A story today in the Detroit News says that city's police department has routinely underreported slayings. It's worth taking a look, especially since numbers they had provided to the FBI put Baltimore in first place with the highest per-capita murder rate for city's with more than a half-million people. That ranking changed to No. 2 when Detroit police added a bunch of slayings to their total.

Now, the newspaper has found that the cops there did this often. It comes as Baltimore residents continue to question the veracity of crime stats here. While it appears Baltimore's murder numbers are accurate, I did find the Detroit story interesting in that it makes clear that the FBI wants cities to report even justified homicides. Baltimore's numbers only count unjustified killings.

I still think that for our purposes, counting only unjustified slayings makes sense in that we're trying to get an accurate count of violence. But it could be that Baltimore is underreporting its numbers to the feds. But as you'll see in the Detroit News article, what they're cops did was far worse -- misclassifying slayings as accidents and writing up as suicides cases the Medical Examiner had ruled homicides.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Mapping crime, Neighborhoods
        

I last wrote about an experiment at Johns Hopkins University in which 93 sound sensors were set up to detect gunshots. The location is then projected onto a computer screen in the security office. Washington D.C. police have a similar program -- Baltimore's is called SECURES Gunshot Detection System -- and laud it as a great tool for responding quickly to gunfire.

Baltimore police have been skeptical but the free Hopkins trial allows them to test the system. I've questioned it's location in a relatively safe area of town -- from November to December of last year, only two noises registered as possible gunshot and one of those was a firecracker.

I asked Hopkins for an update from spokeswoman Tracey A. Reeves and she told me: "It’s still too early to make a case for or against the SECURES system or whether it should or will be expanded. But we can say that  anytime you have a tool that can help you with investigations and provide another layer of security, it’s worthwhile.”

Here are some details:

Continue reading "Gunshot detection" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Mapping crime, Neighborhoods
        

The good news from Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton this morning is that crime is down in just about every category this year, from burglaries to violent crime. Homicides, during an unusually slow May, are on par with last year, which recorded a 20-year low. See the Baltimore Sun's homicide map.

Still, Baltimore is a violent city -- four people were slain over the holiday weekend and another person was stabbed near downtown on Sunday night. We still have a lot of work to do but the numbers are encouraging. Of course, the numbers mean nothing if you are among the victims.

I spent Saturday night driving around the city with City Councilman William H. Cole IV and the Peter Collier, the deputy director of the Parking Authority. I wanted to see what it was like when clubs are open; we hear of so much violence, from stabbings at the Inner Harbor to shootings outside the Belvedere, that I wanted to see for myself (above, Baltimore Sun's Karl Ferron took this picture of a man being arrested after a fight on Calvert Street near the Inner Harbor on Saturday night).

We drove from club to club; some were quiet, others were hopping, including Club One and another spot near the Farmer's Market under the JFX, where an international heavy-metal festival attracted about 2,000 people.

We raced from a fight on Calvert Street near the Inner Harbor to a disturbance on Saratoga and Gay streets back to another fight on The Block. The commander of the Central District, Maj. John Bailey, was out late, as he always is on the weekends, looking for trouble. There were four cops working overtime at a single garage on Water Street and another two hired by the Belvedere Condo Association to watch over the clubs in that building.

One of the, Suite Ultralonge, has been targeted by the city for closure; the liquor board pulled its license but the owners have a stay until a Circuit Court judge rules on its appeal. One of the owners, Louis Wood, spoke to Bailey and one of the Mount Vernon leaders and told them he only had 60 kids for an underage night inisde his club on Saturday. That made it easy for Bailey, who likes the club to close at 11 p.m. so the kids can get off the street and back home by midnight curfew (At left, another pic by Ferron of Cole and Maj. Bailey talking about the Ultralounge on Saturday night).

But other clubs were more trouble, including a new on Calvert Street that just suddenly appeared. It looked as if someone had put a sign in a vacant building and announced a party. By the end of the night, city police had to close not only East Baltimore Street, which do when The Block shuts down, but also North Calvert Street because of the clubs and illegally parked cars blocking a lane.

