Patrol Officers

Baltimore police moved Monday to increase foot patrols over the next month and conduct street sweeps of violent fugitives after a weekend that saw six people killed and continued a violent start to 2013. Baltimore has recorded 35 homicides this year, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2012. The spike made for the deadliest January and February in the city in four years. The increase has been particularly alarming to residents of West Baltimore, which has been the scene of 11 killings since Jan. 1. Two men were killed within five blocks of each other there Saturday and Sunday.

A man on a bicycle exchanged gunfire with Baltimore police Tuesday afternoon before barricading himself in a home and surrendering. No one was injured. Police said the exchange occurred about 1 p.m. in the 2500 block of Robb Street, an area that police had saturated with patrol officers because of recurring violence. Officers saw a man on a bike they believed was involved in "some criminal activity" and tried to stop him when he pulled out a gun, Deputy Commissioner John Skinner said.

Some Western District police officers are threatening not to make drug arrests after their commanders, angry about Sunday's triple shooting in Harlem Park, ordered them to stop undercover drug surveillance and spend more time locking up loiterers. About a half-dozen officers said yesterday that Lt. John Mack "chewed out" his patrol units during morning roll call because they failed to prevent a gunman, armed with an AK-47, from shooting three men Sunday morning in the 1100 block of Harlem Ave. in Harlem Park.

During a career spanning four decades, Baltimore police Officer Ron Starr says, he never really considered leaving the department's Southeastern District and moving up the chain of command. "I never wanted to," Starr said, a longtime foot patrol officer. "I'm not knocking what they do, because we need administrators, but when you put three stripes on, you're not out there working with street, and I've had a love affair with the street for 38 years. " Starr, who is single, flashed a silver band with a blue line that he wears on his ring finger.

City police executing a search warrant in a high-crime area of East Baltimore found five illegal handguns and arrested four people, including one who had been charged with illegal handgun possession in January. Acting on a tip obtained by a patrol officer, police raided a home in the 1700 block of E. 25 t h St. at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, where they found the guns along with crack cocaine and $500 cash, a spokesman said. The area, near the border of the Eastern and Northeast police districts, has seen nearly a dozen shootings in recent months, and police said they hope the guns will be linked to some of those cases.

The woman stabbed to death in her Garrison apartment this week was under police watch and had sought a court order for protection against her alleged killer, a former boyfriend who had been threatening her for years, Baltimore County police said Thursday. Katie Hadel, 33, was three months pregnant when she died Tuesday night, her mother said. She was in the apartment with at least two children when police say Jeffrey Matthew Shiflett - a man who had made many violent threats to harm Hadel - arrived at her door.

The Baltimore City Police Department will take another giant step into the computer age next fall with sophisticated equipment that will enable officers to tap into a wide variety of data bases from their patrol cars. The idea is not new; many police departments have had some form of portable computer in their radio cars for years. But these, according to police officials, are supposed to provide more information for officers on the street -- some of which could help save their lives.A $3 million contract has been awarded for the purchase of 160 mobile data work stations, one for each car in the city on regular patrol.

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.

A fight in Essex left two men in hospital with stab wounds, Baltimore County Police said. The men got into an altercation around 1 a.m. in the 1000 block of Foxchase Lane, police said. Their wounds were said to be not life threatening. Patrol officers are investigating the incident and no further information was immediately available. iduncan@baltsun.com twitter.com/iduncan

A team of officers from five county police units swept through three Severn neighborhoods Wednesday and arrested three men and a woman.The goal was to increase the presence of police and crack down on illegal activity in Pioneer City, Stillmeadow and Meade Village.Patrol officers teamed with officers from four specialty units for the effort, which began about 7 p.m.The first arrest came when an officer stopped Melissa Goliday, 23, of the 1700 block of Richfield Drive, checked her license, found she was wanted in Annapolis on a battery charge and arrested her.About 8: 30 p.m., patrol officers tried to stop a reportedly stolen car in Meade Village, but the driver sped off and crashed into a car in the 1700 block of Meade Village Circle, police said.

