Prince George's County's new police chief wants to focus on staffing, youth crime, community building
One-on-one with Prince George's County Interim Police Chief George Nader
Prince George's County's new interim police chief sat down with FOX 5 tonight. Shirin Rajaee joins us live from Hyattsville with more.
PRINCE GEORGE'S CO., Md. - Prince George's County's new interim police chief sat down for a one-on-one with FOX 5 this week.
Interim Police Chief George Nader has been in this role for just over 30 days. In a one-on-one interview, he addressed a number of issues in Prince George's County—from youth crime, to ICE raids, to bolstering law enforcement resources and like other police departments around the country, which is one of his biggest concerns is recruitment.
The backstory:
Chief Nader was appointed by Prince George's New County Executive Aisha Braveboy with 32 years of law enforcement experience under his belt.
Nader says he’s coming in with a focus on building up the department’s staff and resources.
"Top priority is going to be staffing. How do we enhance our staffing? Enhance our appeal to people to apply and come aboard our organization?" he said. "There have been a lot of negative incidents that have happened with law enforcement. I think we still have not recovered from that as a profession. Also, what you see, too, is there's less interest in our younger folks to come on board jobs like this."
Nader says in order to be fully staffed the department needs roughly 330 additional officers, with 60 to 80 retiring every year. They're constantly in a deficit, supplementing that shortage with officers on overtime.
The department is now looking to widen their social media outreach to diversify the force.
"We have a lot of bilingual officers," Nader said."We have various races and genders, but we are looking to enhance our female officers, so we'd love to encourage young ladies that are interested in this profession to come to our department."
Dig deeper:
Another big concern in the county is youth crime. The interim chief says curfews are working- and also plans to start a truancy program once kids go back to school.
"What you find a lot of times is when kids are out and about, and they're truant from school that could lead to them, being the victim in a crime that could lead to them, being involved in some kind of delinquent act. So merely by picking these juveniles up and taking them back to school. That could avoid that.
FOX 5 also asked about ICE raids potentially being conducted in the area.
"We don't enforce immigration status in Prince George's County. We don't ask our citizens what their immigration status is,’ said Nader. "We want them to feel comfortable enough, and trust us enough that they can call us when they need us."
Again, Nader says he recognizes the real fear in the county about ICE raids and stresses tonight that they will not be working with ICE, and really urging residents in Prince Georges County to come forward if they need help.