Crash victim wonders if city gives a hoot
Emily Chalmers wrote Getting There to share her experiences as a traffic-crash victim in Baltimore. It's enough to make anyone think twice about bringing a car into the city. Here's the story, in her own words:
On Saturday afternoon (July 23), I was in a three-car accident in northeast Baltimore. I was the collateral damage, my tiny car mashed by a giant SUV that bounced off something that looked like a Sierra van. Because I was miraculously unhurt, I jumped out of my car and immediately entered what I can only describe as an alternate reality.
First, I grabbed my cell phone to call 911 for an ambulance (the two other drivers were hurt) and police (the cars were blocking an intersection). To my utter amazement, what I heard was not “Police emergency,” but “Please wait for the next available representative.” I looked at the number I’d dialed to be sure that it was 911; it was. But when I put the phone back to my ear, I heard again “Please wait for the next . . .” I don’t know how long I waited, but ultimately I got through, and the ambulance and police arrived.
When I called the mayor’s office to complain, I learned that when the city canceled its 311 service on nights and weekends, it started routing the 311 calls to 911, so the emergency number is often busy. What? Some guy is calling to request bulk trash pickup while a girl lies bleeding in the street? HAS NO ONE IN THE BALTIMORE CITY GOVERNMENT HEARD OF RECORDED MESSAGES DIRECTING PEOPLE TO CALL BACK DURING BUSINESS HOURS? The mayor’s office seemed entirely unconcerned. Do you know anything about this situation?
Next, I tried to get the insurance information for the person who’d hit me, who was sitting in his car waiting to be moved. In my many decades of driving I’d learned that exchanging insurance information was not only routine but necessary. However, the officer who had his license and insurance cards refused to give me the information. She said I had to get it from the police report, which I would have to buy. I was dumbfounded. I asked her if I could just have the gentleman’s insurance information, as he had admitted fault, and she could see I was the proverbial innocent bystander. She refused. Police procedures, she said.
Since Saturday, I have been trying to find out how to get the police report. I have called the Northeast District, the Mayor’s Office, the Maryland Insurance Administration, Central Records, and the lawyers for the police (now there are some rude folks). Not only can I not get the information I need—I would be happy with just the insurance information—I can’t get anyone to tell me who made this policy or why it is legal for the police to withhold from me information that I need to file an insurance claim. Everyone just says that it is police procedure.
In the meantime, my insurance company is treating this accident as if it were an at-fault collision, since I can’t prove to them it wasn’t. Apparently insurance companies often have to wait 4-6 weeks for a report if they order it. I can get it faster, but only if I order it on line, and only if the on-line system is working properly. I tried it. I had to call the Northeast District for help with the officer’s handwriting. When I asked the officer how to fill out one of the system’s cells, he didn’t know. Neither did Central Records. I cannot get a copy from the Northeast District, nor can I get the insurance information, although it’s on file there.
Is it legal for police to refuse me this information, require me to pay for it, force me to deal with an unreliable electronic system, and then deny me access until a “backlog” of reports is cleared up in some dim and distant future? Do I have any rights left as a citizen in Baltimore?
One of the many city employees I spoke with opined that whether one could get the needed insurance information at the accident scene often depended on who the responding officer was. Can police officers deny access to needed information that I thought was always readily available? Do they have that power?
Thanks for any light you can shed on these subjects. I would really appreciate any information. I also think Baltimore residents should know that these kinds of things are happening—from what I’ve heard from everyone I’ve spoke with, my case is not unusual.
BTW The police lawyers told me that I could write to the Commanding Officer of Written Directives—I am not kidding—for any written policies that might exist on these “procedures.” He did add, however, that there might not be any.
Emily Chalmers
Normally, with inquiries about the city, Getting There will turn to the Department of Transportation or the Baltimore Police Department for answers. But Chalmers' email seems to touch on a citywide breakdown, which calls for a response from the office of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. So that's where I'll forward this email, in the hope that we can get point-by-point responses to the complaints Chalmers is making.
Comments
Maybe the AG's office...?
Posted by: N. Payer | July 27, 2011 3:57 PM
This is out of Kafka.
Posted by: Claudia | July 27, 2011 3:59 PM
call the attorney general's office.
this treatment from the city is awful. not surprising.
the city doesn't give a crap about many things.
Posted by: brandon | July 27, 2011 4:24 PM
And that is the reason why so many of us prefer to live in the county (or counties). In Baltimore County, the officer would not only have given you over the insurance information, they would have made sure you knew the report number, and how to get the report AND the local precinct would have been more than willing to get it for you.
Its the difference between an agency that sees itself as there to SERVE, and one that is there to ENFORCE. And the one that is there to ENFORCE does it poorly.
I feel sorry for this person...
Posted by: Gunpowder Chronicle | July 27, 2011 8:23 PM
Not to blame the victim, but it seems the individual at fault was not injured (at least not badly). It would have never occured to me to ask the cop- I would have automatically asked the driver.
Posted by: Lis | July 27, 2011 10:32 PM
Mr. Dresser,
I hope you don't mind reading suggestions for story ideas, but it seems to me the Baltimore Sun has a potential for a good investigative series on a whole host of issues based on news it has covered:
1. Citizens decry lack of response in accidents (Emilly Chalmers).
2. City councilman urges citizens to claim a gun is involved for more rapid response.
3. 50+ officers investigated as part of corruption probe involving towing.
