Mayor Muriel Bowser wants D.C. to have 4,000 police officers, but her police chief detailed on Wednesday the challenges of reaching that goal. Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee told the Council during a budget hearing that his agency is losing a “significant” number of recruits because they do not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

D.C. requires all government employees, including police, to receive two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, unless granted a religious or medical exemption. Bowser began enforcing the vaccine requirement this year because inoculation is “a critical tool for saving lives,” as she said in a statement last summer. COVID-19 was the leading cause of death for active-duty law enforcement officers in 2021 and 2020, according to the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum.

Contee did not push back against the vaccine requirement, though he admitted it is impacting recruitment during an already difficult time for hiring. He said the police department is losing about three to four qualified recruits per month because they will not get the shot. He says many of these recruits are young people.

“If you are refusing to be vaccinated, you can be the best candidate in the world but to join the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Department, we have to say no,” Contee told the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, which oversees MPD’s budget. “We are talking about people from all around the country who have different perspectives, and some of those perspectives do not necessarily align with our values here in the city. And I would say quite honestly that’s not necessarily a loss to us. It’s unfortunate but it’s not necessarily a loss.”

D.C. officers were slow to get vaccinated even before the mayor required them to. Less than two-thirds of the police force was immunized as of May 2021, five months into eligibility. Strategies like informational videos and staff-wide emails about the vaccine had not been moving the needle as quickly as officials had hoped.

In February, the D.C. police union challenged the mayor’s vaccine requirement in court, an attempt that was unsuccessful. “Regarding the balance of the equities and public interest factors, the Court finds the District of Columbia’s interest in protecting the health and safety of its employees and the public from the ravages of COVID-19 and its variants outweighs the potential harms plaintiffs allege they face,” said a federal judge in her decision. (Despite COVID-19’s toll on officers, police unions have been one of the more vocal groups against vaccine requirements nationwide.)

Losing a handful of recruits per month because of the vaccine requirement is significant because MPD’s hiring pipeline is not robust. The police department is trying to hire 25 new officers per month to keep up with attrition. “It might be five people one month. But I’m not hearing you say there’s five people behind them in line who can slide up to take those slots,” said Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs the public safety committee, later adding that the five people appear to amount to roughly 20% of MPD’s monthly recruit class.

“Yeah that’s what you are hearing me say,” Contee replied. 

Contee explained that part of the challenge is the hiring market. “You can go to 10 departments in the area who in addition to maybe not having that requirement … are beginning to lower their standards — dropping their education standards — in an effort to build up their pipeline. That’s an area that I’m not willing to compromise [on],” he said. The mayor’s budget hopes to make MPD more competitive by offering hiring bonuses — $20,000 for a mid-career cop or $5,000 for a cadet — and housing stipends for new recruits living outside the city.

Contee raised concerns over the hiring pipeline during last year’s budget cycle. “If we were approved to hire 300, could we make that number? I don’t know. We often get a lot of people who are very interested. ‘Qualified’ is a different discussion,” he told Allen during a hearing in June.

The police department is on track to fill the 175 additional recruit spots approved in the fiscal 2022 budget, according to an MPD document shared with DCist/WAMU. But officers are also leaving the department, leading to what MPD says will be a net loss of 156 officers by the end of the fiscal year. If the Council approves the mayor’s 3% increase to MPD’s budget, the police department will work toward building a 3,553-strong force by the end of fiscal year 2023. As of March 7, MPD had 3,512 officers.