Of the clubs, Cole said, "It's a moving target."

It's nice to see crime down. But judging from what I saw Saturday night into Sunday morning, we still have work to do. But again, it's less the cops and more the people who come, a diverse crowd that could include metal-heads, hip-hop fans, suburbanites at a wedding, college kids at Brewer's Art and families taking a night-time stroll at the Inner Harbor or enjoying a meal.

We were standing outside the Water Street garage when a group of kids walked by. They were loud and jostling each other, and Bailey stepped stood in the sidewalk to ask them to quiet down a bit. They brushed by him without saying a word, but they did get quiet, at least until they reached the end of the block, headed toward the Harbor.

It was 12:30 a.m. and Cole wondered where they could be going. "There are no clubs down there, nothing," he said. Earlier, he wondered aloud, "There has got to be away all this can co-exist."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Mapping crime
        

Want to know how many burglaries have occurred in your Baltimore County neighborhood? Or parking complaints? Now you can know with the Baltimore Sun's new crime map for Baltimore County, launched today.

It took a while, but now we have crime maps on line for Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, along with a homicide map for the city. We hope to add more in the near future. It should be a great help in figuring out what is occurring where you live. Play around with it for a while and let us know what you think.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking crime, Mapping crime, Neighborhoods
        

It appears that the Baltimore Police Department is embarking on a test-run to text crime alerts to residents' cell phones. After saying the idea, which is used by many departments around the country including the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, was being studied, officials launched it today in the Southeastern District.

No announcement was made but for an e-mail sent out by the head of the Southeastern Police District's Community Relations Council, copying a statement from the district commander, Maj. Roger Bergeron.

I confirmed the start of this new program with the Police Department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, who told me it's a 30-day pilot run and if it works it will be implemented across the city: "If we're going to be successful in further lowering crime, the community needs to be a partner. Part of Frederick Bealefeld's strategy is not only to get cops out of cars to interact with residents and business owners, but arming the community with information so they can help us help them."

Here is the statement from Bergeron:

"I am proud to announce that the SED will be the pilot district for a community alert system. The system will go online today, Friday, April 17. We will run this pilot for 30 days and evaluate its effectiveness at the end. If successful it is anticipated that we will continue its use. This program will allow subscriber's to receive alerts via cell phone text message or email as they wish. The information put out will include information as to major crime within a quarter mile of an incident. We will include information as to significant arrests, community meetings, missing persons, and any other idea that we can think of that would benefit the community. A citizen may become a subscriber by logging on to www.nixle.com and follow the sign up instructions. This is a free program, however, costs may be incurred by their cell phone company depending on how they set up their contract with the phone provider (e.g. Pay per text message, etc...). I would encourage EVERYONE to sign up asap. Please alert as many residents as possible. I am excited about this new program and can't wait to see how it works out. Thank you!"

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, Mapping crime, Neighborhoods
        

Police are notorious for spelling errors, especially on street names. But now that city cops are increasingly going on-line with information, those errors are making their way into the public domain.

Monday night, Baltimore police twittered a shooting in the "500 block of N. Elwood Ave." Of course, there is no such address in the city (one extra 'l' would've given the posting accuracy), which my counterpart crime blogger didn't hesitate to point out:

Tweets our Facebook friend the BPD: "SHOOTING: Police investigating @ 500 block of N ELWOOD AVE." Google maps says there's no such street in the city, though there's an Elwood Ave in Easton, making us wonder if ...

there are still unexplored, primordial and unGooglized parts of the city

the BPD is trying to fake out sloppy reporters

the BPD is getting Easton radio transmissions

an officer said some other street with a Baltimore accent to a NY PR firm that's handling the BPD's "social networking services."

