What MPD's own report says is wrong with MPD
What MPD's own report says is wrong with MPD
Officers and outside experts report serious problems within DC's police force
MPD recently posted “A Cultural Assessment of the MPD Workplace”; a 312 page report that has been almost 2 years in the making and outlines several serious challenges for DC’s police force. Chief Contee commissioned the report shortly after he became chief in 2021 and it’s now a resource for interim Chief Benedict and whomever takes on the role permanently. The report presents a pretty negative view of MPD and shows how its shortcomings make DC residents less safe. Notably, a lot of the problems don’t cleanly map to DC’s usual political divides and hopefully this report can drive positive change for residents, officers and staff. Here are the key findings:
MPD officers are demoralized and give especially low ratings to the department’s (lack of) communication and leadership
Officer grievances focus on workload and working conditions:
“Two of the greatest contributors to low morale are canceling employees’ days off and requiring them to repeatedly work overtime, often without prior notice”
Officers with kids have difficulty arranging child care due to unreliable schedules
Poorly maintained facilities and aging/faulty equipment further drive feelings of neglect
The report offers encouraging ideas on “civilianization” and fairer overtime rotation policies that could significantly mitigate some of these concerns
Broad perception of unfairness in career opportunities and discipline:
Significant racial and gender divides with officers often feeling that other races/genders are favored for promotions/opportunities
MPD officers think that poor performers are not held accountable
Report finds that officers are correct to be concerned about internal discipline often being arbitrary/inconsistent
Heavy criticism of MPD’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Recruiting offices for not following HR best practices
The report presents a dire view of policing east of the Anacostia River in police districts 7D and 6D:
These districts (with the highest rates of gun violence in DC) have by far the least experienced officers
More senior officers tend to use their seniority to leave these districts
Community feedback to MPD alleges that police are more rude and less proactive in dealing with crime in these districts
These negative experiences motivate 7D and 6D residents to report fewer crimes and make fewer 911 calls because “the response would be inadequate”
This reduced 911 call volume is then used to “justify” less police focus in these districts (despite the highest concentration of gun violence)
This is a pretty negative report, but Chief Contee deserves credit for wanting to find the problems and commissioning this report in the first place. By all accounts, most of MPD’s problems did not start under his watch but unfortunately there have been few signs of progress on these issues during his tenure. He selected the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), who have worked with many police departments (including MPD in 2013), to perform an “organizational culture assessment” in June 2021 and PERF used surveys, interviews, focus groups and policy/data reviews (among other methods) to create this report. Notably, the DC Police Union (DCPU) denied PERF’s request to interview members individually and initially blocked PERF from surveying DCPU members. As a result, the report’s quotes from officers and sergeants are from the open-ended questions in the survey.
Overall ~22% of MPD’s officers and staff responded to the survey. The sample is generally representative but Black officers and staff responded at a slightly lower rate than their share of MPD while White officers responded at a higher rate. The sample was pretty representative of MPD’s share by gender and other racial groups:
The report attributes the somewhat low response rate to a general sense that MPD management doesn’t care what officers think. Even among those that took the time to fill out the survey, only 24% of officers and 37% of staff agreed with the statement “I Believe the Results of This Survey Will Be Used to Make My Agency a Better Place to Work.” Unsurprisingly, officers rating MPD’s “Communication” very low, with the majority of officers disagreeing with each positive statement (like “Department leaders do an effective job of informing employees about matters affecting us”). Here are some of the officer statements highlighted in the report:
“Learn to talk to each other instead of relying so heavily on email and impersonal communication.”
“When there is no clear venue or opportunity to speak about these day-to-day and practical work items, it breeds an environment of distrust.”
“Decisions made by individual district management typically are made with no input whatsoever from officers and sergeants.”
“Decisions are almost always made by the upper management without any consultation with the masses who are to carry out those orders. The rationale is never made known, and the decisions often seem nonsensical or asinine to the lower echelon of the department.”
The other aspect of MPD that received very low scores was “Leadership.” On a 1-5 scale (1 = Lowest or Strongly Disagree), Leadership received a 2.87 from sworn officers and a 3.34 from professional staff. “Of the nine positive statements to which personnel were asked to respond, sworn personnel disagreed with all nine while professional staff disagreed with seven.” Notably some of the comments differentiate between Chief Contee and the rest of MPD’s upper management:
“Some are like Chief Wheeler-Taylor or Chief Contee who could teach
a master class on leadership and management, others are like poison on the department and leave behind them a wake of inefficiency and low morale.”
“The leadership is the worst it has ever been on this department.”
