Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones said his decision to announce that he’ll retire, effective July 1, isn’t a decision he came to suddenly.
Jones told WTOP that not long after he was named chief of the Maryland county’s police department in 2019, he considered the long-term plan, “about how many years that I felt like I could really give all of my energy to being the chief of police.” That was, he estimated, about five years. So that’s how the July 2024 date was decided, said Jones.
The process that ended with Jones’ selection as chief came after County Executive Marc Elrich considered three other candidates, including the former Portsmouth, Virginia, police chief.
Jones said he’s confident that Elrich won’t have to go far to find a qualified successor.
“I’ve stated this to him already,” Jones sad. “I believe he has the next chief that’s on deck, that is within the ranks of Montgomery County.”
Jones said he hasn’t put forth any names, but that he’s confident that all of the assistant chiefs in the department are prepared for the job.
Jones has seen policing change dramatically in his years on the job. But he said one thing hasn’t changed: police need to see themselves as public servants, and maintain “the desire to serve.”
Asked what he tells police recruits, Jones told WTOP, “You have to work with the community, because you can’t solve every problem as a police officer yourself.”
Among his proudest accomplishments, said Jones, is the closing down of an open-air drug market that plagued a community in Damascus. Jones said that was a direct result of policing that worked closely with the community to solve a problem.
The Montgomery County Police Department used to see thousands of applicants when recruitment classes opened. Now, they see hundreds. Jones said he believes that’s going to change, as police departments work to enact reforms that came after the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
“Things that happen in Minneapolis impact us here in Montgomery County,” he said. That includes, “police officers doing it the wrong way, utilizing their power in a very negative way.”
Jones said he reminds his officers, “you have a tremendous responsibility” and that it’s important that they make sure to use their authority in positive ways.
Jones, who leads a department of nearly 1,300 sworn police officers, and hundreds of support staff, has served in leadership positions in drug enforcement and the department’s major-crimes division.
He said his toughest day on the job was tackling a grisly crime scene in Germantown where a mother and her roommate stabbed four of her children. The two youngest, an 18-month-old boy and a two year old girl, were killed. Two other children, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old, survived.
“I’ll always remember going into the crime scene. That was a tough day,” he told WTOP. “That still sticks with me to this day,” he said, noting cases that involve children are always especially difficult.
Juvenile crime has been the focus of communities across D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and Jones said it’s his “personal feeling” that everyone plays a role in shaping the lives of children.
“It’s important for us to make sure that we’re guiding children in the right way,” and that society as a whole needs to step up, he said.
He added that the juvenile justice system needs to make sure that young people are held accountable and let adolescents know “that message has to be continuously delivered, whether we’re parenting, whether we’re mentoring, whether where we’re teaching.”
When he announced his retirement this week, Jones made clear that he wouldn’t disappear. At 59, “I’m too young to be sitting in a rocking chair, my wife has already told me that,” said Jones. But Jones said he will first take some time to relax before taking on a new role of being engaged in his community.
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