Bad Person. Bad Judge.

Too many people refuse to believe that there are some truly bad people out there. Some people are just bad. Police know this. Judges don't.

Is it unfair to throw someone in prison for a long time for a technical violation of parole? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the person.

Just because you can't convict a person doesn't mean he's not guilty. That's when using probation and parole violations become so important.

There's an attempt in Baltimore to crack down on 960 of the most violent people in Baltimore. This is exactly the kind of plan that has worked with great success in other cities to dramatically reduce violence (google: "Boston Miracle). There's a story in today's Baltimore Sun about a bad man, Jerrod Rowlett.

On one hand (the wrong hand) you could see this man as a victim now being locked up for a crime he wasn't convicted of. On the other hand, the correct hand, this is a bad and violent man who can't be convicted because his victims are too terrified to testify about his violent and drug-dealing ways. It's bad that Rowlett shot anybody. But his last shooting is a preventable shame that should (but probably doesn't) rest on the conscience of Judge Stewart's.

Jerrod Rowlett... racked up a dozen criminal charges at a young age and earned such a street reputation that Bealefeld [the police commissioner] knows him by name.
...
Rowlett's first arrest came when he was 16 and accused of first-degree murder, but he was found not guilty. The next year he was convicted of carrying a handgun, but the five-year sentence was suspended. He was found guilty of assault in 2005 and got another five-year suspended sentence.

In April 2006 city police raided a drug corner and charged him with dealing heroin. He made bail, and the following January a witness said Rowlett shot another man
...
Rowlett pleaded guilty in both cases.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Lynn Stewart signed off on a plea deal that suspended the 15-year prison term, allowing him to walk away with only the time he had served while waiting for the deal, and five years' probation. This earned him a place on the state's year-old worst-offenders list.

The judge in Rowlett's case, who had agreed to the plea agreement, had stern words at his August hearing. "The court will work with you," Stewart told him. "But make no doubt about it, sir. If you violate the probation, you're going to be gone for a long time. Do you understand?"

Looking down, he mumbled "Yes."

In April, police arrested Rowlett again on a gun charge, and probation agents jumped at the chance to send him to prison. Prosecutors dropped the charges when the victim, a family member, recanted the story, but the probation agents still sought a violation.

Since Rowlett was in the target program, a state probation agent asked Stewart to imprison him anyway by issuing a "no bail" warrant, saying Rowlett failed to tell his agent about the arrest. Stewart declined to issue the warrant on May 7.

Twenty days later, Rowlett became a suspect in a midday shooting in Northeast Baltimore. He's now charged with attempted first-degree murder for the fourth time in his life, and he is off the streets - being held without bail until his trial.

May he stay off the streets. This is one guy I'm willing to pay for to keep locked up and far away from me.

Carmelo Anthony in the New York Times

I'm not a fan of basketball. But I am a little interested in Carmelo Anthony. The only reason I know him is that he (unwittingly) appeared in the Stop Fucking Snitching DVD that got him and the DVD a lot of press. Bad press for him. Any press was good for the home-produced DVD.

I felt sorry for the guy who was somehow blamed for the whole Stop Snitching philosophy simply for going back to his hometown of Baltimore and not freaking out when someone recorded him with a camcorder (he doesn't say much in the DVD other than a little against the last Olympic basketball coach).

Now he has an Olympic basketball diary in the New York Times. His writing ain't too deep. But still, he is in the Times. At least online.

Details on the drug corner

My friend emailed me this:

I think we were able to pull that surveillance off not only because it was quiet from the rain but also because it was 1 month and 3 days after 9/11. We were rolling 3 - 4 deep and had every spare car on the road.

Drug corner in action

Here’s a nice action video of a drug corner shot by a police officer friend of mine back in October 2001.

Basically this corner is a three-man (or boy) shop. The guy in the green shirt is the money man and the biggest man of this not-so-impressive. The kid in the white t-shirt (let’s call him “Little Man”) is kind of a go-between man and utility boy. An apprentice. A thug in the making. By the way, I’m guessing he’s about 13. I’m also guessing that if you had to live in what probably passes as his “home,” you might be on the corner, too.

