Police Ride-along
Many of us complain about our police departments, but very few of us do anything to make the situation better. On Friday 11 December 2009 a group of citizens in the Central District of Baltimore City did something. We rode along with police officers to learn more about what they do and what they face.
If you have an opportunity to ride along with a police officer, take advantage of it. I have done this twice and both times I learned so much. I am also more aware of what actually happens on the streets.
This is the second open house this year. Everybody should have a ride along with him. The open house starts at 18:00. The whole thing will terminate around 21:30 tonight.
The district has patrol and operations and they are two different paths of work. There is an officer of the year for both. The operations officer is in court. Jeffery Moore is the patrol officer of the year. The major said that the officers are doing a phenomenal job is keeping the crime down. This is not a normal roll call.
There is a nine month course at the University of Maryland. We are coming in in the black at every crime category. We blew the other districts out of the water in the homicide and shooting. The numbers dropped. In many of these categories they dropped the numbers in double digits. There were groups of gangs coming downtown and they stopped that.
Larceny from auto affects the regular visitors. This has been problematic for quite some time. They were 2% up six weeks ago. They dropped the number by 40 and by 100. They arrested the right guys and got cases on that.
A lieutenant talked about the new pay system. My impression is that the City is getting ready to shoot itself in the foot by messing with the pay of police officers.
Sgt. Charles Hess then talked about the Open House. We are going to see the City Wide Center at the Atrium. There will be a 15 minute presentation and some hands on activity. We will see some archive videos.
My notes below are random notes developed from conversations with police officers.
The tow trucks are private and not a part of the City. The police rarely get calls from St. Mary Street. Lexington Market is a bad point for the Police Department. The users are the biggest drug dealers. They go to the programs because it is free to them. They then sell the drug on the streets. For one pill they charge somebody $40. The Lexington Market drug market is not controlled by anybody. The dealer just yells out what he has.
The Harbor is built on landfill. The condos are all build over water. The kids who were fighting each other are from different schools.
MySpace is a real head ache. Somebody says something on it and it gets back to the person being discussed.
McDonald’s on Howard Street is a problem for the police. KFC is not a problem because they have an armed guard there.
We picked up a young man who was the seller in a drug deal. The drug dealer is only 17 years old and he does not live in the courts where he was arrested. He seemed like a well manner, clean-cut young man. The handling of him was very professional. I just hope that he learned something from this arrest.
Petra from Communications: Her office does the statistics. There are 16 million 9-1-1 calls a year in the city. That is 2.5 for every person in the city, according to Remington Steele, who was also riding along with us. They analyze the top ten addresses. They summarize the significant calls. Everything they do is available to everybody in the department.
They have 40,000 open warrants in the City. There are priority warrants. You can call her unit if you are buying a house in the City and they will look it up on a map. The city has nine police districts. They put together a stat book of 300 pages.
The police boundaries are tied with other agencies and they have to be approved by the City Council. The City is looking at redistricting the entire city. This has to be approved by the City Council and also public hearings.
On 9-1-1 calls, life always comes first.
How many wheels are on a car? Including the steering wheel, five.
Things usually slow down on really cold days. There are certain hours of the day when there is more activity. The first and 15th of the month are other busy days.
One group saw three arrests, five service calls, and a domestic dispute. Officer Brian Hill arrested one guy twice and he knew the whole family. He has a good rapport with the people. They know him as fair and just but when he gives a command, they follow him or they pay the price.
There is a gas station on Eutaw and Mulberry. On the side of the gas station behind the fire house next door they sell every drug you can name.
City Watch Center
The best time to do a ride along after the checks come out and on the tenth after the child support checks come out.
Every camera is overt. They can look into store front windows. We have a direct link to the dispatcher. They do not call 9-1-1.
This is the City Watch Center, a part of the Criminal Intelligence Division. They put together intelligence package. They can compile the footage and this makes it a lot easier to get a search warrant. If a house has prior CDS problems, it is easier.
They are a 24/7 operation. It has 64 cameras. Two monitors are dedicated to the downtown area. There is a lot of people and businesses downtown and the Harbor is downtown. They make an arrest on Lexington Market on a daily basis. Every system can monitor every camera they have. This building used to be the main center.
They watch McCulloh Homes. They have four monitors stationed there.
They used to have two different systems and it was costing the city a lot of money. DvTel Version 6.0 now runs every camera and they all record the same way. All of their monitors are retired police officers or have criminal justice experience. They know what they are looking at. We made some big cases here. We have made convictions without the victims in court just by taking the cameras in there. They don’t believe us when we go to court. Now they do.
They can adjust the resolution and clarity of the cameras. They are most effective within two blocks but they can see four or five blocks down the orad. They don’t record conversation. They make sure that they get tag numbers of vehicles.
They now have the Inner Harbor cameras there also. The Marine unit has been disbanded. A man fell into the water and the Harbor Police commandeered a water taxi. They had to act fast. The cameras saw him falling in and the monitor immediately made the call.
If you slow down the video, you can see the round coming out of a gun.
The banks also send in their film. At night they have a monitor watch one of the projects, if not all of them.
You can control a camera with a joy stick or mouse or the screen. A monitor can switch camera with a keyboard. All the monitors are trained to watch people. On play backs they can pause the video. When a camera is on tour, it follows people moving. We have 492 cameras.
They try to keep the monitors in certain areas so that they get to know the area. They also have Google Maps which show were the cameras are. They also have cameras that pick up gun shots.
They are limited on where they can place the camera because they have to have power.
The firehouse on Paca Street is a warehouse for the street sellers. The Northeast District is the only are a where there are no cameras. We get much of our money through Homeland Security grants. We want people to know that the cameras are there watching you. Their tech support people are right there in the room. They just integrated the cameras into the software system. Most of the districts are shown a decrease in crime. Did we just move people away from the camera areas? The City is looking into expanding the project. We are granting six cameras in the Pennsylvania Avenue area.
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