A Day Riding Shotgun with the Baltimore Police

So it has been exactly 627 days from my last post on my once-world-famous blog. Anyway, we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief because, after my post tonight, I promise not to post for at least another 627 days. [If you want a few (or fifteen) good laughs, scroll to the bottom of this post and read my posts from when I actually thought I was a blogger.] The subject of my only post of 2010 is my day spent with the Baltimore Police Department. This entry will be ridiculously long, and I doubt it will be funny or too well-written. I am doing it primarily so that I have my own record of my day with the cops. Feel free to read all, some, or none of the post. I really couldn’t care less what you do. Anyway, here it goes, the backstory first:

On November 6, 2009, I sat down with Major Melvin Russell, Commander of the Eastern District of the Baltimore City Police Department, to do an interview for a history course I was taking at the time, The Power of Place: Race and Community in East Baltimore, taught by Melanie Shell-Weiss. A primary aim of the course was to help create recorded oral histories of people familiar with Middle East, an East Baltimore neighborhood just north of the Johns Hopkins University Medical Campus, which is currently being redeveloped. After interviewing Major Russell for the project, he told me and my partner, Hopkins senior Jenny Klein, that we were more than welcome to ride along with a patrolman or woman for a day if we ever wanted. Finally, on March 2, Jenny and I took Major Russell up on his offer.

In an email, Major Russell instructed Jenny and me to get to Headquarters by 6:30 AM. It was still dark out, and we definitely had our driver confused as to why two college kids wanted to go to police headquarters so early on a Tuesday morning. Once we arrived, we were greeted warmly and signed some series of papers in which we promised that we would not hold the police responsible for anything that happened to us. I decided to skip to the bottom section to sign the papers; I did not want to know what dangerous possibilities lay ahead. We then waited for roll call, which began promptly at 6:39 (not one minute earlier or later). Aside from what I expected to see (a few cops were commended for excellent service recently, and the sergeant gave a small motivational speech, the only interesting moment was when the sergeant distributed reading material for his patrolmen and women. I don't recall exactly what the Xeroxed reading was on, but it consisted more of inspiration and philosophy than of policing or city issues.

Some observations from the events surrounding roll call:

1) There were many fewer cops to cover one of the most dangerous districts in one of the most dangerous cities in America than I expected.

2) There was only female cop...I expected more (maybe 25%) of them to be women.

3) There was a very good and healthy mix of racial diversity among the patrolmen. I would say there were about the same number of black and white cops, and there were one or two Asian and Latino cops. However, maybe the 50-50 white-black ratio is not a healthy mix, given the fact that the district is overwhelmingly black. Even though I don't normally like to use race as a primary identifier, I think it's important in this context (and will be throughout the post).

4) Everyone got along great, joking with (and playing pranks on) each other, discussing their upcoming football game, etc. Nobody seemed stressed or anxious about what is very dangerous work.

After roll call, I was assigned my patrolman, a white man in his mid-20s, whom I will refer to only by his first initial, A. After introducing himself to me, A. asked me if I was wearing a vest. I had no idea what he was talking about; I was wearing a red hoodie, and I thought that was pretty evident. I responded to his question by telling him that, no, I did not have a vest, and I quickly learned that he was referring to a bulletproof vest, which is required for riding along with a cop. Unfortunately, however, the Eastern District was out of vests. I could either go home or take my chances. Of course, using my four-year Hopkins education, I decided to take my chances. If 50 Cent got shot nine times, what's one bullet, right?

[From here on out, I will provide time estimates that will not be terribly precise. They are not completely accurate but will help structure my day.]

