Weekly Letter: Are We Safe?

How safe do you feel? More safe or less safe than a year ago, or ten years ago? What makes you feel unsafe? Or put another way, what do you fear?

Those are tough questions, but they’re important. If public safety is, as I often say, the most fundamental obligation of government, then people like me should be asking it more often. And we should make sure that you have accurate information to assess whether your fears are justified.

I know that a lot of folks fear crime. If you’re among them, here’s some good news that Anne Arundel County Police put out this week. 

Crime rates have declined in recent years, and they dropped a whole lot further in 2025. Compared to 2024, we had 47% fewer citizen robberies, 46% fewer commercial robberies, 30% fewer stolen autos, 27% fewer carjackings, 19% fewer contact shootings, and 13% fewer sex offenses. Our homicide number had already dropped to a long-time low of ten last year, and in 2025 it was 11. 

Our county has grown its annual investment in policing a lot over the last seven years - 59% to be precise. But we’ve still not reached the 825 officers that the International Association of Police Chiefs recommended for our county during the last administration, and that’s only because interest in the profession has dropped in recent years. To accelerate recruitment, we raised our starting salaries to make them the highest among Maryland counties, and just this week we announced the rollout of a change to a more family friendly schedule for patrol officers with 12-hour shifts and fewer work days. 

“The new shift schedule will provide our officers with a much better quality of life by affording them more time off with their loved ones and more time to rest and recover,” said Chief Awad. It resulted from a year-long process of listening and planning by both management and the union. 

Officer well-being is an essential component to maintaining the high standard of professionalism that our residents demand from their officers, and I believe that the trust built by that professionalism contributes to crime reduction. But the most powerful deterrent of all, in my view, is economic opportunity and quality of life for all residents. 

For some of us, it’s not crime that we fear as much as disasters, things like fire, accidents, and flooding, where we rely on our firefighters and paramedics to rescue us. We have some good news there as well thanks to an 87% funding increase over the last seven years to our fire service.

We’ve added additional firefighters in almost all of our 31 fire stations, and in three we have full-time career officers round the clock where before there were none. We have a whole lot of modernized equipment, and no longer have engines going out with only two firefighters on them. All have at least three. Most importantly, every emergency we run in the county, whether it’s medical or fire, meets National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommendations for the services on scene. 

Our greatest challenge is to keep up with the growing volume of EMS calls. Medical calls make up 80% of the department’s call volume.

We recently commissioned a study to suggest ways to improve Fire Department services, and that study has been referenced by union representatives in recent budget town halls. It offers a scenario in which we add some 350 new positions to the over 900 career and 300 volunteer firefighters we have today. It proposes that we add a fourth firefighter to each of our engines. The NFPA recommends four-person crews on engines, but acknowledges that many departments operate with three, and offers suggestions for how to do so safely. 

My own view is that we do need to grow our staffing levels, but I doubt that we can afford to make much headway this year when we’re facing major cuts to federal support for education, housing, health services, FEMA, and infrastructure projects. But please don’t let the recommendations of a new study keep you up at night wondering if anyone will respond to your emergency call. They will. Our Fire Department is better staffed and better equipped than it has ever been.

For those of you whose fear is the federal government descending on communities with heavily armed and masked ICE agents, either to deport immigrants or simply to escalate violence for political purposes, I share your concern. The contrast between the professionalism of our police, where de-escalation and public safety is the goal, compared to ICE officers, where escalation and chaos appears to be the goal, is stark. 

My recommendation is not to give them the escalation that they appear to want, but to direct your energy to protecting our neighbors. We have a Family Protection Hotline at 410-222-0319 to assist families when a loved one has been deported. County staff will not ask for immigration status, but will make connections to county and nonprofit resources. 

To support the work of nonprofits that provide that assistance, you can contribute to the Family Protection Fund that is managed by the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County at this link.

And if you’d like to volunteer with our Office of Multicultural Affairs Family Protection Initiative, there is a sign-up form here.

Finally, I will note that uniformed Anne Arundel County Police patrol officers are unmasked, and clearly identifiable. Some of their vests are currently marked with the word Police. Now that ICE agents are dressing up in vests that also say Police, our department will soon be adding “Anne Arundel County Police” on the back of their vests. 

Our Police Department wants the following to be clearly understood:

• We do not enforce immigration law, nor do we conduct immigration enforcement operations with ICE.
• We encourage everyone to call 911 when they need police assistance.
• We do not ask questions about anyone’s immigration status.
• We serve all who choose Anne Arundel County as their home, workplace, or simply the place where they prefer to spend time.

Until next week, stay safe.