Police Station

If Robert Sisselberger quit his job at the Eastern District police station, he'd take the fun with him."We wouldn't have anyone to play peek-a-boo with," said Vanessa Turner, a custodian at the station. She supervises Mr. Sisselberger when he comes in three times a week.The 25-year-old Pasadena resident has been volunteering at the station since 1992, cleaning the community room, sweeping the halls and front stairs, bringing a smile to everyone as he dances and sings with his broom, plays peek-a-boo behind corners.

Three people who went to the Western District police station to protest the misdemeanor arrest of a relative found themselves facing more serious charges after allegedly getting into a fight with a policeman, authorities reported.The officer, Steven Sturm, 28, was struck in the head with his own flashlight and later received five stitches at University Hospital. The three stationhouse visitors were charged with assault with intent to murder.Police said that after the three arrived about 9:50 p.m. Saturday to protest the arrest of the relative on a charge of failing to obey a lawful order of an officer, they became argumentative and were asked to leave.

You'd think the uninvited houseguests -- the homeless, the prostitutes and young graffiti artists -- owned the Northern District Police station's waiting area by the way they walk in and flop on the sofa to catch a breather or commit a bit of vandalism.The police can't see them because of the bulletproof glass installed last summer to protect the officers from attack. A brick wall, built last summer, also blocks officers' view of the parking lot.To fix that problem, north county residents and businesses are buying observation cameras and monitors for the parking lot, lobby and waiting area.

THIS FALL continues to lead me around the city to some marvelous buildings where, in the course of the tour, I migrate to the windows and get a new perspective on our old, ever-rebuilding city. On a windy afternoon this week, I found myself under the roof of the old Southern District Police Station, Ostend and Patapsco streets. I was gazing out at some first-class 1896 rounded casements and taking in the steeples of the Holy Cross and St. Mary's Star of the Sea churches, along with a lot of South Baltimore roof asphalt.

When Baltimore County's Spanish Colonial Revival-style police station opened in Towson in 1926, some 75,000 people inhabited the 656-square-mile jurisdiction.With the population edging over 700,000, officials have conceived a plan -- the second since 1979 -- to replace that building.Veteran police officers like Sgt. J. T. Gribbin, who started his career as a cadet at the Towson station in 1976, aren't holding their breath until a new building opens. They stoically endure things like peeling plaster, a boiler with a mind of its own, a leaking roof, dial telephones and a floor plan akin to a rabbit warren.

Mary Pat Clarke, the City Council president and mayoral candidate, made a late-night visit more than a week ago to a police station on behalf of an arrested constituent, a trip the mayor has termed "improper and unethical."Police commanders privately complained that her visit to the Central District pressured officers to speed up the booking process for the 25-year-old woman charged with assault."Apparently she was trying to make some points for herself with a constituent," one commander said.

For the second straight day, protesters gathered outside the Western District police station and demanded the department suspend the officers involved in arresting a man who was later found dead in the back of a police wagon."

Harry S. "Frankie" Reynolds spent nearly four decades rubbing elbows with Baltimore's finest -- as well as Baltimore's worst. He saw more sides of the city from his boxy, windowless "office" than most people could ever hope to see from the top of the Bromo Seltzer Tower.Mr. Reynolds operated the Prisoner's Elevator at the city's old Central District police station on Fallsway, then moved across the street to a new building, working 37 years before retiring in 1984.He was known for fooling police officers into snapping to attention for him and for laughing at practical jokes played on him or by him. More than anything, though, Mr. Reynolds was known at the Police Department for his singing.

Not so long ago, 3355 Keswick Road was the place where miscreants were locked up in the "dungeons" -- an array of closet-sized basement cells with small squares cut in the doors for breathing. As much a part of the community as the patrol officers who walked their beats, the Northern District police station has loomed over Hampden for a little more than a century as a study in Victorian turrets and green copper. Local lore even has it -- albeit incorrectly -- that Edgar Allan Poe once slept off a drunken stupor behind bars there.

Despite fleeing to a Howard County police station to avoid a fight, a 25-year-old Clarksville man got punched right outside the station, police said.About 10: 30 p.m. Monday, two men got into an altercation at the Cherry Tree Shopping Center in Scaggsville, said police spokesman Sgt. Morris Carroll.One of the men hopped into a car, driven by someone else, and sped next door to the Southern District police station, followed by the second man, Carroll said.After both cars pulled onto the lot, one of the men punched the other through his open window, Carroll said.