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Washington DC, Police Chief Robert Contee said law enforcement officials had issued warnings over the years that the loss of police would be problematic for the city, which has seen a recent surge in gun violence as a result of “intentional efforts” to fund his department.
“This is something we’ve been warning about for years,” Contee told Fox News on Friday, following a press conference where he provided an update on a cheeky double shot in the popular Logan Circle. from DC a day earlier that sent passers-by running for their lives. “We don’t really have the capacity to hire agents right now. We have a definite amount of resources to deal with a very large city that continues to grow.”
Earlier in the week, he said the Metropolitan Police Department had lost nearly 215 officers. In July 2020, as calls for police funding increased after George Floyd’s death, the department had 3,800 officers, he said.
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By September 2022, the police force is expected to number approximately 3,460 officers.
In addition, last July, city leaders cut funding for police services by $ 15 million and froze hiring. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s FY2022 budget did not include additional funding for the ministry, despite having more than $ 40 million available for public safety initiatives.
“There have been intentional efforts not to provide all the resources, in my opinion, that the police department needs,” Contee said. “Right now we are in this budget season. The budget for the police department should have been fully supported.”
Washington has grappled with a string of high-profile shootings over the past week, including Thursday’s incident, gunfire outside Nationals Park and the murder of a 6-year-old girl.
The city reached 103 homicides on Friday, up from 106 during the same period last year, according to police figures.
The chief on Friday expressed his biggest criticism of the district’s justice system, which he says has freed violent criminal suspects arrested during the COVID-19 pandemic in communities equipped with GPS monitors pending trial .
“People have asked the police to reform. It has been a question for me for a year and a half,” he said. “I’m saying we need to go beyond policing and look at the whole ecosystem to see what everyone else is doing in the ecosystem to keep our communities safe.”
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“It’s not just about ‘What are the police doing?'” He added.
DC court spokesman Douglas Buchanan refuted Contee on Friday, arguing there was no backlog forcing the release of violent suspects turned back onto the streets. He noted that only about 5% of felony cases go to trial.
“There is no (backlog),” he told Fox News. “That was the theme from last night that we’re trying to figure out… how we got trained in this.”
Currently, around 800 suspects have been held pending trial since the start of the pandemic, Buchanan said.
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