Cops and residents ride together
Steve Herlth glances out the side window of a police cruiser on Washington Boulevard and sees a group of kids hanging by the side of a liquor store.
"The guy on the bike is dealing right now," he tells the man behind the wheel, Southwestern District Officer Christopher Warren with the Baltimore Police Department.
The officer swung his cruiser through a parking lot and pulled up to the teens. As he pulled up the bicycle rider’s shirt and patted him down, Herlth rolled down the window and stared at the youth. Both lived in the same Morrell Park neighborhood, but this longtime resident who organizes community walks and is a liaison with police wasn’t scared.
"I’ve got to show him I’m not afraid of him," Herlth told me (that's Herlth in the midle of the photo, with Lt. Sean P. Mahoney in the white shirt and Officer Matt Daugherty after police stopped a car and found drug needles).
This was once scene out of many Friday evening and night on the streets of Baltimore, as city cops held one of the biggest community gathering in years. Not only did police open up virtually every office in the downtown headquarters building on Fayette Street, where people could chat with the police commissioner, they invited residents to ride with officers in every district in every corner of the city.
More than 170 people accepted the invitation — young, old, teens, community leaders, curious homeowners. It was more than a meet and greet — it was a chance for people to see how the officers work and confront the very issues they complain about day after day, week after week in phone calls and at community meetings.
"I want engagement on happy terms," Southwestern District Maj. Anthony Brown told me.
For more on the ride:
One of the biggest complaints from just about anyone is that they call 911 and either nobody comes or the officer simply rides by, without stopping, without getting out of the car, without talking to people. "They’ll see our guys running," Brown said. "They’ll see how the supervisor takes charge of the radio when it gets busy, and how that bicycle theft gets put in the back seat when the call for a domestic violence comes in."
The major gathered the residents in the roll call room and told them, "I hope today you get to see what police do. ... We want you to meet officers, not just on a 911 call."
Herlth was particularly happy with Brown, who took over the district in January, because he was reachable. He showed me his cell phone that not only Brown’s person cell phone plugged in, but those of the deputy major, the lieutenants and the sergeants. "His attitude is that if I need him, I got him," Herlth told me.
Morrell Park, like any neighborhood, has its share of problems. Its not as drug or crime ridden as other parts of the sprawling Southwest District, which reaches up into what is considered Northwest Baltimore, but for the people who live there the issues are real. Herlth knows the player, like the kid on the bike who didn’t have any drugs on him on Friday but deals marijuana and prescription pain killers.
Herlth pointed out other drug "runners" and another youth known as "Waked and Shake."
"We’re fighting a battle," he said, sparking a conversation with Warren. Herlth blamed parents. Warren asked, "Do we need so many bars and liquor stores in this city?"
Like any resident, Herlth wants more police, but he also recognizes that Morrell Park is far more stable than others Warren has to patrol. "How do we ask for more patrols when you have Poplar Grove right up the way that can have a shooting any moment?" he asked.
Warren answered with an old axiom of policing: stable neighborhoods get police service, while problem neighborhoods get police response. Residents in the stable communities "sometimes feel left out," the officer said. "The still have police, just not as much as the others."
During the course of the evening, Warren helped other officers at a car stop in which a man from Anne Arundel County was looking to buy drugs (he had nine heroin needs in a small bag), and responded to another stop in which an officer saw someone with an open container of alcohol in the car.
The driver happened to be a state employee with a clean record, but his friends all had been arrested before and were known drug dealers. Another call for a man with a gun led to an arrest of a 19-year-old on an old warrant and on Winchester Street, Warren spotted a known member of the Crips gang, a kid with "C" with a line through it tattooed on his wrist.
"As soon as we see a gang member, we move them out," Warren said after he told the youth to go to his home in Northwest Baltimore.
