Baltimore has thousands of outstanding open warrants, police revealed Thursday in testimony before the City Council ? including hundreds of warrants for rape, assault and robbery.
The testimony came as the council grappled with how to hire more police officers, including a proposal to add more state police to the Warrant Apprehension Task Force, the unit charged with pursuing outstanding warrants. Lt Col. Steve McMahon said the task force would welcome additions to the four state police officers already detailed to his unit.
“The more the merrier,” he said.
But McMahon also said the 79 officers working under him were staying ahead of the most violent criminals.
Still, McMahon told the council, there was a backlog of roughly 53,000 open city warrants, which his unit was working to track down.
“Would you need 250 to 300 officers to close all of those?” asked Councilman James Kraft, District 1.
“Yes,” McMahon answered.
However, the Baltimore City State?s Attorney Office questioned the figures.
“Fifty thousand is vastly overstated; there was an audit conducted by the [city] Sheriff?s Office in which thousands were found to be old, with outdated information,” said Margaret Burns, spokesman for city?s top prosecutor, Patricia Jessamy.
Figures forthe number of warrants by crime obtained by The Examiner show roughly 21,000 open warrants.
And while the Judiciary Committee voted to send the resolution calling for more state police to assist the warrant task force to the full council for a vote, the proposal to raid the city?s rainy day fund to bolster recruitment of new officers was called into question.
“I think we need to focus more on retaining officers we have now than recruitment,” said City Council Vice President Robert Curran, District 3.
Administration officials cited 60 percent more officers hired this year than in 2003 as a sign that recruiting efforts were succeeding.
“We hired 256 new officers in 2007,” said Sheryl Goldstein, director of the Mayor?s Office of Criminal Justice.
Debate on how to retain officers focused on raising pay to achieve parity with other jurisdictions.
“Most officers say that money is their primary concern,” Goldstein said.
City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said her concerns about the police department were not limited solely to adding officers.
“Allocation is an issue,” she said. “Some of the officers in specialized units are reluctant to change back to patrol, but we need to move more officers into patrol.”
Vacancies
Officer vacancies in Baltimore Police Department
2003: 66
2004: 140
2005: 189
2006: 203
2007: 158
Souce: Baltimore Police Department
Open warrants for Baltimore City
53,838 open warrants total as of Thursday
Crime: Open Warrants
Murder: 2
Shooting: 12
Attempted murder: 48
Rape: 71
Sex offense: 126
Robbery: 234
Assault: 5,799
Burglary: 1,053
Failure to appear: 13,697
Violation of probation 806
Total: 21,983
Source: Baltimore Police Department
