Deter Crime

In a push to seize guns and deter crime in the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, Baltimore police are aggressively stopping and frisking people, a tactic employed with little oversight from senior commanders and virtually no tracking of its effectiveness, a Sun review has found. Department officials credit the strategy with helping to reduce homicides and violent crime in areas where people often ask for more police. But residents being targeted say they are unjustly harassed and detained.

No one likes the thought of Big Brother constantly looking over one's shoulder. So it's understandable many people initially resisted the idea of blanketing the city with police surveillance cameras that record everything that happens within their field of view. Of course, no one wants to be the victim of a crime either, which is why a new report on the effectiveness of cameras in deterring would-be criminals should prove reassuring. The study, conducted by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, found that Baltimore's network of more than 500 police surveillance cameras has been a highly cost-effective deterrent to the kind of street crime that most concerns residents.

Opponents of the death penalty, who have been quietly lobbying and organizing against the scheduled execution of killer John F. Thanos, unveiled their formal campaign yesterday with a news conference in Baltimore."

Police Officer Sarah Miller has already filled her new headquarters in Columbia's Owen Brown Village Center with large wall maps, informational brochures and community fliers, dozens of coloring books and a bowl brimming with lollipops. After months on bicycle patrol, she knows her territory and now has a spot from which she can direct efforts to safeguard the village she serves. "I wanted as many maps as possible," she said. "Owen Brown can be a confusing area geographically.

Long Reach Village residents met with law enforcement officials last night and discussed ways to fight back against crime -- mostly vandalism, thefts of vehicles, thefts from vehicles and residential burglaries -- that has plagued their community.About 60 residents attended a town meeting with officials from the Howard County police and sheriff's departments to learn what they could do to help deter crime and "hate-bias incidents" aimed at racial, ethnic and religious groups."These crimes don't just affect the person whose house was spray-painted or whose car window was smashed," county police Officer Steve Black told the gathering at Stonehouse in Long Reach.

The investment a business makes in a community can't be reckoned only in terms of bricks and mortar. It also has to include a desire to improve the quality of goods and services for customers and create a safe environment for employees. That kind of commitment ultimately benefits people far beyond its immediate neighborhood. The $300,000 gift big-box retailer Target made this week to the Baltimore Police Department to beef up crime-fighting efforts around its new store at Mondawmin Mall in West Baltimore is an example of that kind of commitment.

The Glendening administration urged legislators yesterday to support a bill that would make it harder for people accused of violent crimes to be released on bail."

After spending nine years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, Kirk Noble Bloodsworth was able to walk out of the House of Corrections in Jessup Monday only because Maryland makes it hard to carry out the death penalty.The jury in Mr. Bloodsworth's first trial on charges of sexually assaulting and murdering a nine-year-old Rosedale girl did impose the ultimate penalty. When that verdict was thrown out on appeal, he was tried a second time and given two life sentences. He maintained his innocence and was finally freed this week only after a new type of DNA testing proved he wasn't the killer.

The life sentence meted out Tuesday to Bernard Eric Miller for the Sept. 8 murder of Pam Basu was entirely appropriate given the brutal nature of the crime. Dr. Basu was dragged to her death after being forced from her BMW at an intersection near her home in Savage; repercussions of the crime were felt nationwide and prompted state and federal officials to toughen carjacking laws.Miller faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. But he was protected from the death penalty because he was only 16 at the time.

PEOPLE CONCERNED about the escalating fear of violence, as I am, may believe that capital punishment is a good way to combat that trend.Take it from someone who has spent a career in federal and state law enforcement, enacting the death penalty in New York State -- as the new governor plans to do -- would be a grave mistake.Prosecutors must reveal the dirty little secret they too often share only among themselves: The death penalty actually hinders the fight against crime.Promoted by members of both political parties in response to an angry populace, capital punishment is a mirage that distracts society from more fruitful, less facile answers.

With regard to The Baltimore Sun editorial "Deterring youth crime" (Aug. 16), the best way to improve the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center is to keep kids out of it. And the best way to do that is to partner with community-based organizations to provide interventions that we know work. No one knows these kids better than the families and communities they come from—and no one has more incentive to see them succeed. We are setting up these kids, and the Department of Juvenile Services, to fail when we expect a centralized state agency to provide individualized solutions without engaging local partners.

