Montgomery County’s Vanishing DUI Unit Was a Crisis Years in the Making

County leaders had plenty of warning that the police department was losing officers. Now a specialized DUI unit is disappearing because there are not enough cops to go around.

Nobody in Montgomery County government should be able to say they didn’t see this coming.

For years, the warning signs were right there. Police officers were retiring. Others were leaving for neighboring departments. Recruiting wasn’t keeping pace. Vacancies were piling up, overtime was climbing, and the officers who remained were being asked to do more with less.

Now we know where that road leads.

The Montgomery County Police Department is disbanding its Alcohol Initiatives Unit, the specialized team that focused on getting drunk and drug-impaired drivers off our roads. The reason isn’t complicated. MCPD needs those officers somewhere else.

In other words, the department is short enough on cops that it has to take officers away from one public-safety job to fill holes in another.

That’s not a solution. That’s triage.

To be clear, drunk driving enforcement isn’t disappearing. Patrol officers can still make impaired-driving arrests. MCPD says it will continue its summer and holiday alcohol task forces, sobriety checkpoints and saturation patrols with other law-enforcement agencies.

That’s good. But it isn’t the same thing.

There’s a difference between having a permanent group of officers who spend their time developing expertise in impaired-driving enforcement and asking already busy patrol officers to pick up the slack. Seasonal task forces have value, but drunk drivers don’t operate on a holiday schedule.

So how did Montgomery County get here?

You have to go back several years.

In the FY2022 budget, County Executive Marc Elrich proposed, and the County Council ultimately approved, the elimination of 27 sworn police positions. Among the positions affected were traffic-complaint officers, patrol-investigation officers, school-resource positions and the Centralized Auto Theft Unit.

Those weren’t figures on a spreadsheet. They were cops doing actual jobs.

Traffic enforcement took a particularly noticeable hit. Council staff later reported that the county had lost eight traffic officers and a collision-reconstruction officer during the FY2022 budget period. Other traffic personnel were shifted around during a departmental reorganization.

By 2023, MCPD was telling county officials it didn’t have enough officers to provide comprehensive daily traffic enforcement across Montgomery County.

Nobody can reasonably call that a surprise.

The warnings went back even further. Council analysts were discussing police staffing problems as early as 2019. By 2021, they were warning that retirements and resignations were becoming increasingly difficult to replace. Then came an especially troubling projection in April 2022: without improvements in recruiting and retention, MCPD could be short 223 officers by 2025.

That’s the sort of number that should set off alarm bells.

Instead, the problem dragged on.

MCPD had roughly 1,295 sworn officers in 2019. By 2024, that number had fallen to about 1,101. That’s 194 fewer officers in just five years. The department had 179 sworn vacancies. Patrol overtime was up 54 percent. Response times for priority calls had increased more than 17 percent.

Eventually, county government started reacting.

There were $20,000 hiring bonuses. Salaries went up. Pension benefits were improved. Those were smart moves and probably overdue.

But here’s the problem with waiting until you’re already in a staffing crisis: police officers aren’t hired overnight.

You have to find good candidates, screen them, put them through the academy, train them, and give them on-the-street experience. A signing bonus today doesn’t replace an experienced officer who walked out the door three years ago.

There are other factors here, and they shouldn’t be ignored. Police departments across the country have struggled with recruiting. Montgomery County competes with numerous federal, state and local agencies for qualified officers. A sizable portion of MCPD’s workforce also became eligible for retirement.

And no, the County Council didn’t hold a vote saying, “Let’s eliminate the DUI unit.” Police commanders decided where their limited number of officers was required most.

But that doesn’t let elected officials off the hook.

The county executive proposes the budget. The County Council approves it. Those same officials make decisions about police compensation, staffing levels and spending priorities. They were warned repeatedly about where the numbers were heading.

Now they’re dealing with the consequences.

County leaders can point to the roughly $352 million police budget approved for FY2026, and that’s certainly a lot of money. But residents don’t experience public safety as a line in a budget book. They experience it when they call 911, when an officer arrives, when someone investigates a crime, and when police stop a dangerous driver before somebody gets hurt.

That’s what matters.

There’s also an uncomfortable contradiction here.

Montgomery County talks endlessly about Vision Zero and its goal of eliminating deaths on our roads. Fine. That’s a worthy goal.

But if we’re serious about safer roads, shouldn’t stopping impaired drivers be near the top of the list?

Drunk drivers don’t care about slogans. They don’t care about government plans or press conferences. What gets their attention is enforcement and consequences.

Montgomery County is now losing a specialized unit devoted to exactly that mission because there aren’t enough officers to go around.

Residents deserve to know why.

This wasn’t a crisis that appeared last Tuesday. It built slowly, year after year, budget after budget, warning after warning.

County leaders had time to act.

They waited too long.

And now the rest of us are living with the consequences. Of the policies of radicals on the County Council, like Will Jawando, who is also running for County Executive now.

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Endnotes

1. “Montgomery County Police Eliminate Driving Under Influence Enforcement Unit Amid Staffing Shortages,” The MoCo Show
https://mocoshow.com/2026/08/28/montgomery-county-police-eliminate-dui-enforcement-unit-amid-staffing-shortages/

2. “MCPD Ends DUI Control Unit, Moves Officers to Other Roles,” Montgomery Community Media
https://www.mymcmedia.org/mcpd-disbands-alcohol-initiatives-unit/

3. “Montgomery County Council Approves FY22 Operating Budget,” Montgomery County Council
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MDMONTGOMERY/bulletins/2ddaca0

4. “Briefing: Police Staffing,” Montgomery County Council Public Safety Committee
https://montgomerycountymd.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?clip_id=17252&meta_id=174149&view_id=169

5. “Montgomery County Police Face Staffing Shortages, Explores Civilian Hires,” WJLA 7News
https://wjla.com/news/local/montgomery-county-police-shortage-civilian-hires-officer-vacancies-staffing-crisis-maryland-law-enforcement-workload-overtime-challenges-public-safety-concerns-policing-investigations

6. “Montgomery County Council Approves Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget,” Montgomery County Council
https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=47107

James Thompson writes on Maryland politics and public policy for Direct Line News.

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