Jawando and Wells on choosing a new police chief, officers in schools

Montgomery County’s next county executive will nominate a new police chief and face a host of critical public safety questions.

Democrat Will Jawando, an at-large member of the County Council, is expected to win, given that most Montgomery County voters — 58% — are registered Democrats. But Republican Esther Wells, a certified public accountant, is hoping her fervent opposition to tax hikes will propel her candidacy as the cost of living rises.

In the days before the Nov. 3 election, The Banner asked Jawando and Wells about their most pressing public safety priorities. Wells spoke to The Banner by phone and raised the subject of defunding the police. She opposes the movement and said Jawando’s past support for it has demoralized the department. As county executive, with oversight over the police, the issue could be a sensitive one for Jawando.

Jawando declined to respond to questions for this story. On Wednesday, his campaign said several of The Banner’s questions “are personnel and governance decisions that belong with a transition, not in the final days of a campaign.”

Instead, this story relies upon Jawando’s past statements on public safety.

A new police chief

The next county executive is expected to appoint a new police chief, but approval rests with the County Council.

County Executive Marc Elrich asked former Police Chief Marc Yamada to resign after the release of a critical report from the county’s Office of the Inspector General last month. Interim Chief Darren Francke now leads the department.

Wells told The Banner she is “agnostic” about whether the county should conduct a national search to fill the job and would consult with the department’s officers, civilian employees and the police union to determine how wide of a net to cast. Montgomery County “has a lot of talent,” Wells added.

She said hiring a minority or female candidate wouldn’t be her top priority when choosing a new chief, but that she would seriously consider such applicants.

“It will be most important to ensure they’re qualified. There is an opportunity for us to have a police chief that reflects the community,” Wells said.

During a Sept. 29 press conference, Jawando said that nominating a police chief would be “if not my first decision, one of the very first.”

“Public safety is extremely important to our residents,” he continued. “Crime is down. We want to keep that going in that direction, but you need continuity.”

Jawando, who was elected to the council in 2018, also said he wants to signal to the men and women in the department, both officers and civilians, that “they’re going to have a leader and a vision at the department.”

Francke, who has three decades of experience with the department, told The Banner earlier this month that he wants to be considered for the job.

Top public safety issues

While crime overall is dropping, reflecting national trends, county police are grappling with repeat juvenile offenders, pedestrian fatalities and a shortfall of about 200 patrol officers, among other issues.

Wells said the shortfall has lowered morale.

“We have a demoralized police department,” she said. We have “experienced law enforcement officers that are eligible for retirement as of Jan. 1, and so we are in a very precarious spot with public safety.”

Wells also said the county should focus on school safety, expressed concerns about students bringing guns to school, and noted shootings at Thomas S. Wootton High School in February and at the James Hubert Blake High School in April. She said the district should bring back school resource officers to campus.

“I would like to revisit the SRO program, not for discipline, but to ensure that police officers are in our schools,” she said. Students should be able to see officers as trusted adults they can confide in about “things that they’re hearing through the grapevine with social media.”

Jawando has opposed the permanent presence of school resource officers. Montgomery County Public Schools stopped assigning school resource officers to campuses in 2021 amid a national reckoning over how Black people are treated by law enforcement and concerns that school-based officers disproportionately arrested children of color. MCPS replaced its school-based officers with “community engagement officers,” police who patrol communities surrounding school campuses.

In an August 2021 interview at Germantown’s Seneca Valley High School, Jawando addressed the subject with Montgomery Community Media.

“I’m happy with where we are in the process. I’ve always said, step one was removing police from the schools in a law enforcement capacity. We’ve done that thanks to our students, our parents, our teachers, the community members, working with my colleagues.”

Defund the police

Jawando spoke in favor of defunding the police following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020.

A Washington Post article a month after Floyd’s high-profile death at the hands of police delved into Jawando’s thinking on the subject, and explained that he had attended several protests and vigils organized to highlight police brutality and commemorate Floyd.

“I have been a Black man for my entire life, and I have known, my entire life, that Black Lives Matter,” Jawando said at a protest in Gaithersburg.

He continued: “We need to invest in our communities, and we need to disinvest from the things that give us these horrible outcomes in policing. That’s what ‘defund the police’ means to me.”

Jawando then added, “And I support it. I do.”

In a later story from DCist.com, Jawando said of the phrase: “To me, it’s really a synonym for reimagining policing and reimagining public safety. English is an imprecise language.”

Wells raised the topic with The Banner and critiqued, without using names, “current council members that have led the ‘defund the police’ movement.”

In addition to Jawando, Council member Kristin Mink, District 5, has also previously expressed support for the defund the police movement.

Those positions unnerved officers and conveyed that “they are not welcome here,” Wells added. “We really need to restore that relationship.”

Hannah Yasharoff and Talia Richman contributed to this report.