The shooting occurred in the 500 block of N. Ellwood Ave., in the city's Ellwood Park/Monument neighborhood. For more information, see today's story in The Sun.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

This morning the Baltimore Sun offers you a new crime map for Baltimore County. You can even get e-mail notifications of crime in your area, as well as keep track of trends from everything from car stops to burglaries.

We have been trying to get similar maps for Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs with different degrees of success. We have a similar map of Anne Arundel County crime and a map of homicides in Baltimore.

We've improved the Anne Arundel map by now allowing you to search for more than a week at a time. The same is true with the map from Baltimore County.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Mapping crime
        

Baltimore police twittered their first shooting this morning.

About 9:15 a.m., 25 minutes after the first 911 call, city cops put this up on Twitter: "Baltimore Police SHOOTING: Police investigating @ RUTLAND @ OLIVER ST."

The author of the post was chief spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, who just recently created a Facebook page. "I've conquered Facebook, now I'm tackling Twitter,"  he told me.

Guglielmi said he's copying other police departments around the country, such as in Boston and San Antonio.  "San Antonio puts out all the accidents," he said. Boston police is very active, they're on there all the time. They put up a shooting on there yesterday, a robbery last week."

Guglielmi said he chose this particular shooting to highlight because it involved a 16-year-old seriously hurt. He and his counterparts around the country will have to decide how to use Twitter, and Facebook, to communicate. At least four major departments use Twitter, some to post breaking crime, others to issue news releases or highlight awards.

I certainly embrace this type of openness.

Here's an example from the Boston Police Department's Twitter page:

BANK ROBBERY: Brighton, 2000 Beacon St, Citizens Bank, bank robbery task force is responding. half a minute ago from TwitterBerry
PERSON SHOT: Roslindale, 27 Beechland St, detectives setting up crime scene, avoid the area. about 14 hours ago from web
Internal Memo From Police Commissioner Davis: A MESSAGE FROM THE POLICE COMMISSIONER I would like to take this o.. http://tinyurl.com/cgzx2a about 16 hours ago from twitterfeed
STABBING: Roxbury Crossing, 1400 Tremont St, man stabbed on MBTA platform, EMS and detectives on scene, expect delays. about 19 hours ago from TwitterBerry
DAILY INCIDENTS FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2009: Suspect Arrested After Stealing Car, Attempted B&E

In trying to put up crime maps for Baltimore and suburbs, I've run into astonishing roadblocks from agencies that are reluctant to surrender the data, some saying outright it wouldn't be in their political interest to tell people how much crime is occurring and where it's happening. Other departments, such as Anne Arundel County and soon Baltimore County, are or are in the process of providing us information. We publish a crime map for Arundel and a homicide map for the city.

A great place to see what other departments are doing is on the FBI's Twitter site. Click to see who is following the FBI and more than 100 other departments come up. I clicked on a few and quickly learned that many of the Twitter sites are still in their infancy. The San Jose, Calif, department for example has a Twitter from March 13 that says only, "Drive Safely!"

The Anne Arundel County Police also twitter -- they put up daily press briefings and emergency road closures. Twitter seems to me an avenue to quickly report news snippets as they are happening. Police will have to decide whether that's the best way of imparting breaking crime news and updates.

It seems to me that Facebook might be best for releases and Twitter for news as it's happening now. That's not always easy given the fluididity of crime news. What goes out over a police scanner is often wrong, and departments don't want to publish information and then have to retract it later. Hence the vague Twitter on the East Baltimore shooting. It didn't give details that reporters could hear over the scanner -- that a 16-year-old had been shot in the shoulder and lung.

About the same time the Twitter came out, the Baltimore Sun had a short story published on the shooting. It's all part of the new technology. Baltimore Police also are considering sending crime alert text messages to your cell phones.

Here is a news release Anne Arundel County Police put out this morning about Twitter:

Continue reading "Baltimore police twitter a shooting" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore police are considering joining other departments in texting crime alerts to your cell phone.

Police in Washington set up just such a program in November and already 9,000 people, most of them business owners, have signed up to receive the messages. I think it's a great idea in that it both helps the cops get suspect information out quickly and keeps citizens informed about what's going on.