The third guy (white do-rag ) may be around the corner hitting people off or may be out and about, drumming up business. He's not around in the beginning and appears to not be in cuffs at the end.

The drug stash is in the rubble by the steps.

I describe an efficient drug shop in a lot more detail in my book, Cop in the Hood. Here, I'm not impressed. Things are sloppy. They’re all doing a little of everything. Too often the drugs and money are too often in the same hands. It takes way too long to complete the drug deal with white girl. And I think Mr. Green Shirt is drinking on the job. Plus they get arrested.

It is good police work. Usually patrol doesn’t have the time to this kind of surveillance. Maybe the rain kept the radio quiet.

3 min., 15 sec. No audio.

Here’s a timeline:
6:35:00 Kids standing in the rain.
6:35:18 White addict comes up. Just strolling through the hood in the rain, minding her own business. How did I know she’s addict? Sometimes being a cop is very easy.
6:35:45 Reach in stash.
6:36:47 Go around corner to hit off.
6:37:31 Reach in stash again, pass to young kid.
6:37:50 Positively skips with delight because he’s about to make four sales!
6:37:55 Cluster fuck of junkies on corner. Crowd control skills come into play.
6:38:12 What the hell is that guy carrying?
6:38:45 Junkies heading back after hit off.
6:39:30 Counting money.
6:41:45 Running away. Po-po must be near. (Is that a bottle or the stash in his hand? I think a bottle).
6:42:47 Back at stash. He thinks he's safe.
6:44:29 Two of the three in cuffs.
6:45:45 Police officer recovers stash.

If you have police video I can have, let me know. Especially if you’re police. I promise to keep you anonymous and edit out anything that needs to be edited out.

KGA Radio is on the Air

This video isn’t exactly action packed. In fact, nothing happens. Really. It’s just a one minute drive through the streets of East Baltimore. But that’s one minute more than you’ve probably seen. And notice the sleepy-voiced dispatcher over the police radio. If he didn’t sound sleepy, It would get your attention. He was skilled. The last thing you want as a cop is a dispatcher who can’t handle the pressure. When things are going crazy, you want confidence that the dispatcher at least has things under control. This guy was always on the ball. Plus I loved his smooth DJ voice.

A bad dispatcher is dangerous. And even if nobody gets hurt, a bad dispatcher just makes work unpleasant. Dispatching is not an easy skill. And they don’t get paid much. So quality is too often low. This dispatcher was the best. From police headquarters downtown, if need be he could direct you in or of Iron Alley. He knew the streets of East Baltimore. That's a safety thing. Too bad he didn’t work midnights.

State raids mayor's home

Is Baltimore's Mayor Sheila Dixon a crook? I guess we'll find out.

Please note that in this case, Officer Pete's Fourth Rule (below) does not apply.

Don't eat the paint

Why is there so much violence in Baltimore? Maybe it's the lead. Or you could say, "It's the lead, stupid!" There's a lot of lead paint in Baltimore, especially in poor neighborhoods.

Greg Toppo reports in USA Today.

In the academy, a friend and I used to joke that one of our dim classmates had licked the windowsill one too many times. Maybe he had.

No Parking = No Drugs?

In a comment, Timothy turned me on to an article by Liz Kay in the Sun, "No parking, Less Drugs." Leaving aside the grammatical question (it should be "fewer drugs," right?), what about the concept? They banned parking on part of the business strip of Pennsylvania Avenue to get rid of drug dealers. Apparently, it has gotten a little better. It's also hurt business.

[Sun photo by Andrew F. Chung]

My first thought is that it's a dumb idea. As Mr. Sussman, pawnshop owner and president of the Merchants' Association, is quoted as saying, "Sometimes there's a worry that you can cure the disease and kill the patient."

And I also don't like a vision that prefers empty streets to streets crowded with non-criminals. That's very anti Jane Jacobs.

