Last spring, all nine Montgomery County Councilmembers voted to support a critical reform at the Montgomery County Police Department. The County Executive signed it into law.

Under existing County law, collective bargaining remains available for wages and benefits and workplace conditions, and every union in the County has the right to bargain for them.

"Effects bargaining," however, means that Police Chief Tom Manger has to bargain the effects of any management decision with the Fraternal Order of Police leadership. Such mandated bargaining prevents the Chief from effectively carrying out his job of managing the Police Department in the most productive and efficient way possible -- protecting both his officers and the lives and property of County residents.

No other police union in the State of Maryland has "effects bargaining." No other Montgomery County employees' union group has this power in their contract.

That's why the County Council unanimously repealed "effects bargaining" this spring. That's why the County Executive signed it into law.

My colleagues and I, the County Executive, and your Police Chief ask for your support FOR Question B.

Even with the repeal of effects bargaining, the Police Department will still maintain its requirement to bargain with the Fraternal Order of Police leadership on wages, benefits, hours, working conditions, grievances, schedules, leave and more...just like other County unions and other police unions around the State.

Here are just a few examples of the consequences of "effects bargaining":

• Under effects bargaining, the distribution of critical police equipment must be bargained with the Union.

• Under effects bargaining, police officers still don't have to sign their time cards. Can you imagine working at an agency where managers can't even require employees to sign time cards?

• When the Police Chief needed to redeploy officers last year to immediately respond to an uptick in crimes against residents and property in Silver Spring and the Route 29 corridor last year, the Union leaders demanded that he bargain over that - even though officers had already volunteered to shift to meet the problems!

• The Police Department's revised policy on "Use of Force" -- important to protecting the public and officers alike - was sent to the Police Union for their "approval" on June 27, 2008. More than four years later, Chief Manger is still waiting. In all, 15 policies are awaiting union "approval" -- 12 of them for over two years.

• The Police Chief could not even require that police officers have County email accounts - or check their email. It took months to negotiate that common sense measure with Union leaders.

• The Police Chief wanted to require that officers use yellow "Police" armbands in situations where officers in civilian clothes responded off-duty to incidents (such as the Discovery standoff ) - in order to protect officers from "friendly fire" and make clear to civilians who were the police in a given situation. Using effects bargaining, the Union objected.

It is our job to make sure that our government serves our residents well and that critical public safety departments are run efficiently.

With this reform, we will have a better department, the union will maintain its collective bargaining rights and the Police Chief will have the basic management rights he needs to manage the department - protecting officers and the lives and property of County residents.

In 2010 the County Executive proposed, and by a 5-4 vote the County Council passed, what is referred to as the "ambulance fee". The fee was to be collected by the county from insurance providers for ambulance service.   

This month the County Executive sent a new version of the ambulance fee called the Emergency Medical Services-Insurance Reimbursement Bill #17-12, for County Council consideration. The Bill was introduced, a public hearing held on May 8, and the Public Safety Committee, of which I am a member, voted 2-1 against the measure. I was one of the two members voting against it in committee.

However, by a 6-3 vote, the full Council embraced the measure. The bill was amended in the Public Safety Committee, and the version that became law now makes it explicit that county residents do not pay and that volunteer departments will be held harmless for the loss of any donations resulting from the biil.

Notwithstanding these improvements and others, I voted against the measure in full Council primarily on the grounds that this issue was put to referendum 18 months ago, and was the first and only law ever rejected by the voters. While there are arguments on both sides of the issue, I believe we would have been better served to have respected the will of the people as reflected in the referendum. Now, the people may get to decide once more if there is a successful effort to put it on the ballot in November.

Detectives from the Montgomery County Police 1st District Investigative Section have charged two suspects for two burglaries that occurred in November in Potomac.  The suspects were identified as Demar Anthony Brown, age 27, with no fixed address, and Jonathan Abraham Mulatu, age 20, of Baltimore.

In the month of September, 1st District detectives and police crime analysts noticed a burglary trend emerging in the Potomac area.  The burglaries appeared to have similar characteristics, to include the type of property that was stolen and the fact that force was used to enter the homes.  Patrol officers and detectives began to examine the trend and determine possible suspects.  Detectives developed Brown as a possible suspect and shared this information with other jurisdictions, to include Fairfax County, Virginia.

