Today, Councilmember Grosso sent a letter to his colleagues on the Council of the District of Columbia regarding a proposal introduced that would increase the number of officers serving in the Metropolitan Police Department.
"It is my belief that while we must act urgently to stop violent crime in the District of Columbia, there is no evidence that increasing the number of officers to 4,200 would achieve that result," Grosso wrote.
According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, D.C. had approximately twice the number of sworn officers per 10,000 residents in 2015 as similarly sized cities. Despite more officers, D.C. did not have a corresponding low-level of violent crime when compared to these other cities.
Instead of increasing the number of officers, the city should continue to embrace the public health approach to ending violence in our neighborhoods.
"The public health paradigm, with programs focused on violence interruption and preventing its spread, has proven successful in many other cities, with evaluations showing reductions of shootigns and killings by as much as 50% in targeted neighborhoods," Grosso wrote.