BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A growing staffing shortage in the Baltimore County Police Department is fueling a dispute over how many officers the agency is actually down — and raising concerns about response times and officer burnout.
FOP President Douglass Jess said the department is facing far more vacancies than the number it publicly reports. “The 10th, the vacancy of report was 162 sworn vacancies,” Jess said. But, he added, “The forward-facing report is half of the actual number.”
Jess said the department’s counting method includes recruits who are currently in the police academy, even though, he argues, they are not sworn officers and cannot fill the roles needed on the street. He said those recruits are “incapable of getting a guy a day off, contributing to someone being able to take a vacation, working a post car next to someone, making an arrest, making an arrest.”
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“Currently we have 179, as of this morning, academy class members, which means our true total of sworn vacancies is 341,” Jess said.
FOX45 reached out to Baltimore County Police about the discrepancy between the department’s reported number and Jess’ figures. The department said that once a recruit is hired — even while in the academy — the state of Maryland considers them sworn personnel, so the 179 in the academy class are already included in the count. The department said that as of Tuesday, it was 162 personnel short.
As the union and the department continue to disagree over the accounting, Jess said the staffing shortage has real-world impacts. “It will affect response times,” he said. “It’s not like they stop dispatching calls.”
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Jess also pointed to what he described as long-term effects on officers as the shortage continues, including burnout and morale problems. He said officers are struggling to get time off and are being pushed into overtime.
“If shifts across the county are making people work three and four days a week in overtime, that wears on those officers as well. It’s voluntary, to a point. Somebody is going to work overtime if the shift commander deems it needed for the public safety,” Jess said.
Jess said he wants officers to know the union supports them. “We get it, we understand it. You’re doing more with less. You’re facing the same threats as we all faced in our career, but with less people now than ever. We support you, I support you. And if you need anything, that’s what we’re here for,” he said.
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