On November 8, Montgomery County police officers became aware that Fairfax County had arrested Brown and Mulatu that day for committing a burglary in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Virginia.  Working with Fairfax County detectives, Montgomery County detectives determined that Brown and Mulatu were responsible for at least two burglaries in Potomac.  The two burglaries, one burglary at a residence in the 9800 block of Potomac Manors Drive and another burglary at a residence in the 11200 block of River View Drive, both occurred on November 5.  Montgomery County Police 1st District detectives obtained a warrant for Brown on November 11 and obtained a warrant for Mulatu on November 16, charging the suspects with two counts of first-degree burglary. Because Brown and Mulatu remain in the custody of Fairfax County for the burglary committed in Great Falls, Montgomery County Police have placed detainers on both suspects for the cases in this county.

This investigation is on-going and Montgomery County detectives will continue to explore the probable involvement of Brown and Mulatu in other burglaries in the county.

The much discussed and debated curfew, Bill 25-11, was introduced by the County President at the request of the County Executive on July 12. As introduced, the Bill would establish a curfew for minors between 11 pm and 5 am on Sunday through Thursday and from midnight until 5 am on Friday and Saturday nights.

On July 26, the Council held a public hearing on the proposal, where many county citizens testified at the hearing and strong positions were articulated for and against the Bill. We heard from our Chief of Police, who believes the curfew will be an important "tool" in the County's "toolbox" to deter crime; from parents who do not want our government telling them how to parent; from teenagers who lament the proposed loss of their capacity to move about freely; and from student athletes whose morning practices could be impacted by the morning hours of the curfew. From my perspective, each public hearing participant brought a unique, valid point of view to the conversation.

The Council's Public Safety Committee held its first worksession on the curfew this past Thursday - a worksession that lasted three hours. The rest of the Council joined Councilmember Andrews, Councilmember Elrich, and me - which is rare for a committee worksession.

Since its introduction, the County Executive has submitted several amendments to the Bill. One major change is that an offense associated with violating the curfew would be a civil one, as opposed to a criminal offense as originally proposed. The amendments also carve out several reasonable exceptions to the curfew, including returning home from work without a work permit or returning home from "an event at a place of public entertainment." Other exceptions include running an errand at the direction of a parent or attending certain other events.

The changes submitted by the County Executive, I believe, improve on the original draft of the Bill.  But even with these modifications, I am still struggling with what I perceive to be a very broad brush approach that is of questionable effectiveness in addressing recent crime issues.  I want to understand whether enhancing our loitering laws, to compliment relevant state laws already on the books, might be effective.  

I have not made a final decision on this issue.  Before it is considered by the full Council, the Public Safety Committee will hold at least one additional worksession on the curfew on November 3.  Stay tuned.

There is good news and bad news on the District 1 public safety front. The bad news is that Captain Russ Hamill will no longer be Commander of the Bethesda Police District - but that's because (and this is the good news) he has been appointed by the County Executive to serve as the new Assistant Chief of Police.

While this is a loss for Bethesda, it is a tremendous plus for the County.  He will be hard to replace, but I am sure that Chief of Police Tom Manger will install another excellent police professional in the Commander's role.

Commander Hamill has been outstanding.  He responded quickly and effectively to constituent concerns, went out of his way to connect with concerned citizens and the business community, deal with complaints, and take initiatives that kept all of us informed when possible.  I wish him the best of luck in his new post. 

As most of you probably know, several weeks ago our County Executive sent to our Coucil a proposal to establish a curfew for teens uder the age of 18 in our couty. The District of Columbia and Prince George's County have long-standing curfews.

However, as a member of the Public Safety Committee, I was more than a little surprised by this proposal insofar as nothing had been shared with our Committee leading us to believe that we had a very serious problem on our hands that necessitated such a sweeping and dramatic measure. Indeed, the statistics that had been shared with us suggested just the opposite -- that the trend lines were positive, even with respect to gang violence.   

But there was a serious incident in Silver Spring that made the County Executive conclude that more dramatic measures are needed.  That incident involved scores of youth, some under the age of 18 -- and some older -- from Prince George's County and the District of Columbia that were looking for and finding trouble.  The incident resulted in a stabbing. More troubling, given cell phone technology, the gangs were able to disperse and gather again beyond the reach of the police. After conferring with the Police Chief and the Silver Spring business community, the County Executivedirected that the legislation be sent to us.

