Budget Part 5: Investing in Public Safety
July 13, 2022
Dear Resident:
Keeping our community safe is my priority. That is why I was proud to support a set of smart investments in public safety in this year’s budget. This email describes the progress we are pushing towards.
I am also heartened to have played a role moving forward on important measures that will strengthen a culture of accountability and excellence in our public safety mission — because everyone deserves to feel safe, not just some of us.
In that spirit, I am happy to report considerable progress in this year’s budget.
Police
The Police Department’s budget is going up this year, continuing our long-term trend of investing in public safety. My colleagues and I appropriated more than $296 million to the Police Department, a 4.5% increase year-over-year.
This record investment allows us to:
- Create 24 new positions in the Police Department across various disciplines including, sworn officers, emergency communications, IT, Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) requests, crossing guards, and body worn camera reviews.
- Increase salaries for police officers to improve our competitiveness with neighboring jurisdictions, helping our recruitment and retention efforts.
- Add 300 body worn cameras, replace mobile video cameras and provide less lethal protective instruments such as pepper ball guns.
To promote school safety, the Council added funding to stand up wellness centers in every County high school, where we’ll provide violence prevention teams and mental and physical health services.