Enforcement Agencies

Suspects arrested for violent crimes or burglaries will again have to submit to DNA collections, officials with several Maryland law enforcement agencies said Thursday. A day after U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. authorized the practice to resume, at least temporarily, a number of police departments said they had decided to collect samples as they await further word from the high court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has asked the Supreme Court to decide whether collecting the genetic information before a person is convicted violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Anne Arundel County police filled their void at the police chief position after just a few weeks. Baltimore should name the successor to Frederick H. Bealefeld within the new few weeks, if not days.  But for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police Department, their void at the top continues a year after Marcus Brown left to take control of the state police force. The lingering vacancy has raised questions over whether officials are contemplating a merger of the agency and other state law enforcement agencies into the state police.  State officials confirm that such a move is being contemplated, but said it has no bearing on the lack of movement on naming a permanent chief for the MdTA police.

The Baltimore Sun's Gus Sentementes reports today on a Highlandtown company building a possible replacement rifle for the M4. The new gun could be used by the Army, as well as by municipal police in Baltimore . While most Baltimore police officers carry .40 Caliber Glock pistols, tactical officers have higher-firepower at their disposal. Gus' story on Adcor, a machine shop best known for bottling equipment, has come up with what is described as a "powerful and durable automatic rifle" that doesn't easily jam. Gus writes: Even if the Army decides to stick with the M4, [Adcor owner Jimmy]

Suspects arrested for violent crimes or burglaries will again have to submit to DNA collections, officials with several Maryland law enforcement agencies said Thursday. A day after U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. authorized the practice to resume, at least temporarily, a number of police departments said they had decided to collect samples as they await further word from the high court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has asked the Supreme Court to decide whether collecting the genetic information before a person is convicted violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Two law enforcement agencies became a little richer yesterday.U.S. Marshal George K. McKinney presented the Maryland State Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration with a check for $254,163.96. The money represents the proceeds from several drug investigations carried out in the state last year.Under forfeiture laws, prosecutors can seize cash, cars, boats, houses and other items used in the course of drug trafficking operations. The goods are sold and the proceeds distributed to law enforcement agencies in the region.

Police departments in Aberdeen and Bel Air will be hiring an additional officer each for community patrol with federal grants announced last week by Democratic U.S. Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes.The grants are available through the COPS FAST program, authorized by the $8.8 billion federal crime bill recently passed by Congress.The program will add 59 new officers throughout the state, the senators said in a statement released from Ms. Mikulski's headquarters.Aberdeen police will receive about $50,500 and the Bel Air department about $70,000.

A team of assessors from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. will visit the Howard County Police Department this month to examine its policies, procedures, management, operations and support services. Members of the community are invited to offer comments at a public information session to be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Ellicott Room of the George Howard Building, 3430 Court House Drive, Ellicott City. The assessment team is made up of members of law enforcement agencies in other states.

Sheriff's Office recognized by national commission The Carroll County Sheriff's Office has received a national award for meeting nearly 100 standards related to life, health and safety issues as well as legal and liability requirements. The award by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc. was presented yesterday to Carroll County Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning. The national organization's "recognition status" is needed before law enforcement agencies can seek accreditation.

Municipal police officers may go outside town limits when backing up other law enforcement agencies on nonemergency calls -- if the municipal governments authorize such a mutual aid policy, the state attorney general's office said.Betty Stemley Sconion, an assistant attorney general who is the principal counsel to the Maryland State Police, said state law clearly permits mutual aid between police agencies in nonemergency situations -- even under oral agreements like those between some Carroll towns and neighboring law enforcement agencies.

WASHINGTON -- The White House is pressing for legislation to force telephone and cable television companies to install computer software on their networks that would enable law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on phone calls and computer transmissions, Clinton administration officials said yesterday.The move, intended to preserve the law enforcement agencies' ability to conduct court-authorized wiretaps, is intended to overcome the difficulty of intercepting telephone conversations and other electronic transmissions in the on-off pulses of digital computer code, which is being used increasingly for everyday communications.

