Building off of Peter's post about New Year's Eve preparations, one of our photographers was in Southwest Baltimore when he saw what he described as about 10 police cars and a police van - a paddywagon - driving around slowly through the neighborhood, with lights flashing but no sirens. He decided to follow them to see what was up, and ended up driving around the area in circles until losing them at a red light that they pulled through.

He wanted to know what he had just seen, so I called a Southwest District officer, who informed me that this was an intimidation tactic called a "corner sweep." 

"We're warining the drug dealers to stay off the corners," the officer said.

There will be tons of extra officers on the streets tonight, but it looks like they're trying to set the tone early that police will be out in big numbers.