WASHINGTON (Map, News) - D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier is quietly stepping back from the next installment of her controversial “All Hands on Deck” initiative, cutting hundreds of officers from the anti-crime push aimed at flooding city streets with police.

“There is a concern that we may be inadvertently impacting the staffing of the District’s [police beats] during the other days of the week,” patrol division Inspector Steven Sund wrote to police leadership in an April 18 e-mail obtained by The Examiner.

Accordingly, the department is looking for “volunteers” to take the first weekend of May off, Sund wrote.

That is the weekend when Lanier had planned to have virtually the entire force on the streets, as in past “All Hands” efforts.

Asked about the e-mail, Assistant Chief Alfred Durham said the department needs about 250 officers to stay home in order to keep full staff during the ensuing workweek.

“We didn’t have adequate staffing,” Durham said. “That’s what we’re trying to correct. We’re trying to do better.”

There have been five “All Hands” weekends since Lanier became chief in late 2006. Every officer, regardless of assignment, is required to work foot patrols over the weekend. Lanier says the maneuvers reassure worried neighbors and crack down on crime.

But critics have said the events do more harm than good because officers later take days off en masse, leaving police districts with fewer cops during the week.

Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the police union, said volunteers are required because the department is contractually bound to give 14 days’ notice before it changes an officer’s schedule.

“They’ve screwed up the schedule,” Baumann said. “And it still raises the question of how many officers are going to be working Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And in districts like 7D — where Tuesdays are the worst nights — I don’t know how they look people in the eye and say that ‘All Hands’ is keeping them safe.”

Roll calls before the “All Hands” weekend dropped by 30 percent last year. Then people were shot, one fatally, during a violent Halloween, a weekday night when hundreds of police officers were off because they had worked the previous “All Hands” weekend.

District Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, who oversees Lanier’s department, said he was “pleased” that Lanier was taking a step back on “All Hands.”

“We should not lose adequate police staffing in the neighborhoods whenever there is an ‘All Hands on Deck,’ ” he said in an e-mail.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

smccabe@dcexaminer.com