That being said, there are many things in favor of this idea.

1) It is an idea. Maybe it'll work. Maybe not. But I'm all for trying it.

2) The problem of public drug markets is big. Desperate times often do require desperate actions.

3) Apparently the business owners support it. As long as the businesses support it, I will, too. In a business strip, the business owners should have a big say. Besides, probably the main people inconvenienced by this are the business owners themselves who park in front of their store and feed the meter all day. I wonder how many of these spaces were open to the public, anyway.

4) The greater impact seems to result from increased police presence rather than the removal of parking space.

Is it a long-term solution? Of course not. But I guess it's worth a try. There are lots of places you can deal drugs in Baltimore. It would be nice if Pennsylvania Avenue weren't one of them.

From the article:

Deidre Danois said she and a friend had to park across the street recently when they stopped on Pennsylvania Avenue to grab some breakfast.

"I bet you police don't go up to Roland Park and tell them they can't park on their street," Danois said as she shopped at Sweet Sixteen.

That's right, hon. Because they're not dealing drugs in front of stores in Roland Park. She reminds me of one time when I was in the 7-11 at 2300 Orleans St (which is actually the Southeast but we would go there because it was next to 24 post and hell, we didn't have a 7-11 in the Eastern). I liked this 7-11 because of Lorraine, one of the employees. Sometimes we would swap our respective soul foods. She'd bring me homemade collards and I'd give her just baked spanakopita. Lorraine quit when she won the lottery and got engaged to a nice Indian man. That's two separate events. I didn't want her to quit. But hell, could you blame her? Who works midnights in that 7-11 by choice?

Anyway, this 7-11 could get pretty wild. One night they were out of chili and cheese and posted a sign by the hot dogs saying so. There were a bunch of yo-boys acting up, ordered hot dogs, and hadn’t seen the sign. They were upset that they couldn’t top off their “dugs.” Between curses, one guy shouts, “I bet the white man’s 7-11 has chili!”

Sure thing, dog, and an open bar, too.

Overdose deaths

In 2007, 235 Baltimore residents overdosed. The story in the Sun is here.

Interestingly (and surprisingly), 74 of those were from methadone. I don't quite understand the point of methadone. If it's addictive and you can die from it, why not just give junkies heroin?

Getting away with murder in B'more

The Baltimore City Paper tells the story. Well, one guy did get 5 years.

Here's their first story.

Here's the concept:

The Murder Ink column in the print edition of City Paper tracks homicides in Baltimore, giving details on each murder in the city. But what becomes of those homicide cases after we've reported the murder? Recently, we started looking at old cases to see whether those arrested for murders were ever convicted of the crimes they were accused of committing. For most murder cases, that information is not reported in the press. So, starting with this post, we'll follow up on old homicide cases, beginning with murders in 2006, to see what happened.

Man bites dog?

One of the stranger headlines appears in today's Sun: City infant was not hit by bullet, police say.

Community Policing query

Dear Prof. Moskos

First off, let me say that I enjoyed your book. As someone who has recently moved to Baltimore and now finds themselves living on the edge of the Eastern I found it a fascinating read. Your discussion of 911 helped to explain the very big difference in reaction between the community meetings.

Commanders (not a direct quote) "We won't know something is happening unless you call 911 and tell us. We can't do anything about it if you don't tell us."—911 operators "You've got transvestite hookers working in the park across the street? We can't do anything about it unless you call when one of them is getting into a car."

Even without my new context, "Cop in the Hood" would have been an interesting book. I appreciate how you are able to speak with two voices; both the police and the sociologist.

That out of the way, I have a question I would appreciate your opinion on: are citizen's patrols actually effective? I've made some minor forays into the literature and searched for opinions. Although community policing generally seems to have a positive effect in some studies, I can't find anything pointing to which aspect(s) is effective.

At a gut level I have a cynical reaction to the overall effect of having a random group of neighbors walking around the area in green vests and waving the occasional flashlight at a dark corner. Keep in mind that I live in Greenmount West straddling the border between the Eastern and Central, so we have to communicate with 2 separate districts. This seems to reduce the level of direct contact with anyone who we have direct contact with.

