases the USAO deems unwinnable due to officer actions. There is a lot more that could be done like more proactive supervisor review of BWC footage and tracking prosecution rates by arresting officer/PSA/Unit to identify issues. Beyond the USAO/OAG oversight, this section describes MPD’s ongoing partnerships with National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force (CARFTF) (which helps apprehend suspects outside DC) and the Violent Crime Impact Team (VCIT). The VCIT is notably one lever where Federal resources could augment DC’s efforts and includes members of the FBI, ATF and DEA.

“Accountability” is by far the shortest section of the strategy and failing to lay out a vision for better collaboration with the USAO and OAG is concerning. While this section’s header is “We cannot prevent every crime, but we can work to ensure those who commit them are held accountable,” it says very little about how to ensure more people are “held accountable” after arrest. This seems to reflect a siloed view of crime where MPD’s own “accountability” ends after arrest but that is at odds with MPD’s broader mandate. MPD’s deterrent effect (making criminals think it isn’t worth committing crimes because they will be caught and punished) and incapacitation effect (helping lock up high-risk offenders so they don’t commit more crimes in the community) are both undermined when prosecutors don’t press charges or secure convictions and appropriate sentences. MPD’s actual effectiveness at its core goal of “Decrease crime and increase feelings of safety in all of our communities” is directly impacted by the decisions of prosecutors. Building the most productive and collaborative relationships with the USAO and OAG is an imperative for MPD that ought to be reflected in its strategy. Just this week a new report from the DC Sentencing Commission showed that even serious violent crime arrests rarely end in serious convictions:

• Only 2/3 of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon arrests are prosecuted

• Only half of those cases end in a conviction

• 84% of those convictions are for lesser charges

MPD’s ability to drive “accountability” for criminals is only as good as its working relationship with DC’s prosecutors. Hopefully Chief Smith and her leadership team prioritize those relationships.

Sustainability:

• Investment in Our Members: This sections leads with a discussion of the 30X30 Initiative to have recruit classes (not the overall force) be 30% female by 2030. Among other initiatives in this section MPD is expanding its “Chaplain Corps” from 1 to 7 officers, looking for a “Wellness App” and a grant for a “Peer-Link Team.” The strategy does allude to the officer complaints in the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) “MPD Organizational Culture Assessment”: “Childcare was one of the top identified sources of stress for members in a recent assessment. Based on the results of the study, MPD may discover solutions, such as the need to establish our own childcare service within the Department or even Districtwide, as well as a pathway to launch those efforts.” Unfortunately for MPD officers, this document only says MPD “may” do something to help. Given MPD officers’ incredibly low level of trust in department promises its unlikely that these kind of “maybe” offerings will do much for morale or retention. This lengthy section continues with “Retention Incentives” which are a mix of things MPD already offers ($ for higher education in exchange for promising to stay for 3 years, Leadership Academy slots), some more “maybe” promises (possibly expanding the number of officers who receive police vehicles they can take home) and some new training options. Honestly this section doesn’t commit to addressing any of the major workplace problems (unscheduled and unfair overtime assignments, toxic leaders, poor communications, duplicative paperwork etc.) that officers say make them want to leave MPD.

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• Enhancing the Workforce: This section talks about recent steps to expand MPD’s recruiting team, increase hiring bonuses and existing programs for housing/tuition assistance. There’s nothing really new here; which is a concern given that the current recruiting policy mix has failed to meet MPD’s goals despite record funding. One major concern is that MPD’s Cadet Corps isn’t mentioned at all in this “recruiting” section and is instead listed under “Keeping Our Youth Safe” alongside things like traffic enforcement around schools. This seems to reflect an ongoing lack of interest in a program that’s directly supporting MPD’s stated goals of recruiting more women and native Washingtonians. There are a number of ways MPD could expand the Cadet Corps and recruitment in general in this post:

  Getting serious about recruiting more police

• Leveraging Technology: This section also could have gone under “Accountability” but it outlines ways that MPD is investigating the use or expansion of technology like surveillance cameras, license plate readers and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (“drones”). This is welcome since any way to improve the effectiveness of the officers we have (and in some cases increase their safety) helps offset some of MPD’s staffing issues.