4. Officer running citywide heroin network.
These may look disconnected, but to me, they all point to an endemic cultural issue within the Baltimore Police-- a real case of life imitating art ("The Wire", anyone?).
These aren't disconnected issues... they are about the culture in the BPD.
It would be interested for the Sun to do an expose across all its sections to cover this.
Posted by: Gunpowder Chronicle | July 28, 2011 1:29 PM
Hi Gunpowder.
Since The Wire is finished, please help out the region and chronicle how many people from the counties drive into the city and contribute to the region-wide drug problem of Central Maryland.
Do you really think that some people on the county police squads aren't doing the same things? After all, most of Central Maryland's population stems from Baltimore. It's not as though it takes hours and hours for county folk to reach the city.
Do you really think that people contributing to the regional problems around here don't live in one of the Maryland counties?
A better solution is that people of the region stop hiding behind invisible fences and fix the regional mess.
Thanks all.
Posted by: JoJo | July 28, 2011 9:52 PM
I completely agree with JoJo on this one. It really angers me that people in the surrounding counties enjoy regional benefits such as a winning football team, the Grand Prix, access to world-class medicine at two high quality research hospitals, big city arts, concerts, a beautiful waterfront, interesting places to eat, shop, and generally have a night out - but then retreat to their jurisdictional borders when problems such as poverty, systemic racism, corruption, crumbling infrastructure, and environmental calamity rear their ugly heads. Baltimore pays the highest property tax in the state for a reason - we have the most problems and the fewest resources to deal with them - mainly because our predecessors made a mess of downtown and then, the ones who could afford to, left and put up a wall known as the county line to keep those problems from being their tax-paying obligation.
It's BS
Posted by: Youssef | July 29, 2011 11:56 AM
Nice straw-men arguments Youssef and JoJo.
The issue here is the cultural problem within the BPD -- its how sworn officers at ALL levels, from the Commissioner down to street cops -- see their roles and how the leadership of the department (or lack thereof) imparts their responsibilities.
And most of all, its about how that culture is failing the citizens of Baltimore in MANY facets, causing them to want to move in the first place.
Its not just about the drug culture, which yes, is fueled by white folks in the counties. If the base crime issue in the city were something else, the cultural issues in the BPD would still be there.
You claim that the counties have a regional "responsibility". Okay, but what about the core responsibility of the citizens of Baltimore to their own charter government? Why should county citizens be the only ones to accept responsibility here?
Posted by: Gunpowder Chronicle | July 29, 2011 3:57 PM
Yes, Gunpowder.
If we could open up Central Maryland, and all of Maryland, to a regional jurisdiction, the whole region might tackle the region-wide problem.
Look at the rest of the U.S. Pretty much all of the major modern metropolitan regions are city/county municipalities.
Our area is antiquated in its practices. Please, let's modernize.
I didn't grow up here. In fact I grew up in a military family, knowing all kinds of boundaries that were knocked down.
JoJo
Posted by: JoJo | July 30, 2011 5:35 PM
Maryland law:
ยง 20-104.(b) Duty to give certain information. -- The driver of each vehicle involved in an accident that results in bodily injury to or death of any person or in damage to an attended vehicle or other attended property shall give his name, his address, and the registration number of the vehicle he is driving and, on request, exhibit his license to drive, if it is available, to:
(1) Any person injured in the accident; and
(2) The driver, occupant of, or person attending any vehicle or other property damaged in the accident.
Posted by: Barry Childress | July 31, 2011 10:45 PM
I had similar difficulties when my car was involved in an accident in the Northern district. Someone rear-ended a parked car so hard at 2am that the stationary car travelled 5 feet and plowed into the back of my parked car hard enough to do $4,000 in damage. No sobriety check was done on the driver, no citation was issued despite the fact that the driver did not have insurance and the vehicle's registrtation was expired. I asked a friend who works in the precinct why they wouldn't have cited the driver and after he looked at the responding officer's name his answer was "oh, he's just lazy". So, the driver got off SCOT FREE despite totalling the vehicle that hit mine and destroying my car's immaculate condition, probably while drunk. Great police work. I then had the pleasure of facing many of the same difficulties that Emily describes while dealing with insurance paperwork. The level of dysfunction in this city is profound.
Posted by: kateebee | August 1, 2011 9:24 AM
Well, here's another take, Emily. Bet if you were a hulking 350+ plus man with a real serious attitude at the scene of this accident you just might have fared a tad different. I'm just saying...
Posted by: ruth | August 1, 2011 1:35 PM
Couldn't your insurance company have obtained all of the important information they needed if you had given them the license plate numbers of the other cars involved in the accident? It's my understanding that insurance companies have access to the the DMV's records on file. By giving them the license plates of the other vehicles, they could find out who owns the car, if it's insured and by who, and maybe even who was driving the vehicle the day of the incident. That's what I would've done in that situation so I at least had something.
Posted by: B | August 1, 2011 9:15 PM
Congrats Baltimore City! My wife and I have been looking at homes for a while and quite a few nice ones were in the city proper. I can assure you now that we will NEVER purchase a home in the city!
Posted by: Masterius | August 10, 2011 3:22 PM