7:30 AM: We leave headquarters and are on our way. Our first stop was for breakfast at a local Royal Farms. It's the closest thing to WaWa (which is one of the few things Philly has over New York) I've ever seen, and it's unfortunate that there are none within walking distance of Hopkins. Anyway, at RF I met another cop, a middle-aged African American, who quickly told me that I would learn a lot on my ride and that I would realize that just about all criticism of the police was unfounded. He noted (somewhat accurately, I would learn), that the media (whether it be the Baltimore Sun, TV, or YouTube videos) highlights only bits and pieces of incidents, often focusing on the final minute of an arrest or a rare moment of excessive brutality taken out of context. He also told me how being a cop makes one increasingly paranoid, to the point where he and his wife are afraid to open the front door to their house after ordering pizza delivery; A., who I learned takes his gun everywhere with him, including the shower, agreed.

7:50 AM: Our first stop was a car crash a few blocks from Hopkins Med (JHMI). A relatively young Indian woman was on her way to work at the hospital when she ran a stop-sign and crashed into a middle-aged African-American woman and (I think) her son, on the way to school. Nobody was seriously hurt (the cars were damaged significantly), but the Indian woman was shaken up and would not stop crying for a half hour. It was kind of like one of my favorite movies, Crash. Ok, not really. Anyway, after the tow truck came and a police report was filed, we went on our way and dropped the woman off at Hopkins. Another cop who was on the scene took the mother and son to school.

8:15 AM: Our next stop was a bit more exciting. A. stopped a man loitering on a street corner, presumably involved in some aspect of the drug trade. I'm not sure what exactly was on him drug-wise, but the man didn't seem too concerned; he laughed and mocked A. and the other cops who came on the scene. He first lied about his name and about the amount of money on him (both of which are apparently common, even though lying gets you nowhere in the end). He did have everyone laughing when he told us that we could remember his last name, which was Cain. "Just like cocaine," he boasted. Also of note: Mr. Cain is not even 20, he was born in 1991. As Cain was taken into a wagon in handcuffs, A. told me that he would be back out on the corner in no-time. They go in and out on a regular basis, in jail one day and free the next. This would be a recurring theme and is something I never really understood throughout the day.

9:00 AM: We then drove back toward Hopkins and went a few blocks southwest of JHMI. A. spotted an older white guy walking around some housing projects and said that he had to be looking for drugs. He thought that he had seen him before, but he also remarked that, since the neighborhood is almost entirely black, any white person stands out. A. calls the area VFW, which stands for Very Few Whites; the only reason for a white person to be in the area is drug-related. This particular white person eventually became engaged in conversation with an older black man until we drove up, when the two went their separate ways. The white guy got into a car, and we followed for a bit, but we eventually stopped by the time we were along the border of the Southeast District.

Now might be an appropriate place to note that A.'s territory covers a relatively small 4- by 10-block radius. He drives through the same streets daily and knows the blocks (and people) very well. Some people wave, and some people run. I guess it's just part of the job. We took a break at Walgreens, where I used the bathroom (being with a cop helps in obtaining the keycode to the employees-only bathroom), and A. picked up a few random items. At the register, the lady (who seemed to recognize A.) asked if I was his son, which was one of the stranger moments of the day, given the fact that we are only about five years apart. Either I look like I'm eight-years old, or he looks like he's forty, I guess.

9:25 AM: We then drove back to cover the radius, where we found four older black men hanging out on a block. Some older men like to hang out and drink, and others apparently are involved in drugs. A. allows the drunks to drink all they want, but the older dealers and users are not so fortunate, I later learned.

Over the course of the day, A. and I discussed a lot of random topics. From baseball (we both hate A-Rod) to football (he doesn't root for the Ravens because he believes that, just like it was wrong for Indianapolis to take the Colts from Baltimore, it was wrong for Baltimore to take the Browns from Cleveland), we discussed a ton of sports. We talked about politics (policing has made him increasingly more conservative, but he is optimistic about our new mayor) and policy (he has seen too many welfare and disability checks go entirely to drugs). I felt compelled to ask about The Wire ("Is it accurate?"), and he responded, somewhat surprisingly, that, yes, it is. It might not depict Baltimore completely accurately ALL of the time, but, on the whole, there is apparently a lot of truth to David Simon’s award-winning show. My sense (after admittedly only one day) is that he was right. We also talked about the best types of girls for policemen, but I am going to leave the details of that conversation out in case the children are reading.

