Metropolitan Police Department: Oversight Hearing on Proposed FY2001 Budget

Chairman Brazil, members of the committee and guests - thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon to review the Metropolitan Police Department's spending during fiscal years 1999 and 2000. With me today are Executive Assistant Chief Terrance Gainer, Executive Director for Corporate Support Eric Coard, and Chief Financial Officer Dan Tangherlini.

Fiscal year 1999 was a year of continued financial stability for the MPDC. It was a year in which we made significant, and long overdue, investments in our infrastructure—in technology, facilities, vehicles, equipment and supplies. It was a year in which we enhanced our operational capacity through better training, continued civilianization and the more efficient deployment of our sworn personnel. It was a year in which we launched important new community policing initiatives, including a unique program of community policing training for the community. And perhaps most importantly, 1999 was a year in which—thanks to these and other investments—the District continued to realize a steady and significant reduction in crime. I am pleased to report that these positive trends are continuing into fiscal 2000.

With the new fiscal year, our Department adopted a new mission statement:

This new mission statement not only defines our philosophy of policing in the District. It also reflects the Mayor's strategic goal of building and sustaining healthy neighborhoods, as well as the top priorities of residents who attended last fall's Citizen Summit—neighborhood safety and the protection of our children. In other words, our mission statement is now in closer alignment with the priorities of our city.

But while a new mission statement is important, it is only as strong as the operational plan for implementing it. In FY99, and continuing into the current year, we have worked hard to operationalize our plan for community policing, what we call "Policing for Prevention."

Our strategy has three parts:

The first part is focused law enforcement. That means targeting very precisely and strategically those problem offenders, crime patterns and locations that are causing the most harm in our communities.

The second part is neighborhood partnerships. This involves working with residents, business people, elected leaders and other city agencies to form problem-solving partnerships that work to change the conditions that allow crime and disorder to take hold in that neighborhood.

The third part of "Policing for Prevention" is systemic prevention. This is where we expand the focus from individual offenders and communities to take a broader look at the underlying causes and conditions that contribute to crime in any community—conditions such as gang recruitment, drug abuse, the easy availability of guns, the lack of economic opportunity or family breakdown.

We recognize that none of these three approaches—focused law enforcement, neighborhood partnerships or systemic prevention—can prevent crime on its own. Taken together, however, they form a comprehensive strategy of community policing that we believe is helping us create safer neighborhoods and a safer city. The MPDC is committed to using all of our resources—money, people, technology, training and equipment—to make "Policing for Prevention" work in our city.

This commitment to community policing is reflected in our FY99 and FY2000 budget expenditures. For FY99, our Department spent 99 percent of our budget, based on preliminary figures. We expended practically all of our non-personnel funds in FY99, and ended the year with a small surplus in personnel services, primarily because our headcount remained below budgeted levels. We did make judicious use of this surplus to pay overtime for focused, high-visibility enforcement efforts such as the Mobile Force and increased traffic control.

We also incurred significant overtime expenditures for major events such as the NATO 50th Summit and the aborted Knights of Freedom march. Last week, I joined Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton in supporting legislation that would have the federal government reimburse the District for public safety costs associated with these types of events.

For FY99, we also expended slightly more than 100 percent of our grant project funds for the year. In other words, we had to use a small amount of appropriated funds to supplement the grant projects. This represents a dramatic improvement from previous years, when grant funds went unused.