A new bill introduced by D.C. Councilmember Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7) seeks to beef up the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Department by offering retiring officers a bonus equal to a year’s pay to stay on the force for five more years. The bill, unveiled Wednesday, would also repeal a number of measures adopted by the council to increase discipline and oversight over the police department.

Gray’s bill comes as MPD has seen a two-year decline in its number of sworn officers; there were roughly 3,800 in 2020, and are around 3,386 today. And it likely foreshadows a push from Mayor Muriel Bowser in her upcoming budget proposal to further ramp up police hiring. Last year, Bowser put $30 million towards hiring incentives and perks to keep MPD close to 3,500 officers.

Like Bowser and some other D.C. officials, Gray said in a statement that the current state of crime in the city is linked to the decreasing number of police officers.

“In the District today, we have fewer police officers than at any moment in the past 20 years. At the same time, we are experiencing a 20-year high in homicides. Tragic and brazen crimes are in the headlines nearly every day. School children are robbed at gunpoint. Our roads are increasingly dangerous. Sadly, the list goes on,” he said. “After a horrendous crime or crime spree, we hear residents call for more police. The frustrating reality is that there are no more police. When we assign a patrol to a neighborhood, Metro station, or anywhere else, we are taking that resource away from a different location.”

Gray’s bill would offer a retention bonus equal to a year’s salary to retiring officers who agree to stay on for five more years. The bonus would be available until MPD hits 4,200 officers, which Gray says is an ideal size for the department. While there was no immediate estimate on the cost of such bonuses, a similar bill he introduced in 2017 would have cost more than $60 million. The additional officers retained would be deployed to neighborhoods suffering high rates of violent crime.

The bill received quick support from Bowser, whose package of police-hiring incentives adopted last year includes a $20,000 bonus for new officers. (Anne Arundel County and Montgomery County have recently started offering similar incentives.) “Normally, we do not comment on legislation this early, but we can say that we are pleased to see the council focusing their attention on the staffing needs at MPD,” said Susana Castillo, Bowser’s spokeswoman.

Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), similarly said she was supportive of Gray’s bill.

“[Gray] has been a great partner in our efforts to think holistically about the pressing needs to improve public safety. I am in full agreement that we must address the staffing and resources shortages at MPD so they can respond to our urgent public safety needs,” she said in a statement. “I am glad to see Councilmember Gray introducing legislation on this important issue and look forward to diving deeper into his proposal. I plan on holding a hearing on his proposed solutions and others that are available to address this important issue and ensure we are being strategic about ways to prevent attrition in the department.”

Still, Gray’s proposal is expected to spark debate over exactly how many police officers D.C. needs — and what, if anything, that number of officers has to do with crime rates. Gray noted in his statement that when he served as mayor from 2011 to 2015, D.C. saw a historic low in homicides (88 in 2012) around the same time that MPD had close to 4,000 officers. But the city had that same number of officers in 2008, when it recorded 186 homicides. (Last year D.C. had 203 killings; in 2021 there were 226.) Additionally, though D.C. now has fewer police officers than when Gray was mayor, the number of violent crimes recorded every year has dropped dramatically since his term. (Gun crimes have recently increased, though.)

Speaking to the council on Thursday, D.C. Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton said it would be “catastrophic” for MPD to go below 3,000 officers, and that some D.C. neighborhoods already resemble “war zones” because of the department’s inability to properly serve them.

“The way to improve policing is to have the appropriate number of officers needed to staff the demands of the city. Anything less will result in lower standards, reduced quality of customer service, an increase in the cost of overtime, and attrition expenses,” he said. “The number of officers should be decided by rigorously established empirical data and research, not by magic numbers and certainly not baseless rhetoric that calls for fewer police.”

Critics of Gray’s bill also say that D.C. has long had more police officers per-capita than many other cities. Additionally, the point to a 2017 analysis of police staffing that found officers spending less time than in other cities responding to calls for service. And in 2012, when Gray was mayor, a three-page analysis of MPD’s staffing — then around 3,800 officers — found that the department could operate with anywhere from 567 to 266 fewer officers, when taking into consideration how existing officers were using their time and how that stacked up against other departments across the country.

To better understand exactly how many police D.C. needs, last year the council ordered the D.C. Auditor to conduct a comprehensive study on police staffing and deployment; the study could be completed by May or June, DCist/WAMU has been told. Speaking to the council on Thursday, D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said he’d like to see the department “get back to 3,800 officers at a minimum,” but it also curious to see what the auditor’s study finds.

The bill is also drawing a critical look for a number of provisions related to discipline and oversight.

Gray’s proposal would repeal a provision adopted by the council in 2020 that removed disciplinary matters from contract negotiations with the D.C. Police Union, which represents rank-and-file officers and unsuccessfully fought in court to overturn the council’s law. The bill would also do away with a new position the council created, the Deputy Auditor for Public Safety; scrap a planned database of police disciplinary files; and shorten the time that MPD has to bring disciplinary charges against officers who commit crimes. (A recent audit found that MPD had to rehire 37 police officers accused of misconduct or breaking the law, and in 39% of cases the department’s failure to meet deadlines was to blame.)

“It’s just shocking to me that this legislation proposes to roll back a very, very important accountability mechanism,” says Council Chairman Phil Mendelson on the provision that removes disciplinary procedures from collective bargaining. “What we have seen across the country is that police departments have been hamstrung in their efforts at accountability because the police have bargained a very difficult, complicated discipline process. And there are jurisdictions across the country that are jealous that the District of Columbia has been able to sever that connection.”

As recently as two months ago, Gray voted in favor of the council bill that imposed the new discipline and oversight measures he’s seeking to overturn. But Chuck Thies, his spokesman, says that “all responsible public officials have to review the policies they enact” to address “unintended consequences.”

“We’ve lost collective bargaining rights, we’ve lost due process rights in terms of being able to defend ourselves against frivolous accusations,” said Pemberton about those provisions. “We’ve built up the investigative element against officers. I don’t think anyone’s afraid of the accountability … but there’s a climate that officers are just always constantly doing things wrong. And that’s why I think people leave.”