The Baltimore Sun's Gus Sentementes reports today on a Highlandtown company building a possible replacement rifle for the M4. The new gun could be used by the Army, as well as by municipal police in Baltimore . While most Baltimore police officers carry .40 Caliber Glock pistols, tactical officers have higher-firepower at their disposal. Gus' story on Adcor, a machine shop best known for bottling equipment, has come up with what is described as a "powerful and durable automatic rifle" that doesn't easily jam. Gus writes: Even if the Army decides to stick with the M4, [Adcor owner Jimmy]

After years of discussion, several changes in public policy course and an election cycle where options were hotly debated — the Carroll County Sheriff's Office officially became the principal provider of law enforcement in Carroll on July 1. The move marks a phasing out of the Resident Trooper Program in Carroll, through which Maryland State Police had been the primary law enforcement agency under a contract with the county. In February of this year, a memorandum of understanding formalizing the move was signed between the Sheriff's Office, the Maryland State Police and the county's Office of Public Safety Support Services.  The agreement increases the responsibilities of the Sheriff's Office, establishes a timetable to increase staffing and provides for a transition of duties.

Sgt. Julio Valcarcel wheels his unmarked sport utility vehicle south onto U.S. 1 in Jessup as motorists whiz by in the opposite direction. The Maryland state trooper is not looking to ticket speeders, but rather is on the hunt for stolen cars. And he doesn't have to consult a "hot sheet" to compare license plate numbers, or even remember the make, model and color of vehicles on the stolen-car list. Images of license plates pop onto his laptop computer screen as the cars go by. An alarms sounds when the computer finds a stolen plate or car, or even a revoked or suspended registration, information stored in a database updated daily by the FBI and the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration.

On the streets, where illegal drugs are still easy to get at affordable prices, Maryland police chiefs are losing the decades-long drug war. But many departments have come to depend on drug raids to increase their operating budgets. While the drug trade still enriches the bad guys, police chiefs now also get a piece of the action. Many states, wary of overzealous police departments, require that the proceeds from seized assets be used for education or other non-police purposes. But the 1984 federal Comprehensive Crime Control Act, a turning point in America's war on drugs, is a way to get around these state laws.

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy. These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.

WASHINGTON -- The account, buried in a mountain of documents assembled for a congressional investigation, describes a decidedly local yet brutal crime: a Navajo man charged with beating his girlfriend nearly to death and then hanging her by a rope outside their Arizona trailer home to make the attack look like a suicide attempt. The incident has none of the political intrigue of the other cases, mainly dealing with government corruption or voter fraud, before lawmakers as they examine the circumstances surrounding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

LOS ANGELES -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer released statewide statistics yesterday on 1998 hate crimes before announcing the creation of an advisory commission and a new strategy to combat the problem.Lockyer was flanked by politicians, law enforcement and civil rights leaders as he spoke at a news conference at the city's Museum of Tolerance."Whether hatemongers use gun violence, arson or other illegal means to spread their poison, we in law enforcement and communities throughout California must respond swiftly and make it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated," Lockyer said.

When Khalid Almidhar and Nawaq Alhamzi arrived at Dulles International Airport on Sept. 11 to board American Airlines Flight 77, airline officials were unaware their names were listed on an Immigration and Naturalization Service watch list of people associated with possible terrorist activity. That list, intelligence sources say, wasn't available to the Federal Aviation Administration, which could have given the names to airlines and perhaps prevented the pair from hijacking the plane and crashing it into the Pentagon.

A growing problem for our nation's law enforcement community is the "cop crunch" that is leaving police departments across the country understaffed. The solution to this growing crisis is for Congress to reconstitute the Law Enforcement Education Program to attract qualified men and women to the field. From coast to coast, it is estimated that 80 percent of the nation's 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies have vacancies they cannot fill. The Los Angeles Police Department has more than 700 vacancies, and in March, New York City announced plans to hire 800 more officers.