I hear constant complaints from people who didn't know until weeks later that the person who lives down the block had her house burglarized, or that someone had been shot on the corner, or even that a rapist was attacking women in Mount Vernon and Charles Village.

People want real-time crime information and with the city police already on Twitter and Facebook, and crime maps available on-line, it's a logical next step for department to alert residents about crime almost as soon as it occurs. Already, you can text in tips to Metro Crime Stoppers and many universities send out text alerts about crime.

Washington got help with a $800,000 federal homeland security grant that helps pay for its text-messaging program and ones in other jurisdictions in Virginia. It obviously costs money and would need to be fine-tuned for Baltimore. I'm told the mayor's office is exploring the idea that came up in a resolution filed earlier this week by Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

The Washington Post wrote a story on the DC's Metropolitan Police Department's initiative and here is some more information provided to me from DC Police and their program heads, Doug Jones and Patrick Le Foch:

Continue reading "Texting crime" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

A Baltimore reader wrote me last night asking about a subject near and dear to my heart -- crime maps:

I was wondering, I know we have the homicide map for Baltimore City, but I found a really cool real time map of crimes or police responses for Indianapolis through their local newspaper's website and I was wondering how Baltimore City could develop one of these. ... Just wondering if The Sun could develop something like this?

I've seen and blogged about the Indianapolis map and I too share your frustrations. We at The Sun have been trying now for more than a year to put up comprehensive crime maps for all the local jurisdictions. Only one agency, Anne Arundel County Police, has cooperated with us. They provide us data of 911 calls every week, which we map and put alongside the city homicide map. Data for the homicide map is inputted by staffers but repeated requests for more crime information from the Baltimore Police Department have gone nowhere, though we were promised it would happen nine months ago.

We are working with Baltimore County Police to map their crime but have run into various technical difficulties. The way Baltimore County compiles and sends us information is vastly different than how their counterparts in Anne Arundel handle the data. Other jurisdictions have either flat-out denied our requests (Howard County) or have are taking the requests under advisement.

Many area police agencies use a private company, CrimeReports.com, to map crime. This has troubled me from the start -- the company charges each agency (so, yes, you pay the bill) to provide it with data that is a matter of public record for anyone who asks. For smaller departments lacking crime mapping programs and computer engineers, I understand this is enticing. But Baltimore City has one of the most sophisticated crime mapping systems around. I've heard nothing but complaints from local police agencies about CrimeReports being inaccurate.

I agree with the reader and hopefully we'll be able to provide maps of crime everywhere. It's been a slow, laborious and frustrating process.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Mapping crime
        

We have an identity crisis in Baltimore.

My good colleague over at Dining@Large found that out this week when a reader complained she had located Brasserie Tatin in Homewood instead of Tuscany-Canterbury. They're miffed that a restaurant got moved from one neighborhood to another? Try that with crime!

Nobody wants crime in their neighborhood and nobody gets more complaints about neighborhood boundaries than the police reporter. My first taste of this came a number of years ago when an unfortunate man met his demise on the most unfortunate of streets -- Southway, which according to the official city map is the boundary between Oakenshawe to the south and Guilford to the north.

I had put the body in Guilford but I confess I didn't check to see on which side of the yellow line the body fell. Callers insisted it was on the south side of the street, putting the murder firmly in Oakenshawe. To this day I fail to see how anyone in Guilford, especially those whose manicured lawns greet Southway, are any safer with the body a few feet and a neighborhood name away. But we ran a correction anyway.

This theme repeats itself almost every week, sometimes more. I've discovered living in Baltimore that these lines are a state of mind. When I returned from an overseas reporting stint and started looking for a house in the city in 2005, I discovered that Highlandtown had been replaced, by the realators anyway, with something called Upper Canton.

