From the Avoiding the Obvious Department: Maryland Police Face Officer Shortages

(via The Baltimore Sun) Police recruiters across the State (as well as across the nation) are facing officer shortages.

Faced with an officer shortage that is only expected to get worse, police agencies in the Baltimore area and across the country are getting creative. They say they don't have a choice: It's becoming increasingly difficult to find the kid who is educated, hasn't used drugs heavily and would rather work for the local sheriff than the federal government.

"I'd say it's very intense," Tracey Martinelli, a recruiter at the Harford sheriff's office, said of the competition among agencies for new officers. "Applicants are applying to multiple agencies now. Everybody's competing for that same small group of applicants. Just about every agency is struggling."

...

Officials say the problem is not finding applicants, but finding enough people who meet basic qualifications.

Many applicants pass written and physical tests but drop out of contention because of prior drug use, authorities say. Some departments routinely turn away more than half of applicants because of previous drug use, officials say.

"Nowadays, young people are experimenting with drugs at a younger age - ecstasy, marijuana," said Officer Angela Avent, a recruiter with Baltimore County police.

Some departments have relaxed standards for prior drug use to expand the pool of applicants. In Maryland, the panel that sets statewide hiring standards decided in 2003 to permit applicants who have experimented with cocaine and to loosen standards on prior marijuana use. The panel has considered other proposals to further modify the standards.

Sacramento Police Capt. Kevin Johnson, who lectures nationally on recruiting techniques, said departments should consider loosening drug standards. His recently decided to eliminate any disqualifying factors, and now it takes a "whole person" approach in a deciding whether someone should be hired.

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Howard County, seeking to add 20 officers to its 390-officer force, recently started running radio and television ads for the first time. The department's two full-time recruiters have given presentations to criminal justice college students in Waynesboro, Pa., and New York City.

Last year, the department bought a Chevy Tahoe, its windows emblazoned with pictures of officers in tactical unit gear and dramatic poses along with the motto, "Who do you want to be?" A recruiter drives around in the car full time and frequently puts it on display inside Arundel Mills Mall.

...

So, nearly 50% of the applicants in some cases are being turned away for previous drug use. Insanity. The potency of our drug laws are laughable when half of the people signing up to enforce them are also breaking them.

Of course, the article avoids the obvious. No one wants to be a cop anymore, why should they? In many areas of the country, community policing has gone away, along with the communities themselves. Baltimore claims to be returning to that style, but good luck while the drug war still rages in our neighborhoods. The drug war has ushered in a realm where body armor and swat team equipment is the new selling point of police departments. The narrative of the honest neighborhood cop who walked the same beat every day, knew the names of the kids who played in the street, and told the local drunk to "move along" instead of slapping him in cuffs to get another "loitering in a targeted enforcement zone" stat to add the books, is a far off dream.

When the police return to enforcing laws that truly keep us safe, I expect the recruitment problem will be lessened. Until then, we are asking these men and women to fight a losing battle against their fellow citizens for a low salary. Somehow I think letting them take the cruiser home for the weekend just isn't enough.

Baltimore has a Gang Problem (From the Avoiding the Obvious Department)

The Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee has released a report saying that Baltimore has a gang problem:

Baltimore has about 2,600 known gang members and 170 criminal street gangs, according to a new report from the Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee.

Is this supposed to be surprising? The report states some very obvious things, such as:

“The same areas that have clusters of gang members are the same areas that have clusters of shootings and homicides,” said James Green, the Baltimore Police Department’s director of special projects.

Now that is good police work. This is on par with findings earlier this year that assert without a shadow of a doubt that areas which have clusters of traffic (often known as "steets" or "roads" to the layman) are the same areas where police have been seeing clusters of automobile accidents, speeding citations, and drunk driving arrests.

The solutions the report proposes are also not surprising.

To combat the problem, the plan calls for increased opportunities and social interventions for youth; increased penalties for gang members who possess and use firearms; standardized reporting of gang members across area police and sheriff departments; better relations between the police and the community; and improved re-entry services for incarcerated people, among other initiatives.

Arianne Spaccarelli, a member of the plan’s steering committee and a policy analyst for the Baltimore City Health Department, said officials are going to be stressing “disciplinarian life skills” to potential gang members.

That sounds good if you assume that these gangs have nothing to do with the illegal drug trade, which is, in my humble opinion, an insane assumption. However, that is the exact assumption the report appears to make.

The only person who seems to take issue with the report is clerk of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, Frank Conaway.

“I don’t know if it’s as serious as they say it is,” said Frank Conaway, clerk of the Baltimore City Circuit Court. “I’m out on the streets all the time, morning to night, and I just don’t see it.”

Conaway said he also took issue with the report’s findings that 94.2 percent of known gang members are black.

“It’s almost unbelievable,” he said. “There are no other gangs in the city other than African-Americans? How do you really know who’s a member in a gang, anyway? Who’s going to get arrested and say, ‘Well, I belong to a gang?’ ”

Thats not the problem though Frank. The problem is that this report on its own is meaningless because it doesn't address the root of gang activity and violence in the city, the illegal drug trade and the cycle of urban poverty that makes the drug trade so alluring to the forgotten youth of Baltimore.

So they can start as many programs as they like to teach gang members "social skills" (whatever that is supposed to mean) and they won't make a lick of difference. Dramatic changes will come when the city of Baltimore is willing to find creative solutions to policing the illegal drug trade and is willing to invest real dollars and time into ending the cycle of urban poverty here.

For a look at one idea aimed at ending that cycle, check this out.