I'm very interested in your viewpoint...

I answer:

Living between two police districts really does make things worse. And having to deal with a different set of officers on two different blocks is a pain. There is a natural tendency for police officers to push problems (such as prostitution) "away." I certainly pushed some people away from the Eastern and back into the Southeast. Counterproductive, when you consider I lived in the Southeast.

Community policing, by and large, doesn't exist and never has. It was supposed to mark a move away from reactive policing. But despite lip service to the contrary (I mean, nobody will ever come out against community policing), I don't think any police department has every implemented a real long-term community policing program. Quite simply, you can't have community policing if patrol officers are sitting in cars waiting for radio calls.

About citizen patrols… I don't know. My thought is that they can be effective (both directly and indirectly). It really is community policing. That's good, right? But for all the effort put in, the gain is probably very very small.

I'm a big fan of the Guardian Angels, for instance. But that's more from the perspective of being a young guy very happy to see them on the Chicago L than from any actually academic proof that they prevent crime. Buy my guess is that they do help prevent crime from a Broken Windows perspective. And even if the Guardian Angels (or other citizen groups) don't prevent crime, at least they made me feel safer. That's worth something.

District Commanders in Baltimore tended not to be the most enlightened bunch. (At least from my experience back in 2000. I'm sure they're all much better now.) Getting police to move away from rapid response and toward foot patrol in not in their genetic DNA. They're right that they won't know until you call 911. So the question they and you should be asking them is why don't they know and what can they do to know better.

And that 911 operator is an idiot. Just call for disorderly then, to get police to respond. But even better would be to talk to your post officer (on any of the three shifts, but the midnight is probably the best because we had more time) and talk to him or her about ways to solve the problem. As a police officer, I would much prefer to help a real person than just respond to another anonymous 911 call for prostitution. What the cops can do is arrest. And some arresting is probably part of the solution here. But probably just one piece of the solution.

Interestingly, there weren't many street-walking prostitutes in the Eastern when I was there. My guess is it was too dangerous for prostitutes and Johns alike.

You can ask my man right here with the broken neck

911 is a joke. We should all know that by now. If patrol officers didn’t have to always be ready to answer the next bullshit call, they could do a lot more to prevent crime. I’ve written about this.

I’ve always argued that while rapid response doesn’t make sense for police, it does for ambos and fire trucks. David Kohn writes in the Baltimore Sun that there are problems with repeat 911 for ambulances as well. One person called for an ambo every third day:

Baltimore's busy public ambulance service went out on more than 150,000 calls last year, responding to everything from car accidents to heart attacks. About 2,000 of those calls were from the same 91 people.
…
"We want to get these people better healthcare so they don't call 911 so much," said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Baltimore's commissioner of health.

I’d like to give people better police service so they don’t call 911 so much.

One woman in my sector called police at least 600 times a year. She’d call a couple times a day starting around 5am when she got up to sweep the street. She called for drug dealing. She was right. There was drug dealing. It’s just too bad we couldn’t really do anything about it. Not with her calling 911 so much.

Can you get away with murder?

Most of the time.

The City Paper is starting to look into homicides to see what actually happens in the Hall of Justice. Sometimes somebody gets put away. Most of the times, not.

I was turned onto this by the unfortunately fascinating Baltimore Crime Blog.

That's where the money is

A 10AM robbery of an armored truck pulled up at Lexington Market is bold, to say the least. Here's the Sun's account. Makes me think of the line from the Godfather, at least as I remember it: "Forget the gun, grab the crabcake!"

I am enjoying your book

This came to me today:

I came across your book at baltimorecrime.blogspot.com, so far I am 50 pages in to it and I have to say that you have an excellent way of speaking the truth. I am a Baltimore police officer [...] and I have a B.S. in Criminal Justice from [...] (I am debating whether or not to attend Grad School). Thus far, from both my personal experience and academic background everything that you have written seems to be spot on. As I get further into the book, I will keep you posted.