• Strengthening Trust and Partnership with the Community: This is a lengthy section that leads with a description of the “Multiagency Police and Community Together (M-PACT) Initiative” to prioritize enforcement and social resources on specific “focus areas.” This has an initial “Enforcement” phase, an “Engagement” phase and a “Celebration” phase. This has some similarities with DC’s old Homicide Reduction Strategy. There is also a pointed shot at a common criticism of some MPD officers: “it affords MPD members the opportunity to get out of their cars and engage directly with community members.” This “get out of your cars” directive from Chief Smith has been a running theme of her tenure and hopefully reflects a positive change in MPD’s culture. The section goes on to detail a number of ongoing engagement efforts like Public Safety Walks, the Community Engagement Academy and Citizens Advisory Councils. Notably faith-based organizations get a lot of focus in this document including a “Faith & Blue” weekend, a new “Chief ’s Quarterly Faith Advisory” and the aforementioned expansion of the Chaplain’s Corps. There are also a number ongoing of youth-focused initiatives like the “Youth Advisory Council” and “Youth Town Halls.” Lastly this sections covers other existing programs like the security camera rebate/voucher programs and an expansion of the “Amazon locker” pilot in the 6th District (for people who wanted to pick up packages at the police station for fear of packages being stolen from their porch). Overall, the M-PACT initiative if properly coordinated with other agencies, could help improve community relations while the rest of this section are mostly small changes or ongoing policies.

“Sustainability” is the longest section of the strategy in part because it pulls together rather disparate topics. There’s nothing particularly wrong with most of the initiatives but they generally fail to be up to the scale of MPD’s recruitment, retention or community trust problems. It’s also notable that the plan doesn’t say anything about discipline, standards or reducing resident complaints. It makes some sense that MPD didn’t dwell on unpopular topics in a document aimed at officers but it’s still notable that these issues (which are very important to some Washingtonians) aren’t explicitly mentioned in MPD’s strategy at all. While one document can’t cover every topic, the fact that this strategy does indulge in some “padding” by including very minor ongoing initiatives makes the omissions more noteworthy.

Overall this plan reflects solid alignment with policing best practices but falls short in how it addresses downstream “accountability” for criminals or the “sustainability” of MPD’s operations and relationship with the community. This helps inform how residents and policymakers can tailor their feedback to MPD:

• Active oversight (though the Executive, Council, ANCs, CAC and media) of how MPD is implementing its policing strategies. Confirming that MPD is in fact prioritizing officers to higher-crime areas and driving successful investigations of the “Drivers of Gun Violence.”

• Additional pressure and oversight of how MPD is working with the USAO and OAG to drive successful prosecutions. Ensuring that “arrests” and “cases closed” aren’t the only key metrics when so many cases fall apart after arrest. This obviously isn’t only MPD’s responsibility but they need to do whatever they can to improve prosecution outcomes.

• Advocacy for real improvements to MPD’s workplace culture and recruiting strategy. Some of the “maybe we’ll do this” ideas in this plan are promising but need to be real in order to make any change. MPD almost certainly needs to expand its recruitment pool to match the best practices of other police departments and the military.

• Active oversight and evaluation of the M-PACT Initiative to see how it impacts crime and community trust. Ensuring that this doesn’t become just another press release but something that MPD and other agencies build on to resolve longstanding problems in DC’s highest-crime neighborhoods.

There are good ideas in this plan that Chief Smith and her team can build on. Hopefully MPD, policymakers and residents will continue working to fill in some of the gaps in this strategy. Thank you for reading and please share this post with other Washingtonians who want to know more about MPD’s strategy.