Crime down in major cities, but in Baltimore?
Today's Washington Post has an interesting article on how crime in many big cities is plummeting, perplexing officials who are trying to figure out why. Baltimore, however, while experiencing a crime drop, still is ahead in murder this year compared to last. The latest slaying was Sunday night in East Baltimore. Our shootings are down, but homicides are up; see Sun murder map.
The story by Allison Klein explores new high-tech strategies. In Baltimore, police still do Comstat, in which commanders gather weekly to analyze crime trends and can look at patterns of when and where shootings and other crime occur. This allows the cops to deploy and alter strategies as needed.
But New York, which pioneered the Comstat method, cops send a "mobile data van" to every slaying filled with police who can monitor 911 calls in the neighborhood, quickly identify people on parole and probation and work up a neighborhood profile that not only helps them catch the killer, but also enables commanders to understand what is going on and maybe prevent more violence from occuring (at left, The Sun's Glenn Fawcett captures a shooting scene from January).
Shootings are not usually random, but have rational that if detectives can understand they can not only make more arrests but get a handle on crime in neighborhoods. Understanding the motives, patterns and players can only help. New York City has brought its murders down drastically over the years, but of course they have nearly 40,000 cops and can mobilize hudreds at a moments notice.
While they flood the zone after a murder, those of us in Baltimore are still struggling to keep teens on home detention, and realized after a recent shooting of a 5-year-old girl that even with all the technology, if a teen really wants to escape detection of a GPS unit, he can easily separate himself from the device and we won't have any idea where he's gone.
The latest numbers from Baltimore (ending July 4) show major crime down 7 percent, including a nearly 30 percent drop in shootings (105 so far this year, compared to 116 at this time last year) along with a 10 percent drop in robberies, a 7 percent drop in assaults and a 5 percent drop in burglaries. Homicides are up about 10 percent, but assaults with guns are down 26 percent, robbies with guns are down 21 percent.
Meanwhile, according to department figures, arrests in murder cases are up 44 percent, in rapes 23 percent and in assaults 20 percent.
Comments
Every couple of months we read about other cities and how the homicides are down in there respective cities, then we read further and see some of the innovative things that they do to achieve reductions. According to the report new York still does Comstat but has added a few things to it including the Mobile Data Van, the key things in the articles that people don't understand are that we are not an innovative department, as a Baltimore Police Officer I can say that we are about as reactive as we can be to crime, but we certainly are not as proactive as we need to be. But this is where the glitch comes up time after time, you cannot be proactive or try really innovative things without spending capital to try different things, you cannot do this when you have the low level of funding that Baltimore has and when you try different things you have to realize that most often they will not work as intended or be as successful as hoped, but when you don't even have the funding to repair cars and you have the worst equipment possible how is that feasible. Easy It Isn't. this city is dealing with a police department which has no morale, too high of a percentage of officers that just meet the minimum qualifications, that are tired and run down from the heavy work load and the terrible work schedule, it will be impossible to turn this department from a reactive department to a proactive department even if you had the money when your people are just going through the motions and lack motivation or a sense that anyone else is attempting to help the police, i.e parents, citizens, judges, elected officials, and yes the community associations who never pressure city hall to give the police the tools we need, no wonder 90% of the members on each shift hate there jobs!
Posted by: TEB | July 20, 2009 12:50 PM
The only thing I know for sure is that the same drug dealers keep walking the streets and that the guy two doors down can prostitute his girlfriend out right from his home. That his and others are well known drug houses and that I couldn't tell you one cops name after 8 years of living here.
This city has no intention of trying to improve itself. It's run by African-Americans that aren't looking for change (ironic isn't it?) but rather, they're looking for more of the same social assistance from the governmet and someone to blame for their misery.
Posted by: DeathNail | July 21, 2009 11:05 PM