If you are planning on lecturing anywhere in the greater Baltimore-Philly-D.C. area please let me know, I would like to attend.

I'm sure at some point I'll be speaking in Baltimore. No plans yet, though. I'll keep you posted.

The Great(,) Humiliation Column

I got a call from Laura Vozzella of the Baltimore Sun the other day.

I thought maybe she was a reviewer asking about a press release from Princeton Press telling reviewers to hold off until the new edition is out.

But I got worried when I started talking about the errors and heard the tapity-tap-type of note taking in the background.

It's certainly not like the Sun has been particularly good to me. Yes, they've published two op-eds of mine. But since then, I've been misquoted in the Sun. They hadn't (yet) mentioned my work or book. They generally don't call me about Baltimore police issues (they always call Eugene O'Donnell, one of my esteemed colleagues. Gene is a great guy, knowledgeable and smart, but he wasn't a Baltimore cop!). And yet for some reason, unlike every other cop I worked with, I don't hate the Sun.

Cops hate newspapers with even more venom than they hate Hillary Clinton. Reporters screw up crime stories. Or break scandals that shouldn't be. Or insist on getting "both" sides of the story when there is only one side.

Sometimes, the truth is exactly like the cops say. Say a thieving, violent, robbing, drug-dealing young thug goes on a rampage, pulls a gun on cops, and gets killed. Nothing is worse than quoting her mother insisting that her baby never did nothing wrong and was just killed by police in cold blood while coming back from volunteer work at the HIV orphanage. Readers are left to assume that the truth lies somewhere in between the two versions. That’s not right, fair, or true.

Probably half of all police stories show cops in a negative light. A reader may be left to assume that half of everything police do is bad. Of course this isn’t the case. But police need to understand that newspapers will never write column after column of “Another cop goes to work, does a damn good job, and comes home safely.”

No matter, I like newspapers. I like reporters. Maybe it's because there's a bit of journalism in my blood. I loved writing for and editing my high-school newspaper, the Evanstonian. And my uncle was a big-shot editor-in-chief for many fine papers.

So Ms. Vozzella is typing away and I'm telling her everything that's bad about my book. What can you do? All publicity is good publicity, they say... as long as they spell your name right. Well Laura not only spelled my name right, but she wrote a damn good column:

First, don't kill all the editors
by Laura Vozzell
May 2, 2008

First, Princeton University Press issued the book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Then it issued the news release recalling the book.

"Turns out I wasn't a cop at all, and I made it all up," joked Peter Moskos, the author and an assistant professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Moskos really was a city officer from Dec. 6, 1999, to April 1, 2002, Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford confirmed. (Clifford wasn't otherwise vouching for the book, which he hadn't read. "It's not like the CIA where even if you're gone, if you write something about it, they have to approve it," Clifford said. "We're stuck with what they write.")

The real reason the book has been pulled off shelves, according to Moskos and Princeton: more than 90 grammar and spelling mistakes. After the book was issued two weeks ago, Moskos' mother and friends spotted what copy editors at the esteemed publisher apparently overlooked.

"A lot of errors for a 200-page book," said Moskos, who quipped that he should not have gone with a "fly-by-night organization" like Princeton. "The director of the press called it 'unprecedented.'"

Said Princeton publicist Lisa Fortunato: "For us, this is very unusual."

Don't those Ivy League-types have Spellcheck?

"You know what? We asked the same question," Fortunato said. "I don't know the full story."

The book is expected to be back on shelves in four to five weeks. Not a huge delay, but one that's upsetting to Moskos, since he has already begun promoting the book.

"It's just frustrating because I was on the radio today, and you can't buy it this instant on Amazon," he said.

At least he has a sense of humor about some of the errors.

"Somewhere in the book, 'Baltimore' is spelled wrong," Moskos said. "Maybe I spelled it with a 'd' like it's said."

Ironically, there is an error in the column.

