But in its final meeting Monday, the panel approved softer language for its report due April 1, noting that scaling back the duties of police would inevitably lead to a smaller department spending less money and that recommending a specific dollar amount might be beyond the scope of its mandate.

“To help ensure the District does not revert to the current harmful overreliance on policing and incarceration,” the commission decided its report will say, “this investment should be accompanied by a realignment and reduction of [the department’s] size, responsibilities and budget.”

The commission also will recommend police overtime be capped at 3 percent of its annual budget and the size of the force, now about 3,650 officers, be reduced through attrition. Members said a study should be done to examine police personnel and duties, and to determine whether more jobs could be done by civilians.

In addition, members will call on the District to improve the safety net for residents struggling with a wide variety of issues, in hopes of reducing the need for police and other emergency services.

The Police Reform Commission, established in September by D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), is recommending more than 80 changes in police rules, procedures and laws. The District’s police chief or mayor could agree to some, all or none of the proposals; the council could also step in to enact legislation.

Acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III, who faces a confirmation hearing before a council committee on Thursday, has said the department should have 4,000 officers. He has been holding meetings in neighborhoods around the city to determine what police should and should not be doing, and he said he remains open to change. Contee has also warned that his municipal police force could be tasked with new duties confronting domestic terrorism in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The chairman of the police labor union said he would withhold comment until the final report is issued.

At the end of Monday night’s four-hour session, Mendelson’s legislative policy adviser, Blaine Stum, who has guided the commission through its seven-month process, said he has read many reports on retooling police in cities across the country. “This report is by far going to be the boldest and most pathbreaking report that I’ve seen,” he told the group.

The commission is recommending removing police officers from schools, shifting much of traffic enforcement to the city’s transportation department and restricting all vehicular stops to ones posing immediate threats to public safety. The panel is trying to stop a police practice of using traffic stops as a pretext to search for guns or drugs or evidence of other crimes.

The group will urge police to pause operations of specialized forces, such as the Gun Recovery Unit and crime suppression squads, seen in some D.C. neighborhoods as oppressive. Contee is studying ways to change the gun squad’s focus from seizing firearms to targeting people using guns in crimes of violence.

Also on the table is an idea to send behavioral health-care workers rather than police to calls for people suffering mental health crises, coupled with a system in which police and counselors respond to some calls together. The idea is to minimize the presence of police, who many say exacerbate rather than calm such situations.

Other proposals would restrict how officers confront suspected criminals, such as disallowing the practice of police asking people to consent to searches of their cars or other property. It would require police to obtain legal probable cause to conduct a search.

Another provision would ban police officers from using a person’s presence in a “high-crime area” as one of the legal criteria required for stopping and searching a person. Members discussed narrowing the term “high-crime area” to require a more specific location, such as a particular apartment building.

But Christy Lopez, the commission’s co-chair and director of the Innovative Policing Program at Georgetown Law, said barring that term altogether will “encourage officers to think about how [potential suspects] are acting” rather than where they happen to be at the moment.