Police officers can carry without a Maryland Wear and Carry Permit per the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. Most officers don’t bother with a WCP since they can carry anywhere through LEOSA. However, if their LE powers are suspended or revoked for any reason, they may no longer carry under LEOSA.

If the officer is found guilty of a wear/carry handgun violation, then that would be a disqualifying crime for possession of a firearm in Maryland. If the officer is found guilty of possession of a sufficient quantity of cannabis to show intent to distribute and/or proven to be a habitual user, then that would also be a disqualifying crime. Either conviction would make them ineligible to be a police officer in the state of Maryland.

This was a series of extremely poor decisions that will not only ruin their career, but will also ruin trust.

The Unholy Pentaverate of Igos

A carjacking is a specific type of robbery. Robbery is theft + assault/threat of assault. A carjacking is motor vehicle theft + assault/threat of assault.

Not simply a felon, but a felon where failure to immediately stop them poses an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm.

>1. Members may pursue an eluding vehicle when:

>1.1. The vehicle contains a felony suspect and failure to immediately apprehend poses an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to the member or others; and

>1.2. Before the pursuit is initiated, there exists probable cause to believe the fleeing suspect committed a felony which resulted, or could have resulted, in death or serious bodily injury.

This means that even if the officer somehow knows an occupant is wanted on a felony warrant; they may not pursue them if the fleeing vehicle does not poses an immediate risk of harm.

The officer can try to pursue, but as soon as they radio that they have a vehicle failing to stop, the first question a supervisor will ask is “What is it wanted for?” If the answer is “traffic,” then the supervisor is most likely to order that officer to stop pursuing so as to not run afoul of Policy 1503.

This is why you see extremely selective enforcement of traffic and registration infractions. The drivers with egregious violations are not likely to stop. Those who do stop are the exception rather than the rule; and because they actually stopped, they are more likely to get a warning rather than a citation.

Many temp tags are expired, not attached to the correct vehicle, or outright falsified. The issue is not that BPD cannot enforce traffic rules. The issue is that BPD’s Vehicle Pursuit Policy (Policy 1503 PDF) only authorizes pursuits under certain strict conditions which a simple registration infraction does not meet. Many drivers know this and will simply not stop when they are lit up.

The Southern District Police Station has a drug drop off bin.

10 Cherry Hill Rd 21225

It doesn’t matter. Downvotes don’t make things less true, no matter how much they may wish it would.

Good luck. It has been my experience that there is a greater than 50% chance that both parties do not have insurance, and/or are driving on a suspended/revoked license or do not have driving privileges, and/or their registrations are expired or suspended.

Get. The. Duck. Poutine.

MSP doesn’t do laterals. Every trooper goes through their full academy and they are one of the only academies in Maryland that is a live in academy.

A lot of guys with time on aren’t too keen on going through another academy unless they have to, especially if they have to live there for months. It means time away from family, dealing with a petty pseudo-boot camp atmosphere, and getting OC’d, tased, and gassed again.

>Are we losing most of our top tier candidates to other agencies and do you have any idea what that costs us? (It happens in our school system and I don't know the cost)

I don’t believe that the quality of candidates plays into who is leaving. Officers across the board are leaving and it’s not limited to Baltimore. For officers with more time, other agencies offer higher pay for the same amount of years in grade in addition to large signing bonuses. For newer officers, they may be using BPD as a stepping stone towards their first choice agency. Other officers might want to get into specialized units and other agencies offer a better chance to do the kind of work they’d like. Some officers have had bad experiences and want to work for an agency or jurisdiction that has stronger relationships with officers.

As to the cost - I can only speculate and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Trainees are taught as a class, so the money spent paying training staff and facility upkeep isn’t exactly lost. If the trainee graduated, made it through field training, and spent any time pushing a car in patrol, then the city got something out of them which means they put their training to use, so it’s not a lost cost; and I don’t think you could argue that their paycheck was somehow a lost investment if that officer answered calls for service. If it was an officer with a lot of time on, I think the cost is better viewed as loss of experienced personnel rather than a financial loss directly attributable to retention.

