Foot Patrol

Talk to residents and business owners alike and they agree they want to see more police officers walking instead of driving. They want a cop they can talk to, a cop they can see, a cop who understands their problems and can tell, street to street, door to door, the good guys from the bad. For the most part, police leaders agree. But sprawling cities, a deluge of emergency calls and strained budgets have turned the old-time walking beat cop into a luxury. Baltimore's police commissioner, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, wants to change all that.

Talk to Baltimore residents, and most say they want more police — and they don't mean speeding by in their cars from one call to the next. They want their neighborhood beat officer back, and they want him walking his post. But under the adage that too much of a good thing isn't always a good thing, some business owners along Greenmount Avenue see a flood of officers as an obstacle to their profits. Their patrons aren't always the type of people to embrace police, and too many officers can translate into fewer customers.

Baltimore police commanders have quietly scaled back a policy that they initiated at the beginning of June to put 85 investigators a day on foot patrol. The policy was announced simultaneously with Mayor Sheila Dixon's crime plan, which stresses improving relations with the community. Police commanders described it as a "shot in the arm" to the department's patrol division. Initially, all detectives were assigned foot patrol duties, but commanders excused all homicide investigators within two weeks of announcing the program, after complaints that it might impair homicide investigations.

Police foot patrols would be very beneficial in improving police-community relations in Baltimore. This is a plea for our incoming mayor, Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, to consider this positive alternative for utilizing those in uniform who patrol our city. Many citizens perceive police men and women in patrol cars as being distant, perhaps even aloof. There is no better way for Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to utilize his officers than to saturate the city neighborhoods with foot patrols.

Alvin H. "Jake the Snake" Johnson, a strong advocate for police officers on foot patrol who was frequently heard on radio talk shows, died Sunday of cancer at his West Baltimore home.Mr. Johnson, 70, who lived in the Coppin Heights community off North Avenue, seemed to never miss an opportunity to quiz politicians about why there weren't more foot patrol officers.In recent years, usually in casual settings, he broached the idea to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Council President Lawrence A. Bell III and police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier.

To keep 50 foot patrol officers on Baltimore's streets without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime, city police officials have ordered administrative staff and plainclothes detectives into uniform and placed them on the neighborhood beats.The decision was an attempt to maintain the patrols -- a favorite of communities, politicians and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke -- in the face of ever-increasing pressures to cut costs and save money, police officials said yesterday.The department spent $525,000 in overtime to staff the foot patrols from July 1, when they began, through the latter part of September, the police said.

The Towson business district will see a marked increase in police officers on foot after a string of armed robberies last week, Baltimore County police said yesterday.Capt. Roger Sheets, commander of the Towson Precinct, also told a group of Towson area community and business leaders yesterday afternoon that preliminary discussions on the creation of a police task force for the York Road corridor are under way.The civic leaders attended a crime forum sponsored by County Executive Roger B. Hayden at the Towson Library.

Edgewood Harford County officials will discuss plans to bring the Guardian Angels, a voluntary foot patrol, to Edgewood at a public meeting tomorrow. For more than a year, the county sheriffs, County Council member Dion F. Guthrie and the Baltimore chapter of the Guardian Angels have sought to bring the group to Edgewood. "We have been studying this and been having numerous meetings over the last year," Guthrie said. It has not been determined where in Edgewood the group will patrol, said Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane.

After a year of increased foot patrols in crime-plagued communities, the Harford County Sheriff's Office is taking its community policing program a step farther to a team concept, authorities said.Last year's goal was to help reduce criminal activity and establish rapport between deputies and residents of communities where crime was on the rise.In Team Community Policing, deputies will expand their efforts and specialize in solving problems specific to a particular community, said Dfc. DeWayne Curry, spokesman for the sheriff's office.

BAGHDAD -- Five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were killed in a suicide bombing while chatting with shopkeepers in central Baghdad yesterday, part of an uptick in high-profile attacks that has rattled the capital after months of diminished violence. At least three more suicide bombings took place across the nation yesterday, including an attack on a hotel in the comparatively peaceful Kurdish north that killed two people and injured 31. Such attacks are a hallmark of Sunni Arab militants loyal to al-Qaida in Iraq, a mostly homegrown insurgent group that U.S. commanders say is led by foreigners.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III is to be applauded for his efforts to make officers more accessible to citizens by taking them out of their cars ("City putting police back on foot patrol," Jan. 7). However, foot patrol is not the only alternative. Police officers on bikes can patrol more territory and respond more quickly than officers on foot. They can also move easily through congested areas and access alleys, parks, trails and other areas off-limits to cars.

Talk to residents and business owners alike and they agree they want to see more police officers walking instead of driving. They want a cop they can talk to, a cop they can see, a cop who understands their problems and can tell, street to street, door to door, the good guys from the bad. For the most part, police leaders agree. But sprawling cities, a deluge of emergency calls and strained budgets have turned the old-time walking beat cop into a luxury. Baltimore's police commissioner, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, wants to change all that.

BAGHDAD -- Five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were killed in a suicide bombing while chatting with shopkeepers in central Baghdad yesterday, part of an uptick in high-profile attacks that has rattled the capital after months of diminished violence. At least three more suicide bombings took place across the nation yesterday, including an attack on a hotel in the comparatively peaceful Kurdish north that killed two people and injured 31. Such attacks are a hallmark of Sunni Arab militants loyal to al-Qaida in Iraq, a mostly homegrown insurgent group that U.S. commanders say is led by foreigners.

Edgewood Harford County officials will discuss plans to bring the Guardian Angels, a voluntary foot patrol, to Edgewood at a public meeting tomorrow. For more than a year, the county sheriffs, County Council member Dion F. Guthrie and the Baltimore chapter of the Guardian Angels have sought to bring the group to Edgewood. "We have been studying this and been having numerous meetings over the last year," Guthrie said. It has not been determined where in Edgewood the group will patrol, said Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane.

After the recent daylight killing of a man unnerved Edgewood, the Harford County sheriff pledged to fight crime by putting deputies on foot patrol, instituting a zero-tolerance policy toward lawbreakers and exploring the use of surveillance cameras in the troubled areas. In a community meeting last night at the Boys and Girls Club in Edgewood, Sheriff L. Jesse Bane told a crowd of nearly 100 to improve their neighborhoods and to report crime. "We understand there's fear in the community," he said.

Teon Jefferson, 8, stood on his West Fairmount Avenue porch in the late-afternoon summer swelter. Deborah A. Owens, one of Baltimore's deputy police commissioners, walked over and noticed gang signals flashing from his small hands. "Police!" he cried as she approached in uniform. Owens picked up a football lying in the yard and tossed it to the boy. "Go long!" After a few passes and an unsuccessful attempt to rush the officer, Owens moved on, leaving the boy and his family laughing. "If I spend 10 minutes tossing a ball with that kid every day, maybe he'll grow up to trust us," Owens said as she walked away.

Two men who were shot Tuesday in a Little Italy rowhouse might have been the victims of a botched robbery, police say. Joseph Augustus Harrison Jr., 27, was fatally wounded in the shooting, which occurred about 3:30 p.m. in the 900 block of Eastern Ave. The other victim, Richard Featherstone, 18, was shot in the right leg and was hospitalized last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Both victims were found in Harrison's third-floor bedroom. Harrison, a Polytechnic Institute graduate, had lived in the rowhouse for four years and occasionally worked construction jobs, said city homicide Detective Chris Beiling.