10:15 AM: A. was informed that there was a suicide attempt being made in his area. In many ways, this was the scariest call of the day; I expected plenty of drug- and gun-related calls, but I did not expect to have to witness someone trying to (or succeeding in) killing themselves. We got to the address in a matter of minutes, and we met two cops, one of whom was told to guard the back door. We went up to the front door and knocked, but the only response was the loud, persistent barking of what seemed to be a very large dog. Nobody answered, and apparently there was no indication that anyone was home. A. figured that the call had been made from a third party and that, if there was, in fact, a suicide attempt, it was not at this house. I was relieved that this was a false alarm.

It was around this point where I began to appreciate the camaraderie that exists among police officers. Even though there are hundreds of police officers in Baltimore City, A. and I continued to run into the same five or six guys at every call. Most of these were the men (and the woman) whom I had met at roll, but there also were two plainclothes cops who drove an unmarked vehicle, working in the Eastern. They all joked with each other and knew each other’s quirks, but, when the moment came to respond to a call, they were focused and professional.

10:50 AM: For what seemed like the billionth time, A. got a call to report to such-and-such corner, and he immediately turned on his siren, going from 15 MPH to 70 MPH in a matter of seconds. It really is pretty cool going really fast and watching car after car move out of the way for you. We were splitting the Red Sea faster than Moses ever could have dreamed of doing, and, almost immediately, we were at our destination, where we ran into a few familiar cops who had caught some older African-American men, one of whom was supposedly dealing drugs to the others, I think. It was unclear to me if any drugs were actually found on any of them, and, after some questioning, they let three of the four go free. However, the cops took in the one guy they suspected of dealing the drugs (I think), in part because of the large amount of cash he had on him. He had initially insisted he only had five dollars on him, but the sum was much greater. Like Mr. Cocaine, this got him into trouble, I guess, and he was taken in the paddy wagon to who-knows-where.

11:30 AM: I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about lunch, since I was getting hungry, and I was not going to be dropped off at the Homewood campus for another two hours. However, A. asked me where I wanted to get my food—he had packed his lunch—since we would be taking a quick break soon. My options, he told me, were McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway. Since anyone who knows me knows I love and crave onion rings, they should know the choice was easy: Burger King. Had I known that, by picking Burger King, I was getting us involved in another incident, I might have picked McDonald’s instead. On second thought, no, our BK stop ended up being one of the most interesting, amusing, and sad of the day, with my onion rings-based decision ultimately helping to resolve a conflict between two employees.

When we pulled into BK, A. and I immediately noticed two groups of teenage girls, each with its own car, shouting at each other in the parking lot. We stopped, and the store’s manager ran onto the scene, ecstatic to see us. The girls were in the middle of a fight, she explained, and she wanted A. to resolve the problem; he radioed for assistance. After a few other cops arrived, the manager, with all the girls huddled around, quickly explained the situation, in one of the more bizarre moments of the day. Two employees—both with either identical or very similar names—used to be close friends. Then, a while ago, they stopped talking to each other. Over the weekend, someone wrote something mean about one of the girls on Facebook prompting anger and fear among both girls and their support groups, or crews. On Monday, one of them brought her crew to work to make sure she was safe and protected. Today, on Tuesday, the other girl brought her crew; she was worried and wanted to protect herself. Two Burger King employees who used to be good friends…in a fight…OVER FACEBOOK! If it wasn’t real, I would’ve laughed. Actually, by the time we got back in the car (no one was taken in, and the squabble was resolved, at least temporarily), both A. and I were laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. (He also checked one of the girls’ cars pretty thoroughly, on what basis I wasn’t sure.) Oh and about those onion rings: by the time we pulled up to the Drive-Thru, I had totally forgotten my reason for picking BK and ordered chicken nuggets and fries.