“In my experience, virtually none of the command and executive staff have any leadership skills. They are at best competent managers, not leaders of any kind.”
“MPD needs to better evaluate the leadership of this department. Morale is always low and the same people who create the toxic environment seem to continue to be promoted and thrive while people under their command suffer.”
The report also includes a quote with a pretty salacious accusation of high-level wrongdoing: “Command members frequently have inappropriate relationships with subordinates causing infidelity scandals and domestic dramas that are unbecoming [to] representatives of our department.” Separately, the perception that poor performers are unfairly promoted is going to be a continued theme throughout this report.
It’s notable that officers rated “Supervision” the highest and materially better than “Leadership”, indicating a difference in perception between different levels within MPD. Professional staff consistently gave higher ratings except for questions related to professional development. The report provides a number of ideas for better defined career paths for professional staff, who often feel overlooked within MPD:
While “Work Environment” didn’t score poorly, many of officers’ most salient grievances involved these kinds of issues. “Personnel reported two of the greatest contributors to low morale are canceling employees’ days off and requiring them to repeatedly work overtime, often without prior notice. Personnel also reported frustration with the lack of a standard process for assigning unscheduled or impromptu overtime.” I will note this finding completely aligns with officers’ anonymous Glassdoor reviews that I cited in this post and feeds into the “unfairness” narrative that runs throughout the report.
This is a situation where the understandable near-term objective of maximizing officers on patrol (through overtime) is undermining MPD’s long-term objective of increasing its total staffing. The amount and perceived unfairness of overtime is almost certainly making MPD’s retention problem worse.
In the immediate term, the report recommends adopting an overtime rotation policy to “spread the burden of mandatory overtime among personnel; give personnel as much notice as possible when they must work overtime; hold supervisors accountable for limiting the amount of mandatory overtime spent by each patrol shift; and track the amount of overtime that personnel work to reduce employee fatigue.” The report also notes that the Baltimore police department has such a policy.
Overtime fatigue should also spur more enthusiastic implementation of non-police responses for calls for service to offload some of MPD’s workload. This has been piloted at a small scale for years but warrants expansion, at least in the lowest-violence police service areas (PSAs) to free up sworn officers.
One contributing factor to sworn officer fatigue is that MPD has a comparatively low % of roles filled by civilian staff; spreading scarce officers over more work. The report found that “only 13.2% of MPD’s employees were part of the professional staff, well below the 2019 national average of 22.2%.” Mayor Bowser’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 took steps towards expanding MPD’s civilian ranks but only proposed 18 civilian FTEs to directly fill roles currently held by sworn officers. This report suggests that MPD has much more room to “civilianize” and that aligns with our previous analysis of MPD’s shift of over 100 sworn officers into administrative and support roles:
Two other serious “Work Environment” issues were child care and facilities. Here are some quotes from MPD officers:
“MPD [could not] care less if you have a family and children at home. It is standard practice to say that officers need to find other family members to care for YOUR children because a schedule change forces an officer to work.”
“There have been no provisions made to accommodate single parents.” “A department sanctioned daycare and/or night care for children would help.”
“Management doesn’t have empathy for single parents.”
The report states the obvious that “Childcare issues have a major impact on retention, workplace morale, and employee mental health. Offering 24-hour childcare services would significantly boost morale and recruiting.” Apparently MPD has a grant to “assess” childcare options for officers but this seems like something that a motivated government ought to be able to solve sooner rather than later. The report notes that other police departments are trying to stand up safe, subsidized child care for officers. I imagine that FEMS and other first responder agencies have similar problems and I challenge the readers in DC government to think about how to provide a 24/7 child care backstop for first responders who work irregular and unpredictable shifts.
The officer quotes about poor facilities and equipment are bad on their own and sound very familiar to issues raised in DCPS facilities:
“The buildings are falling apart, old pipes breaking, flooding our lockers, bad smells, mold everywhere, broken gates and doors, no parking, and I can keep going but everyone knows that already and nothing has been done about it.”
I’ll note that the perception that “no one cares” is as bad for retention as the actual conditions
“There is no hot water in [the] building, so members can’t use the showers that are provided for them. There are leaks all over the building and they never get fixed. These working conditions are deplorable.”
One of Chief Contee’s goals for this report was to help MPD be “an inclusive and diverse workplace where we have internal mechanisms that are procedurally just” so a lot of PERF’s work focused on these issues. Unfortunately they identified some concerning disparities in how MPD treats its employees and significant perceptions of bias and unfairness among its officers.