I settled on a rowhouse on East Fort Avenue, only to have Jenna Bush become a neighbor. Only she wasn't really a neighbor. All the press put her in Federal Hill, even though she lived well south of the line; had there been a homicide instead of a president's daughter there, the crime would've been South Baltimore.

Here's how confusing it can be: my neighbors call where we live South Baltimore, though the city map calls it smack dab in the middle of Riverside. But the Riverside Neighborhood Association starts on the south side (odd numbered houses) on Fort Avenue. Being on the even side of the street, I'm in the Federal Hill South Community Association. But tell that to anybody on Montgomery Street or further south on William Street and Battery Avenue (where the house prices rise even as the houses get smaller) and you'll get a scornful look, as if we were trying to appropriate their good name and historic trademark. My house is often confused as being in Locust Point, even though I'm a mile west of the marker.

Topping it all off, there's a sign on a building on South Hanover Street, a mile from Federal Hill, that says, "Welcome to the heart of Federal Hill."

The comments about the restaurant has sparked a vibrant debate over at another blog, John E. McIntyre's You Don't Say, where the subject, naturally, returned to crime.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Baltimore Police Department has found a new way to communicate with the public. Over the weekend, it's top cop and top spokesman launched a Facebook page. At the moment, the group has but one member -- me -- and a press release on arrests in a home invasion.

It's a little sparse at the moment but I'm gathering it will quickly grow as a way for both the department to talk to residents and for people to raise questions and engage cops in the hot topics of the day.

Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman, said information about arrests and incidents will be posted, and Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III will also post from time to time, and maybe even answer emails. Time will tell on what sort of information Guglielimi and Bealefeld address -- hopefully they won't feel shy about confronting controversial topics and decisions, such as pulling cops from bar security or not naming officers who fire their weapons.

But for now I'm guessing the postings will be relatively benign.

That and the Baltimore Police Department website are ways of getting information out that is not picked up by the traditional media, the radio talk shows and the blogs, such as the Baltimore Sun's Crime Beat. But to retain interest, Bealefeld and Guglielmi will have to enter the fray, more like verbal combat, while still retaining a sense of decorum. It's not easy.

I got wind of the department's plans on Friday as I out at a bar doing what reporters do best -- grousing about the state of newspapers and the state of public officials. Right in the middle of a beer at Captain Larry's, my Blackberry went off and I read the message. I had to read it twice to make sure I hadn't overindulged -- Frederick Bealefeld wanted to be my friend on Facebook.

When I got home I discovered that sure enough the commissioner had a Facebook page set up. There was his picture and a series of news releases. I accepted his inivitation and for nearly a day I was his only friend. Just me and the commish!

Two others joined on Sunday. I have no idea how many he asked into his club, but Guglielmi told me that morning the commissioner wanted to friend everyone in Baltimore (though twittering was not in the picture).

"He wants to use it as a portal to distribute Baltimore Police Department news and events," Guglielmi said, "and get the Facebook community engaged and involved in what we're doing."

I thought this was a wonderful idea and I looked forward to see Bealefeld's wall postings and status changes. Of course, this opens up a whole new world and exposes the commissioner, the reproters who cover him and the citizens he serves to their often intimate worlds. By my making him my friend, Bealefeld could learn about my friends in California, my cousins, and if I fill out the forms, what books I like to read, what I like to drink, where I've traveled ...

It doesn't matter because a few hours later, the site came down and was quickly replaced by a Baltimore Police Department site. Guglielmi said the new site reflects the commissioner's desire to have the department represtened over the personality. That's probably a better idea, though I don't think organizations can reach out and friend people -- the people have to reach out to the organizations.

I'm encouraged by any attempt by the police to reach out, though I'll miss being, even it was for just a few hours, Frederick Bealefeld's only friend.

And when Bealefeld had his personal page up, he offered a little comment at the end of the news release annoucing the arrests in the home invasion, a little ataboy to his troops. That was gone on the official BPD Facebook page. I understand that the commissioner can make the plug but the organization has to maintain a professional look, but a little bit of personality can't hurt!

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Mapping crime