12:15 PM: A little while later, we were again speeding toward another drug-related arrest. Our two undercover cop friends had caught an older African-American man selling heroin to an older African-American woman. This time, there was no doubt about evidence; the man had a lot of cash on him, and he had the drugs. A. asked me if I had ever seen heroin before, and I replied that no, I hadn’t. One of the undercover guys proceeded to show me a few capsules that he said would go for about ten dollars on the street. Finally, I had seen heroin. At least I could cross something off the old bucket list. At this point, the cops (two undercover and two regular patrolmen) were joking a bit, especially as the wait for the paddy wagon (or just wagon, as the cool kids call it) grew longer. This is when I learned a little about heroin dealing and the similarities between dealing heroin and selling any other product. Apparently, new heroin gets put on the market all the time, especially at the beginning of the month when people get disability and unemployment checks. For the first few days, dealers distribute free samples—just like Costco, I imagine—to introduce the new product and get people hooked. The handcuffed man and woman on the side of the curb were just a part of that game. For the first time all day, I was really depressed, especially as I watched them walk into the wagon. Sure, they were participating in illegal behavior, but, as I learned throughout the day, most of these guys (young and old, male and female) would be back out on the street in two days. That’s why Cain was laughing when A. arrested him, and that’s why A. recognized so many of the people on the street. The cops were doing their job as best as they could. It was the system and priorities of the system that seemed to be failing.

12:40 PM: Our next stop was of a different sort and was the most low-key of the day. Someone’s car’s tires had been slashed repeatedly, and the car’s owner—a middle-aged African-American man—wanted us to check the car out and write a report up. We showed up on the scene, and, like the Burger King manager, he seemed grateful to see us. Once in a while people really do appreciate the police, I guess. Apparently this man’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend had been taking out his anger on his ex by slashing tire after tire of the cars belonging to the ex’s family, and he had just done it again. He invited us into a beautiful rowhouse, and A. explained that all he could do was file another police report. In addition, if the gentleman filed some sort of restraining order against the man whom he thought was responsible for the tire-slashing, he could be arrested if he was near the cars and tried to do it again. Even though A. did not resolve the problem, it was good to see that there could be some genuine interaction between police officers and community residents. The Wire didn’t have to be true all the time.

1:00 PM: A. was about to take me back to Hopkins when we got our final call of the day. I didn’t hear what was said on the radio, but I could tell that A. thought it was serious. I was wondering what was going on, and I guess A. read my mind, telling me that there was “an armed person.” “This time,” he said, “you should stay in the car.” Given the fact that I did not have a vest on, I grudgingly agreed, eventually realizing it was the prudent thing to do. A minute or two later, we were on the scene. I heard no gunshots, and I saw no guns; in fact, I didn’t see many people milling about the public housing complex composed of low rises, pretty close to Hopkins’ medical campus. A number of other cops came to the scene, and I couldn’t tell what was going on. Ten minutes later, A. returned. Some “juveniles” had gotten into a fight, but there did not seem to be any firearms involved, which was fine with me. I had made it to the end of my ride and even got a little bonus time.

As we left East Baltimore and headed back to my main turf, A. turned up the radio (the one for music, not the one for communicating), for the last time. There’s really nothing like listening to Lil Wayne—who, one of these days, will finally go to prison for a year on gun charges—after chasing the bad guys for six hours. A. and I talked a bit more—I got the sense that this was a somewhat quiet day for him—and he reflected on the rather pathetic state of crime in Baltimore. After finding out that I was from New York, he reminded me of a sad statistic with which I was already familiar: New York is ten times as big as Baltimore population-wise, but it has about only one hundred more murders a year. Or, in other term: Baltimore averaged 37 murders for every 100,000 people in 2008, and New York averaged 6.3 murders per 100,000. I’m not really sure what exactly those numbers mean, but they are interesting to consider. After a twenty-minute drive (unfortunately we did not have the sirens blaring and had to obey traffic laws to get me back to campus), we pulled up to 34^th Street and N. Charles. I got out of the car, directly in front of Hopkins kids going to and from classes. There really is nothing like getting out of a police car, at least when you’re not in cuffs, forced out from the backseat.

