Who is running the Montgomery County Police Department?

Montgomery County’s new interim police chief was 18 when a cop in the department he now leads pulled him over at a DUI stop.

“I was nervous,” said Darren Francke, who was told to walk the line by an officer he remembers as particularly professional. Francke passed, calmed down and had a bit of an epiphany.

“If I’m going to do law enforcement, I want to be around folks like that,” he recalled.

Francke went from Gaithersburg High School to Pennsylvania State University and then to the Montgomery County Police Department. He has been rising in its ranks for more than 30 years.

Less than three weeks ago, he accepted the department’s top job after the sudden resignation of former Chief Paul Yamada. In an interview with The Banner recently, Francke, 54, talked about his approach to policing and the search for a permanent chief.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the biggest challenges facing Montgomery County Police right now?

Really high on my list is juvenile crime and how we intervene. We had a 12-year-old that was burglarizing auto dealerships again and again and again. As they get older, they continue that activity unless there’s an intervention. The end goal is the activity stops and these youth go on to a much brighter future.

If people knew how many guns are out there. They’re in cars. That is a terrible combination. When we’re intervening in those street takeovers, we are finding guns. So we got to get a handle on the gun problem.

We have too many pedestrians and drivers and occupants killed on our roads in Montgomery County. They’re avoidable. Slowing down and wearing your seatbelts are two huge things. If we could get everyone on the same page with that alone, it would drastically reduce our fatalities.

When you’re in a stressful situation, what does treating someone with respect look like?

It’s fight or flight, right? Police don’t have the option of flight generally, and so you have to go into it. And the more training we give folks to be resilient, the more repetitions — they can learn how to calm things down.

When I came on, de-escalation wasn’t talked about. Now de-escalation is the first step when you talk about treating people with dignity and respect.

Talk about your new job. Were you surprised to get it?

We did not know this was going to occur. The county executive made a decision. I was asked if I would do this and I said yes.

How many hours of sleep are you getting?

Right now, I’m doing pretty good. I think I get about four, 4 1/2.

There’s a lot of talk about Flock cameras. What do you think of them?

We don’t have Flock cameras. We don’t have any plans to bring in Flock cameras. We have an automated license plate reader program. Our information is siloed for Montgomery County. We have the capability to have 10 fixed sites. I think nine of them are active right now and we have LPR capabilities in most all of our marked police vehicles.

We have a model policy. The reads are only kept for 365 days under state law. We have to have a reason for why everything is looked at. I’ve got a great person running that program, and they’re doing audits.

You were a detective 24 years ago searching for the D.C. sniper. Would it have been helpful to have license plate readers then?

It would have been a game changer. If that technology was in place, I know for a fact that many people wouldn’t have died or been terribly traumatized or injured. Maybe we could have kept it to one or two.

How serious is the shortage of officers in the department and what can be done about it?

The problem is very serious. We’re down over 200 officers now. That impacts our ability to answer 911 calls. It impacts our ability to investigate everything to their fullest extent. Most importantly, it impacts the health of our officers because they’re working so much overtime to make sure that we’re still meeting our marks.

We need to work efficiently and quickly to find these character people and get them into our academy. I have a new acting assistant chief, Dave Smith, who I’ve tasked with doing that. I’ve also appointed a lieutenant on a temporary assignment to go deal with this issue in its entirety, and that lieutenant is going to live, eat, drink, sleep recruiting.

Tell me about your family. You have kids. If they wanted to be police officers, what would you say?

I’ve got an older daughter. She’s student-teaching here in Montgomery County. I have two other daughters — a girl dad to three. I got one that’s in college. I’ve got another one that’s a senior in high school at Damascus.

I would tell them, “Sure.” I’ve had a blessed career. I’ve done everything I want. I have a terrific pension. I have terrific healthcare. Is it a tough job? Absolutely? Are there high expectations? Sure. But then I’ve also been able to have these kids.

I’m a widower. My wife passed away in 2020. But this job allowed me to take care of her and still serve the community and then, more importantly, serve my kids. Seeing them thrive is a huge deal. And this choice I made 30 years ago is part of the reason why I’ve been able to accomplish that.

Will Jawando, the Democratic nominee for county executive, said if he’s elected, one of the first things he would do is appoint a new chief. Do you want to keep this job?

If council member Jawando is elected, I would love to talk to him about it. I just think very highly of the people internally and would love to just be a part of any conversation about who the next chief is.