The shooting of Kendra Diggs and the subsequent barricade by her alleged attacker presented a challenge Tuesday for police and emergency responders. Under the threat of further gunfire from the off-duty Baltimore police officer, officials said, they were unable to render medical aid to the dying woman. "When you have a person who is down … what we're trained on is that you don't jeopardize six or seven police officers in your emotional reaction to save that person," Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said in an interview Wednesday.

Baltimore police moved Monday to increase foot patrols over the next month and conduct street sweeps of violent fugitives after a weekend that saw six people killed and continued a violent start to 2013. Baltimore has recorded 35 homicides this year, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2012. The spike made for the deadliest January and February in the city in four years. The increase has been particularly alarming to residents of West Baltimore, which has been the scene of 11 killings since Jan. 1. Two men were killed within five blocks of each other there Saturday and Sunday.

The woman stabbed to death in her Garrison apartment this week was under police watch and had sought a court order for protection against her alleged killer, a former boyfriend who had been threatening her for years, Baltimore County police said Thursday. Katie Hadel, 33, was three months pregnant when she died Tuesday night, her mother said. She was in the apartment with at least two children when police say Jeffrey Matthew Shiflett - a man who had made many violent threats to harm Hadel - arrived at her door.

A fight in Essex left two men in hospital with stab wounds, Baltimore County Police said. The men got into an altercation around 1 a.m. in the 1000 block of Foxchase Lane, police said. Their wounds were said to be not life threatening. Patrol officers are investigating the incident and no further information was immediately available. iduncan@baltsun.com twitter.com/iduncan

Two Maryland Transportation Authority Police officers were injured while stopped by the side of Interstate 95 in Elkridge on Wednesday night, after their cars were struck by a motorist who has been charged with drunken driving. Sgt. Jonathan Green, a police spokesman, said an officer responded after a license plate reader at the southbound Fort McHenry Tunnel put out a stolen-vehicle alert for a car with Virginia tags. He said an officer made a traffic stop of a 2007 Ford Taurus near the Route 100 interchange and was soon joined by a corporal.

After gathering information this spring on a series of armed robberies clustered around a few blocks in Southwest Baltimore, police say Det. George Cannida had a hunch where the suspects might strike next.  His intuition apparently paid off: after watching a male rob two men at gunpoint in the 2200 block of W. Mulberry St., Cannida notified patrol officers who chased the suspect to the rear of his home.  Police say the suspect, 16-year-old Corey...

If you speed on Baltimore County roads, your chances of getting a ticket are about to nearly triple. Frustrated by an increase in fatal accidents and complaints from residents' about speeding, Baltimore County Police Chief Terrence B. Sheridan plans to put a radar unit in every police car on patrol. Sheridan said the department will spend $205,000 to buy 137 car-mounted radar units, enabling more officers to look for speeders and write more tickets. The new units will be added to the 52 in use, ensuring that the county's roads will be saturated with the devices.

It was a tough week for Maj. John Dodson and his officers in Baltimore's Eastern District. On Wednesday, two of his patrol officers tried to pull over a woman in a stolen car on East North Avenue. As the police approached her, one officer accidentally shot another officer, who was saved from serious injury by his bullet-resistant vest. Then yesterday, as undercover officers broke up a suspected drug deal and arrested a man, police said another man suddenly appeared and began shooting.

Baltimore's police union is calling for an overhaul of the department, describing the agency's management strategy as "outdated, ineffective and reactive" and proposing changes that it said would boost officer morale and reduce crime across the city. Though the study has been in the works for several months, it comes as the city seeks a replacement for Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who oversaw steep declines in gun crime after taking over in mid-2007. Robert F. Cherry, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the union wants the report to serve as a blueprint for improvements by the department's next management team.

Baltimore Police on Tuesday identified the officer who shot and killed a Baltimore County man last weekend after witnessing an apparent domestic dispute in Northwest Baltimore. Northwest District patrol officer Paul Heffernan, 37, had witnessed Michael Wudtee of Randallstown repeatedly assaulting an his girlfriend, in a gas station lot on Liberty Heights Avenue, police said. Heffernan, a 13 year veteran, has not been involved in any prior police involved shootings. According to a police department statement, officers pulled up next to Wudtee's vehicle and attempted to confront him, when he fled on foot.