Public Safety

As I walk around knocking on doors and talking to people, public safety keeps on coming up as the most important issue for people.  After noticing the problem with gun violence, I agree.  Good news is on the horizon, the State Legislature has banned ghost guns and hopefully, that will take effect soon.  We also need to figure out ways to keep guns out of the hands of minors.  Handling of guns unlawfully needs to be taken seriously and higher penalties need to be enforced. Here are some of the things we can do as the County Council and the Community as a whole in order to increase our public safety.

Firstly, we need to increase Police pay and increase benefits so that they can live in this county.  People feel safer when they can see a police car in their community so we should continue the practice of having Police take their cruisers home whenever possible in Montgomery County.  The Police right now are understaffed and overworked and we need to make sure they get back to being fully staffed as soon as possible.

Once we are back to fully staffed, we should put back SROs in school where the staff and students agree it is the right thing to do.  If a majority of the students feel unsafe with the SRO then there should be a continued Police presence but at a lower level until the majority of students feel safe.  I feel overtime at SROs will be back at all the high schools in the county but right now because of both staffing and student concerns some schools should have a presence but not be there all the time. As one of my constituents said, what happens in the schools spills out into the communities.  But vice versa is true, a situation that happens in the community could potentially be settled in the schools.

Next, we need to live but the old adage still, if you see something say something.  It can be anonymous if necessary but we need to inform the police if a crime is occurring or suspected because we can not be everywhere at once.

We need to have Police appreciation days.  The morale in the Police Department is low and they obviously do not like the terminology of Defund the Police even if it is a misnomer. If the Police still feel welcomed in our communities that goodwill can go a long way.