Around midnight, a teenager was walking down a West Baltimore street ? when she was grabbed from behind.
After robbing the 19-year-old and forcing her into a dark parking lot, the attacker held a knife to her face.
“You can do this the hard way or the easy way,” he said.
But just then, Baltimore Police Officer Latora Craig burst onto the scene. The June 14 attack had been filmed by the department?s pole cameras.
The attacker, Bernard Ramseur, 17, saw the officer and ran. He was apprehended nearby in the 400 block of Druid Hill Avenue, where officers found the woman?s cell phone in his pants pocket.
On Wednesday, Ramseur pleaded guilty to armed robbery and third-degree sex offense charges and was sentenced to five years in prison at a hearing in Baltimore City Circuit Court.
The police department?s pole cameras have been an issue of debate in Baltimore, with the Baltimore City State?s Attorney?s Office at times questioning their effectiveness.
In January, prosecutors released a year?s worth of data from their pole-camera prosecutions showing the large majority of incidents caught by the cameras are drug crimes, not violent felonies, and that arrests generated by the cameras were less likely to result in charges than normal police arrests.
According to the one-year study, the cameras caught 609 drug offenses, 24 incidents of trespassing, 21 incidents of illegal cigarettes, 16 assaults, 12 thefts, seven weapons violations, five incidents each for robbery and burglary and three littering incidents. There was one attempted murder, which prosecutors placed on an inactive court docket.
But prosecutors have since praised the cameras after they helped gain a murder conviction in March.
The cameras cost $10 million to install, with $3 million coming from the police department?s general fund and $7 million from federal homeland security funds and seized money from drug dealers, according to police.