A few thoughts/a summary of my six hours with the police (in no particular order):

1) We really do not understand or appreciate the work that goes into fighting crime; it is a lengthy, complicated process, and we only see the end result taken out of context (and sometimes not even that). Like everyone else, police officers make mistakes, but the media rarely gives us the opportunity to fully understand what goes into arresting someone.

2) Just as many older people seemed to be getting into trouble as younger people, which was interesting, especially considering the fact that multiple cops told me that the most involved law-breakers were juveniles (because the punishments are much less for them). All of these old people seemed to have been involved in drugs for decades and were not about to change their ways.

3) There were instances where it seemed as if people were being handcuffed and brought into custody for no apparent crime (other than, say, loitering). I’m sure there were aspects of these arrests that I didn’t understand (and I didn’t want to ask too many questions), but it did seem like the police were bringing in (admittedly bad) people on questionable charges. But what do I know?

4) The Wire devotes a lot of time to critiquing and criticizing the system that contributes to crime as much it criticizes the criminals themselves. I now understand why. There seem to be little virtue in arresting criminal after criminal on relatively petty charges, only to see them back on the street in a matter of weeks, if not days. Not to go on a tangent, but the burglar who was killed by a Hopkins student in the fall had been arrested more than two dozen times and had only just gotten out of jail before he was killed. Either these criminals need to stay in jail for a longer period of time so that they actually get off the streets, or we need to prioritize (and invest money and time in) the lives of the most impoverished and vulnerable members of our society so that they do not end up in and out of jail for the duration of their lives.

5) Baltimore promotes itself as a city of diverse neighborhoods, something I have learned to appreciate more and more. From Hampden to Fed Hill and Mt. Vernon to Canton, Baltimore has a lot to offer its residents and tourists beyond the Inner Harbor, and neighborhoods can really change in a matter of blocks. For a New Yorker, the quick contrast between neighborhoods is somewhat like that of East Harlem and the Upper East Side, separated by East 96th Street (except more drastic and replicated tens of times). The area immediately around the Hopkins Med School is definitely safe, at least during the day; there are lots of people out on the street, and there is a strong police and security presence. However, only three or four blocks in any direction, and the safety of Hopkins no longer holds. A high percentage of the incidents I witnessed on Tuesday took place within a half mile of JHMI.

6) Policing can (and for many people, is) a somewhat regular job. Like most difficult jobs, it has its share of stressful moments, and those moments are obviously of a different type than that of most other jobs. Still, many of the police officers I met seem to treat it as a somewhat normal job. For A., it was less stressful than his previous job; he didn’t have to “bring work home” with him after his shift, like he did before and can at least live a relaxed life when off duty.

7) Mayor Dixon did not seem to be popular with the cops. Maybe this was just because they never got gift cards to Best Buy, but I found this somewhat surprising considering the fact that she was very popular before her conviction and crime did drop significantly during her terms. Apparently a mayor’s popularity is strongly tied to his or her relationship with the union, and Mayor Dixon wanted to reduce pensions or retirement benefits for cops. Somewhat ironic, considering the fact that, despite her conviction, Dixon will receive all her retirement benefits. Major Russell had been very praiseworthy of her, but his position is an appointed (and, thus more political) one, so that could help to explain that.

8) Riding in the front of a cop car is really fun.

9) Finally: We can criticize and challenge America’s criminal justice system—whether or not arrest after arrest of the same people is financially or socially effective is debatable—but the police officers in the Eastern just seemed to be doing their job as well as possible. Sometimes, it is probably effective, and many (maybe even most) times it is not, but the team of cops I met handled every incident quickly, responsibly, and professionally. In my mind, that’s all you can really ask of them.

See you in 2012.