It's certainly welcome news that conditions in the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center have improved enough to persuade the U.S. Department of Justice to lift federal oversight of the youth lockup it has held under scrutiny since 2007. But just because the facility has been found to be "in substantial compliance" with minimum federal standards doesn't mean officials there won't continue to face huge challenges dealing with the city's most troubled youths. The center, which opened in 2003, was originally intended to house up to 144 youths, most of whom were either awaiting trial in the juvenile court system or long-term placement in a rehabilitation program.

Having lived in Baltimore City for 8 years, I do not know one City resident who has not been impacted, directly or indirectly, by violent crime. Where do the judges who casually release known violent offenders onto City streets live? Have they not experienced violent crime in the way the rest of us have? Where do the prosecutors who negotiate these incredibly generous and lenient plea bargains live? Do they know anyone who has suffered the consequences of their deals? Rather than marching on the neighborhood streets where these killings occur, perhaps we should process past the homes of our prosecutors and judges with caskets carrying the bodies of the victims they failed to protect.

The replacement late last week of the two top police commanders in the city's Central District, which covers the Inner Harbor and downtown area, is an encouraging sign that Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III is taking his department's problems seriously. A recent rash of intimidating behavior and assaults involving roving groups of unsupervised teenagers had raised troubling questions about the department's ability to keep a lid on things, especially after police assurances that more officers would be patrolling the streets failed to stop several well-publicized incidents of violence.

The investment a business makes in a community can't be reckoned only in terms of bricks and mortar. It also has to include a desire to improve the quality of goods and services for customers and create a safe environment for employees. That kind of commitment ultimately benefits people far beyond its immediate neighborhood. The $300,000 gift big-box retailer Target made this week to the Baltimore Police Department to beef up crime-fighting efforts around its new store at Mondawmin Mall in West Baltimore is an example of that kind of commitment.

PHILADELPHIA -- The men on the corner of 16th and Page in North Philadelphia say they know what their neighborhood needs to stem the violence that has killed 306 people citywide so far this year, and that does not include putting 10,000 men on the street, as some black community leaders have proposed. Amid the weed-strewn lots and boarded-up buildings of North Philadelphia, one of the city's toughest neighborhoods, the six men who gathered to talk, drink and play cards say the young people who pull guns and deal drugs need jobs, recreation centers, after-school programs and, most of all, parents who care for them.

State officials announced programs yesterday aimed at ending what they called a "perception" that the light rail system is dangerous to passengers and delivers criminals from the city to the suburbs.While at the same time charging the media with overplaying coverage of transit crime, the governor praised the Mass Transit Administration for spending $100,000 to pay overtime to police officers from the city and Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties to provide extra protection at the system's 24 stations for two months.

The murders were occurring almost daily, but when the surge of violence claimed the lives of two innocents - a young mother and a high school band director - people rose up to say, "Enough!" From ministers to moving men to high-schoolers, they gathered by the hundreds until they marched on City Hall, 3,000 strong, to protest city officials' lack of urgency. This wasn't Baltimore; it was New Orleans. And while the emotion on display in the Big Easy recently wasn't unlike the anguish felt in Baltimore when an off-duty police officer was gunned down, the collective response was markedly different.

The murders were occurring almost daily, but when the surge of violence claimed the lives of two innocents - a young mother and a high school band director - people rose up to say, "Enough!" From ministers to moving men to high-schoolers, they gathered by the hundreds until they marched on City Hall, 3,000 strong, to protest city officials' lack of urgency. This wasn't Baltimore; it was New Orleans. And while the emotion on display in the Big Easy recently wasn't unlike the anguish felt in Baltimore when an off-duty police officer was gunned down, the collective response was markedly different.

In a push to seize guns and deter crime in the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, Baltimore police are aggressively stopping and frisking people, a tactic employed with little oversight from senior commanders and virtually no tracking of its effectiveness, a Sun review has found. Department officials credit the strategy with helping to reduce homicides and violent crime in areas where people often ask for more police. But residents being targeted say they are unjustly harassed and detained.