The police reform work group in Prince George’s County has released its report on how the county could reimagine policing and its police department.

The recommendations address many of the local and national debates about racism and policing raised by this year’s Black Lives Matter protests, with ideas about police in schools, police use-of-force policies, departmental hiring practices, greater public transparency, and policing money being allocated to health and social services.

“We didn’t just come to this moment organically,” said commission member and community activist Krystal Oriadha, before the group voted to approve the report. “We came to this moment because people are dying, and people are hurting, and people are crying and begging for change.”

The recommendations will now go to the county council and County Executive Angela Alsobrooks for consideration. Alsobrooks created the work group back in July as the county grappled with the aftermath of Police Chief Hank Stawinski’s resignation, multiple incidents of police excessive use of force and misconduct, and a lawsuit that alleges racial discrimination in the police department’s hiring and promotion practices.

Prince George’s County is one of several local jurisdictions to convene committees to study policing. The District, Arlington County, and Montgomery County all have similar groups looking at the issue.

The Prince George’s report details close to 50 recommendations, broken down into five categories: community engagement, employee hiring and retention, police department finances, internal oversight, and county and police department standards and regulations. Many would require action from Alsobrooks, the County Council, or the Maryland General Assembly.

Angelo Consoli, president of the county’s police union, said they had very little input in creating the recommendations.

“We just ask that we are involved in any of the processes and the implementation of anything moving forward because at the end of the day, it’s the members I represent that have to get buy-in from, if any of this stuff is going to work, and we just asked to be involved,” Consoli said.

Local activists have taken up calls to “defund the police” — the idea that communities will be better served if policing budgets shrink and the funds reallocated to other community services like health, housing and education support.

While the report doesn’t use that language, some of the working group’s ideas move in that direction.

One of the recommendations, for instance, calls for the police department to significantly scale back the power, and eventually the presence, of officers in schools, taking away school officers’ power to make arrests and requiring them to wear body cameras. Ultimately, the report wants the county to “establish school safety data metrics to eventually phase out security personnel,” and instead invest in mental health interventions for youth.

Another part of the report recommends that any revenue taken in by the police department be earmarked to fund social services like health and housing.

“We feel if we focus on restorative approaches and restorative practices to prevent to prevent some of the low-level crimes that occur throughout our county and within our school system, that we can reallocate those dollars for mental health and other services … that are much needed within our county,” said Del. Alonzo Washington, who represents the county in the Maryland legislature and was one of the co-chairs of the working group.

Washington also highlighted another major theme of the report as something he’s especially “excited” about — increasing public transparency and internal accountability in the department. It suggests a wide range of interventions on this issue, including publishing a data dashboard of use of force data, police stops, making police camera footage and officer disciplinary records available for Public Information Act requests, and requiring the police chief to submit a use-of-force report to the County Council every year. It also recommends bolstering the civilian complaint process and internal structures for reviewing police conduct.

Another big area of focus for the working group were the rules and regulations governing officer conduct and policing strategy, with an eye to reducing instances of racial discrimination.

The report recommends changes to the police department’s traffic stop procedures, suggesting that the department issue a general order to end traffic stops for violations that are not related to driving safety. It also suggests that the county look into transferring some traffic enforcement authority over to the county’s revenue authority, and possibly seek state legislation to make that happen.

In 2019, a large majority — 72% — of traffic stops in the county were of Black people.

The departmental use-of-force guidelines are also due for an overhaul, according to the report, which recommends revised language. It also suggests that officers be required to intervene and report the incident if they witness a fellow officer using “excessive force.”

The county has seen multiple incidents of excessive use of force. In June, Alsobrooks said she was embarrassed by the actions of three police officers who were suspended after a video surfaced showing two of them striking and beating a man while trying to detain him. In January, an officer was charged with shooting and killing William Green, who was handcuffed in the back of a police car. There was no body camera footage of the incident.

The county has almost completed the implementation of body cameras for its 1,600 officers.

Another suggestion would make officer “racial (and other related) bias” a fireable offense.

Former Police Chief Hank Stawinski resigned after the state’s ACLU released a report claiming that an environment of racism and retaliation persists in the Prince George’s County Police Department and has not been adequately addressed by department leadership. However, Alsobrooks said the resignation had nothing to do with the report’s findings. Hector Velez is the county’s interim police chief as the county conducts a nationwide search for a permanent chief.

The recommendations also make suggestions about what actions the next hired police chief should take in their tenure. One of those suggestions include building partnerships with faith-based and community-based organizations. Consoli says he thinks the department could do a better job of community outreach.

“That’s something I committed to when I took over [the union],” he said. “Unfortunately, COVID has thwarted that somewhat. But once life changes, we can get back out into the public.”

Other recommendations for the next chief entail supporting the repeal of the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights [LEOBR] and creating an appeal process for the department’s citizen oversight panel to challenge disciplinary actions.

State lawmakers have been trying to repeal the LEOBR, which governs police internal investigations and discipline in Maryland, for years. Critics say it gives too much protection to police who violate rules or even the law.

The group was also tasked with making recommendations to reassess and overhaul the police department’s hiring procedures and internal promotion policies.

One of those recommendations include incentives for officers to live in the county they police. Consoli says he’s been trying to get the county to approve incentives for officers to live in the county for three years. But, he says, when the measure was brought up three years ago, other county employee groups also asked for the same incentives.

Other recommendations push for a higher proportion of civilian employees to sworn officers in the department, and support for a state-level proposal to get rid of marijuana use as a disqualification from eligibility for officer positions. The report also wants the police department to improve its hiring and retention of employees of color.

Those recommendations follow a lawsuit filed by officers of color in 2018 with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland alleging racial discrimination and retaliation in hiring and promotion decisions. The outcome of that case is still pending in the U.S. District Court of Maryland. The officers filing the lawsuit also sent a list of 12 suggestions to the working group in July laying out ways to change the internal culture, policies and procedures in the department.

Attorneys for the officers that filed that lawsuit say given the breadth of the reforms, they don’t think the current leadership in the police department will be able to make them come to fruition.

“We call upon the county executive, in hiring a new chief, to make that chief’s commitment to expeditious implementation of these recommendations a priority,” attorneys wrote in an email.

Attorneys also wrote that the report neglects some of the suggestions the officers made in the summer, such as the monitoring and tracking of officers who have repeated uses of force, ending discrimination in the department’s promotion system and internal investigations in the disciplinary system, and addressing retaliation against Black and brown officers who file complaints against their colleagues for rule breaking or racist conduct.

Working group members acknowledged that the report is a precursor to the real challenge — pushing for the policies to be implemented.

“It’s not just passing legislation, it’s not just making new general orders, it’s really going to take an effort on an individual level to get this work done,” said working group member Glenn Ivey, the county’s former state’s attorney.

“The onus right now is on the community,” Washington said. “We have to hold elected officials accountable.”