PERF reviewed internal MPD disciplinary records and found that Black male MPD officers were disproportionately likely to receive adverse actions:
PERF also found significant divides among MPD officers in how the rank-and-file perceive bias within MPD. For example, 66% of Black officers felt that within MPD “Whites are treated better than minorities” while 47% of White officers felt that “Minorities are treated better than whites”:
There was a similar pattern along gender lines:
Interestingly, there is a pretty widespread perception across most racial groups within MPD that “LGBTQIA+ members are treated better than non-LGBTQIA+ members”:
Focusing specifically on disciplinary issues, the report found that the consequences for officers were often inconsistent. They cite multiple instances of officers making similar mistakes but receiving vastly different punishments. This independently validates officer criticisms that discipline (like promotions) is heavily based on favoritism. The officer quotes in this section are quite concerning:
“Two members can violate the same policy but receive different levels of discipline. For example, one may get 30 days and the other terminated.”
“Discipline in MPD is incredibly arbitrary. Two officers may have committed the same exact violation with the same circumstances but one officer will receive far less punishment based on their relationship with the commander/assistant chief/DRD.”
Note also that one of the statements officers agreed with the least in the organizational survey was “Employees who consistently do a poor job are held accountable.”
PERF also engaged members of the community in focus groups to inform this report. While some within this self-selected group had a lot of appreciation for MPD officers, there was also a lot of criticism that reflected different experiences by Black Washingtonians:
“Participants from majority-Black Wards 7 and 8 said they had historically experienced an aggressive and disrespectful style of over-policing not seen in other wards. Some participants recalled witnessing rudeness in MPD officers’ tone, language, and conduct. They also cited some officers’ lack of empathy and kindness.”
“The participants stated they are unlikely to report crime, share information, and support MPD if officers don’t treat them with respect and dignity, take the time to explain their actions, and listen to what they have to say—in other words, to act in accordance with the principles of procedural justice.”
“One Clergy member who lives in a gentrifying neighborhood said that as more white residents have moved in, MPD enforcement practices have become less confrontational and more patient and positive. The fact that officers are now increasingly visible and engaged upsets Black and Brown residents who have been calling MPD for years only to receive an unsatisfactory response.”
“A common theme was the perceived apprehension of officers to police proactively, even in high crime areas (unless there is a shooting)”
“Many community members said they felt their neighborhood was being policed inequitably, and some residents have stopped calling MPD since they anticipate the response would be inadequate. One resident described how MPD only drives by when called and often after a long wait, which allows suspects to hide and resume their criminal activity once MPD leaves. But 911 call volume influences where MPD chooses to spend its proactive patrol time, so when 911 call volume does not reflect the rate of crime and public disorder, a community is unlikely to receive the level of police engagement needed for residents to feel safe or to have trust and confidence in their police department.”
This dynamic in MPD’s report is so important for understanding policing in DC. We have a clear, causal explanation for why “reported” crime and “calls for service” in police districts 7D and 6D are rather low while serious violent crimes and ShotSpotter incidents are clustered in these areas. When WAMU report Martin Austermuhle asked Mayor Bowser why MPD officers weren’t concentrated in districts 7D and 6D (aka East of the Anacostia River) to focus on gun violence, she said MPD allocations were based on “calls for service” volume. But we have a MPD-commissioned report saying “calls for service” underrepresent policing needs in 7D and 6D. I really hope that MPD takes their own report seriously and rethinks its staffing approach:
The report also includes another way that policing is short-changed in wards 8 and 7. MPD systematically assigns less-experienced officers to police districts 7D and 6D (which mostly overlap with wards 8 and 7), despite those districts having the highest rates of gun violence and homicide. The report found “the average years of service of all officers assigned to a police service area (PSA) is 9.7. In the Sixth and Seventh Districts, however, the average years of service drops to 7.8 and 6.6 years, respectively—several years less than the rest of the districts”:
PERF thinks this is a problem (which is backed up by research on officer experience and crime) and recommends that MPD: “Attempt to remedy the relative inexperience of personnel assigned to the Sixth and Seventh Districts by reassigning personnel, as needed, throughout the Patrol Services Bureau so that the average years of experience across all seven districts is more equal. This is important so as not to breed resentment among personnel who may be bearing more challenging working conditions and to provide appropriate support for the department’s most junior officers and supervisors.”
While policing is incredibly important and MPD has many excellent officers, this report paints a very negative picture of MPD as an institution. There are dozens of serious issues raised in this report and my summary is only scratching the surface. I sincerely implore people in MPD, DC government and local advocacy to read the full report. More importantly, I hope this troubling report spurs the new Chief, Mayor Bowser, the DC Council and broader public to engage with these issues and get beyond simple platitudes like “Back the Blue” and actually make policing better in DC.