There is no question that as Council President Ervin, the District Councilmember who represents Silver Spring, stated, Silver Spring needs more attention and the people there need to be and feel safe. The business community in Silver Spring in particular is strongly behind the curfew given the investments that they have made, and the new investments such as The Filmore that are about to be realized, and the fear that concerns about public safety will reverse all of the positives that have resulted from the successful revitalization of that part of our community. There is broad agreement that we need to do more to make sure that Silver Spring is a safe place to live, work, and play.  

Where there is more debate is on the question of whether the single incident itself justifies a county wide curfew for our teens and whether such a curfew is effective. There certainly has been more than one incident -- there has been an alarming uptick in juvenile crime. But almost all parties agree that it was this July 4th weekend incident that prompted this response. Yet, even here, the gangs gathered before the curfew would have gone into effect, and the ages included a significant number of young people who were 18 or older. So, it has been argued by some that the curfew would not have even prevented this situation from happening. More broadly, there are scores of studies that cast questions on the effectiveness of curfews in bringing down crime -- as well as studies that support them. In addition, there are obvious issues with respect to civil liberties, concerns about racial profiling, the potential negative impact on the local economy, the negative signal it sends to the business community regarding the safety of our community, and the fact that our teens really have no place to go and gather.

I really regret that we did not begin from a shared understanding of the nature of the July 4th incident and the concerns of the Silver Spring community and build up from there by exploring all of the options for addressing those concerns. It may be that a curfew is the right response, but at this point in time, I am certainly not convinced of that. Our Public Safety Committee will hold its first work session in mid-September.    

I do solicit your thoughts on this issue.  At our public hearing on Tuesday, we heard a wide range of opinions, from our Police Chief telling us that he thinks it would be an important tool to deter teens who cannot gather in either Prince George's or DC from using our community to fight things out; mothers who do not want the government telling them how to raise their children; students and civil libertarians protesting the loss of liberty. 

We have come through, and we are not done, hard economic times in our County.  And we have asked our county employees to sacrifice to help us meet our obligation to you.  And they have.  Not without struggles and hard words, but they have.

Our hardest struggles have been with the union representing our brave men and women who every day protect us on the front lines in our community.  In years past, they have bargained for a one tier disability system that was unique in our county, and a previous Council 30 years ago gave them expansive bargaining rights that no police union in the state has.  In both cases, these unique arrangements have been shown to be contrary to the public interest.
 

To our Council's credit, in both instances we reformed these practices to be consistent with the how we treat all other employees, including our other public safety employees such as firefighters.  

Our Police Chief in particular strongly endorsed reforming the collective bargaining law.  Regrettably, his stance was met with disdain by the FOP, who referred to him as a "bureaucrat" and an inept manager.  I believe we have a good and capable Police Chief, and I felt that we could not ignore his strong plea to untie his hands so he could properly manage his department.  Under the prior rules of the game, he literally could not instruct his staff to check their county email accounts without "bargaining" the "effects."    

I deeply regret that many of our police now feel as though the Council and our County does not respect either them or their important work.  We do.  But even respecting them and their work could not allow us to turn a blind eye to abuses of our disability system that cost you millions a year or bargaining laws that led to an incredibly inefficient system.  It is my hope that in the days and months ahead that we will find a way to engage in a way that is civil and respectful.  Just as we are not like Wisconsin and Ohio and other states that have shown such contempt for collective bargaining, we must guard against this "us vs. them" mentality that seems so rampant in our federal government these days.  Not here.  Not in Montgomery County.

Besides education, I know that public safety is a primary concern in our community - and in fact, the public safety budget comprises 40.4% of our total County Government budget.  I believe my colleagues on the Public Safety committee and I made appropriate restorations to the County Executive's recommended budget that reflect this concern in a way that balances the need to make budget reductions while providing our public safety personnel with the resources they require. 

One such restoration I felt strongly about was the need to have our Bethesda Police Station open 24 hours a day.  The County Executive had recommended that it be closed to the public over night in order to achieve savings, and I am pleased that my colleagues supported my inclination that it is best left open during overnight hours.  We also restored funding for a Fire Recruit Class that is badly needed to address retirement and other staffing challenges.  I believe having this class in place will go a long way toward staving off personnel deficits and overtime costs.

Finally, we heard from many members of our school community that they consider School Resource Officers to be tremendously important.  I am pleased that the Council restored, to be funded out of the Police budget, six of these positions - one for each police district - so that their work of contributing to a safe environment for our students will continue.