A staffing shortage is crippling Montgomery County Police units charged to prevent and counter gang violence, according to public records and testimony made before County Council members on Monday.
A memorandum from a county budget officer to the county’s Public Safety Committee this week detailed vacancies in the Police Department’s two units that address gangs. The Gang Investigations Team, or GIT, which focuses on enforcement and intelligence gathering, has five people working in it and four vacancies.
The other unit, the Major Offender Gang Team, or MOGT, which works on complex investigations in concert with federal and other local law enforcement, has four staff members and three vacancies.
That’s nine officers total in the units, and seven vacancies.
During Monday’s hearing, Montgomery County Police Capt. Ian Clark, director of the Special Investigations Division — of which the gang units are a part — said the shortfall has been an obstacle.
He said officers have “limited operational scope with our staffing challenges.”
While the goal “obviously” is to fill the vacancies, Clark continued, he said he recognized that the shortfall is part of a larger, department-wide shortfall.
“We’re also down approximately 190 officers,” he told the Public Safety Committee. “And I understand that. So it’s balancing the needs of the department as a whole.”
Three council members serve on the Public Safety Committee — Dawn Luedtke, Kristin Mink and Chair Sidney Katz, who said the county and police must be able to prioritize the vacancies.
“There’s certain things we can’t afford not to do,” he said in response to Clark’s presentation.
Gang-related homicides are down
Rates of gang-related crime have remained mostly flat in the county since 2020, according to the memo. Between 2023 and 2024, the number of aggravated assaults committed by gang members dropped from 29 to 14, homicides dropped from five to three, weapon offenses increased from 12 to 18 and robberies increased from two to 12, police data showed.
During Monday’s meeting, Clark said there are 19 “validated” gangs operating in Montgomery County, and that the areas with the most gang activity are Silver Spring, Wheaton, Germantown and Montgomery Village.
The most common crimes gang members commit over the last three years, Clark said, are weapons offenses, assaults and homicides.
Clark said during the meeting that police have recently filled two of the gang unit vacancies and he’s hopeful additional officers can be hired after future cadet classes graduate from the police academy, easing the patrol officer shortage.
The GIT has handled 122 cases in 2023, down from an average of 191 yearly cases since 2016, according to the memo. Data for the MOGT team was not available.
The department was short 186 patrol officers as of last week. Other police agencies in the county, including the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, are also grappling with staffing problems.
Gabriel Carrera, an assistant state’s attorney with the county who works closely with the gang officers, said in Monday’s meeting that it’s hard to overstate the gang units’ significance.
“The amount of time, and the amount of things that we rely on them [for], is very, very important,” he said.
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