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Advisory Commission on Policing urges data reforms, consolidation and expanded outreach
Summary
At a Dec. 1 Montgomery County Public Safety Committee work session, the Advisory Commission on Policing reviewed its year of work and recommended shifting a police-data reporting deadline, consolidating departmental reports, improving dashboards and surveying approaches, and continuing public forums and training.
The Advisory Commission on Policing (ACP) presented its annual update to the Montgomery County Public Safety Committee on Dec. 1, outlining recommendations to improve police data, increase public outreach and strengthen training.
ACP Chair Brian Bellamy said the commission — a 15-member advisory body that does not regulate law enforcement — has used subcommittees to focus on implementation, schools and data. He told the committee the implementation panel had reviewed more than 300 entries in the county’s reimagining public safety dashboard and was preparing findings on the Maryland Police Accountability Act for consultations with the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) before forwarding formal recommendations to the council.
“We urge the council to work with MCPD to consolidate departmental reports,” Bellamy said. “We recommend eliminating the requirement that MCPD annually conduct an anonymous survey of residents and officers regarding police-community relations” unless the county provides funding or an independent contractor administers it.
The ACP asked the council to consider legislative changes it described in recent letters. Those included moving a mandatory police statistical report deadline referenced in the packet as “bill 45 20” from Feb. 1 to April and amending the county reporting requirement (cited in discussion as section “35 6 a c”) to add demographic fields on victims and traffic stops. The commission argued uniform racial and ethnic categories aligned with the U.S. Census and Maryland’s race-based traffic stop dashboard would improve comparability across reports.
Bellamy also said the ACP had written to the state’s attorney to ask for clarification after a public-forum comment about the proportion of guns recovered during vehicular consent searches that commissioners said did not match department data. The ACP framed that outreach as an effort to ensure public discussion of policing is “founded on accurate data.”
The commission described two public forums held in 2025 — one focused on MCPD’s consent-search policy and a second in September to collect community safety concerns — and said it plans two more forums in 2026 prioritizing venues accessible to communities most affected by crime.
Why it matters: The ACP’s recommendations are advisory but touch on transparency, how the county measures policing outcomes and how the public evaluates those efforts. The commission’s proposals, if adopted, would change reporting timelines and the format of datasets used by policymakers and the public.
The committee did not take formal votes on the ACP’s recommendations at the session; staff and councilmembers requested follow-up on technical issues, data governance and the feasibility of proposed changes. The ACP and staff will provide additional details to the committee in subsequent communications.