My date of hire was indeed Dec 6, 1999 (The day before the day that will live in infamy is how I remembered it--and since this date goes on a lot of police forms, I needed to remember it). But I entered the academy on Oct 29, 1999.

My end date, however, was neither April 1 nor 2002. I turned in my papers on April Fool's Day (seemed kind of funny to me at the time). But my last night in uniform was June 25. And (because of backed up sick/vacation/personal days) I got paid until early July, when my employment officially ended. And it was 2001.

So in my mind, I worked from Oct 1999 to June 2001. In the police department records, I should be listed as having worked from Dec 1999, to July 2001.

A genuine "good guy"

Initially my presence was greeted with skepticism, especially from supervisors who believed, probably accurately, that nothing good could come from my writing. One lieutenant told me: “Moskos, I like you. But I don’t want anything to do with your book. I don’t want to be in it. I don’t want my name in it. I don’t want any part of it.” Outside of this reference, he’s not.

That quote is from Cop in the Hood. That very lieutenant (if my memory is correct) sent me the following email:

Moskos,

I hope you are doing well.

You were always a genuine "good guy" and always listening and learning.

Can't wait to get the book.

It isn't like it used to be around here. You would probably only know a handful of people at the Eastern.

Good Luck, ............

Those are very kind words. Of course any two-bit grad student can listen and learn, it's the actual "doing" that makes you real police.

I received a follow-up email on 28 April:

Yes, I believe it was I the one who said don't put me or my name in your book. That's OK.

The small portion I read online looks great! It should be mandatory reading for all high school seniors to give them a taste of reality not seen on MTV's "real world".

So how's life as a professor? I hope things are going well for you. I bet some of your students can't believe some of the stories you can tell them about inner city life.

I think the experience you've had will be nothing but good for your career, and life in general.

You've had the chance to see things 95% of society doesn't know exist.

With any luck all of your students will become right wing conservatives!

Officer Down

It's horrible anytime a police officer dies. It's particularly horrible when it's at the hands of another police officer.

If the Baltimore Sun is correct, the officer who died had 44 years on. I didn't know any officer had 44 years on.

My condolences to the officer's family.

From the Economist

This is from the Economist:

Thursday

I'M STANDING on a street lined with boarded-up shops—a popular haven for drug-dealers. A police officer is frisking a suspect whose trousers are nearly around his knees. The policeman didn't pull them down; that's how the suspect wears them. A bit impractical, perhaps, if his line of work requires him to run away from policemen.

But he insists that he is no longer in that line of work. He was caught once, but is now going straight. He has a legitimate reason for hanging around a nearly deserted street, after dark, in the pouring rain, for several hours. He is waiting for someone, he says.
AFP Follow the trousers

The police officer's colossal partner, whose sense of humour is as robust as his shoulders, prays aloud: “Oh Lord, I pray that a meteorite hits this [drug bazaar].” (He adds a P.S. to the effect that God should be careful not to hurt anyone.)

The temporal authorities in Baltimore take a more pragmatic approach to fighting crime. Like every other large city, they have copied elements of New York's system for mapping crime statistics, which allows police departments to send officers where they are most needed.

Baltimore has also put more officers on foot patrol, so that they are closer to the people they are supposed to protect. It has locked up many of the most violent offenders. And it has encouraged local volunteers to mediate between young hot-heads. Such volunteers know when a fight is about to erupt over, for example, a stolen girlfriend. All this is quite new, but the mayor, Sheila Dixon, thinks it is working. The murder rate for the first three months of this year was sharply lower than last year.

But still, the drug trade is unlikely to be peaceful so long as it is illegal. Crack pushers cannot ask the courts to settle their disputes. The only way to stop them shooting each other is to legalise drugs, reckons Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a year as a policeman in Baltimore's eastern district and wrote a book about it.

That is not going to happen, alas. And even if it did, it would hardly be a panacea. Anyone with a proper job leaves the ghetto. The young men left behind develop traits that render them unemployable. For example, says Mr Moskos, they react violently to trivial slights. This is a useful quality in a drug-dealer, but less so in most other trades.