Baltimore Police Officer Jared Stern hasn?t been on the job that long ? but he knows the community he patrols.
“The other night there were about 18 to 20 kids out in the street playing football,” Stern said as he walks the blocks near Patterson Park on a cold March afternoon. “We kept the traffic out of the street so they could keep playing. We want to show them officers are people they can talk to, people they can get to know.”
Stern is part of a new ? scratch that ? old policing strategy that Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm is bringing back in 2007.
After graduating from the police department?s training academy, new officers now must walk a beat on foot for two months before getting assigned to a district, where officers generally respond to calls by car.
For a city police department that made its reputation in recent years with a New York-style “zero tolerance” approach to fighting crime, the shift toward “community policing” ? a style favored by new Mayor Sheila Dixon ? might strike an observer as an old-fashioned, outdated mode of fighting the 21st century criminal.
But the results speak for themselves.
In the neighborhoods where the new uniformed officers have been deployed to simply walk a beat and get to know the community, there have been no reports of serious violent crime, police say.
That?s zero. As in zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
“There?s been no homicides, no shootings, no robberies, no aggravated assaults,” said Maj. Jesse Oden, who directs the new Community Stabilization Units. “It?s almost mind-boggling how successful it?s been.”
And the violent crime reduction hasn?t come in the affluent parts of Baltimore where one might expect crime to already be low. It?s in the city?s toughest neighborhoods.
“Every area we?re walking is one of the most violent in the city,” said Lt. Charles Carter, who joined Stern as he walked the streets near Patterson Park.
The Community Stabilization Units ? as the police department calls the foot patrols ? has targeted an area of northeastern Baltimore nicknamed CHUM, including Coldspring Lane, and a central Baltimore area, including Pennsylvania Avenue, because of shootings and homicides in those areas.
The program is now expanding toother neighborhoods seeing spikes in violent crime.
The units are made up of about 15 officers who patrol 30 blocks in each area.
“They walk about a block apart from each other,” Oden said. “People in these neighborhoods know there?s always an officer just around the corner.”
The police department also has deployed 20 additional officers from the department?s Public Housing Unit to patrol the Cherry Hill neighborhood at all times.
The impact felt in these traditionally violent neighborhoods has reverberated throughout the city, with violent crime down 19 percent in Baltimore from Jan. 1 to Feb. 10, compared to the same time last year.
Oden and Carter said the training will not only help suppress crime in the areas where the officers patrol, but serves as an invaluable training tool making graduates better police officers in the future.
“Sometimes officers can get tunnel vision, responding from one call to the next in their cars,” Carter said. “We want them to be comfortable interacting with the community.”
Oden agreed.
“It?s a totally different breed of police officers that?s being produced,” he said.
At a recent meeting of the Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Dixon praised the “holistic” approach to crime fighting, and Lt. Col. John Skinner, acting commander of the police department?s patrol division, told council members of the program?s early success.
“It?s a very, very positive community policing model in which they?re interacting with the community,” he said. “They?re visiting the stores. They?re visiting the residents. So far, we?re very pleased with the results.”
Baltimore City Police Lt. Charles Carter Jr. heads up the community stabilization unit. Officers patrol some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods on foot.
Baltimore City Police Lt. Charles Carter Jr. inspects officers before they start their shifts patrolling some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods on foot.
