Michael Hough says recruiting new officers could become difficult.
Frederick, MD (KB) – State Senator Michael Hough joined WFMD’s Frederick Focus show to address challenges law enforcement officers are currently facing in Maryland.
“This year, really the groups like the ACLU and these groups really took over and what they did, for example, to police officers, Maryland has now one of the worst laws for police. That’s why we’ve got police officers retiring all over the place, it’s very hard to recruit police,” Hough explained.
According to Hough, Maryland’s use-of-force statute was completely re-written and replaced with a vague and undefined statute that makes it difficult for officers to protect themselves.
“Not only that, but instead of having police do the discipline, so we used to have it where the chiefs and the Sheriffs and they would have a board together to do the discipline for police, now you’re gonna have politicians, and people in the public, people in county government who are gonna be appointing folks who are going to be disciplining police officers,” said Hough. “People who have no experience in policing, no background, don’t know what they’re doing, many times might be political activists.”
Hough said many officers do not want to become criminals for doing their jobs.
“So it’s really some of the worst laws and on top of that, the General Assembly compounded that by passing a number of pieces of legislation to reduce the sentences and to allow parole eligibility for violent murderers,” stated Hough.
Hough said these bad policies could have a trickle down affect to Frederick County.
“I think it’s very crucial for public safety and I think Frederick County, which you know, 20 years ago, we might have one homicide a year, now as we are growing, we’re seeing an influx of more crime in our area,” he said. “We have to be very cognisent of what we do with police and how we treat our police because policing is the number one thing that affects your crime rate.”
Hough said these policies could make it difficult to recruit officers at a local level.