>Why does it often feel like the police work is extremely lackluster when you're the victim of a crime?

There is a lot that may contribute to this perception.

The FBI defines crimes in their Uniform Crime Reporting standard. Many calls that I respond to do not actually rise to the level of a reportable crime per UCR. Common calls include reports of “threats” which do not actually fit the definition of an assault by threat and is therefore simply a dispute which is not a crime.

Also, even with a UCR crime, enforcement can only take place when a suspect is identifiable. From a patrol perspective, we do our best to try to interview witnesses and canvass for cameras; but when we can not immediately identify a suspect, that task usually falls on detectives. I have not worked in a detective unit, but I know that the process of sifting through footage, statements, and interviews in order to positively identify a suspect takes a lot of time. Furthermore, the case load that BPD detectives carry is ridiculous - easily 4 to 5 times the FBI recommended case load per detective.

In many cases, it is almost impossible to identify a suspect in a manner which rises to probable cause. It is the difference between what you know and what you can prove. This is common with larceny incidents. Person A left their stuff in their house while Person B was also there. Person B leaves and Person A’s property is missing. Person A did not see Person B take it. Person B probably took it, but there is not enough evidence to name Person B as the suspect.

In other cases, the suspect description is so generic and cameras captured barely usable footage that there is little hope of actually identifying the offender. Even more common is that someone did see who did it, but refuses to cooperate with the police.

Even if an incident gets all the way to identifying the suspect, sometimes the responsibility of filing charges against that suspect falls upon the victim. This is true in cases such as a destruction of property, common assault (not domestic), larceny, and trespassing. In many cases, particularly domestic incidents, the victim refuses to show up for court or file for a protective order and then get angry at responding officers for “not doing anything.”

>Ivan Bates says that he's going to get cops enforcing traffic laws and squeegee statutes. Is this realistic, or is he "pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining"?

Maybe - it depends on how such a program is implemented. Mosby made a public statement and listed which crimes her office would decline to prosecute. Simply being able to enforce those named crimes would likely have a positive effect on enforcement. Quality of life crimes such as disorderly conduct, loitering, littering, spitting, etc. are generally not prosecuted and those types of charges can be useful tools to keep dealers off of corners. The problem with QOL crimes is that they are too easy to overuse and can lead to overzealous enforcement.

I’m not sure how the SAO would be able to increase traffic enforcement. There is no standing order to write traffic tickets and any such order would likely run afoul of laws against quotas; specifically Maryland PS § 3-504. I don’t see how the department could force officers to pull over more cars and issue more citations.

As for squeegee statutes - there is already a city code which prohibits squeegee behavior, Article 19 § 47-4 (4), but if the States Attorney’s Office declines to charge this crime, then it does not seem to be worth risking a foot chase in traffic and a use of force to enforce it. The question would still remain even if it were being prosecuted: Is it worth you or the suspect getting hit by a car or getting injured in a use of force for squeegeeing?

>What does the average day and average week look like on patrol?

It varies a lot by shift, by day of the week, and by season.

Midnights may get calls from 2300h - 0300h, but then the volume goes to almost zero. Day work doesn’t usually get calls until 1000h. Swing shift is almost always busy.

Peak crimes is usually on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is usually dead. Call volume peaks in the summer and dies down significantly in the winter.

The opinion of the public at large is going to be slow to change and that is largely due to the fact that police don’t interact with as many lawful citizens as we do with citizens with a long history of criminal involvement. The stories that news outlets choose to publish rarely cover the gun, drug, or domestic arrests we make every day - and it is our conduct on those incidents that establishes our reputation with the people we interact with the most.

I cannot speak for all officers, but I know that my conduct on those types of incidents has earned me a reputation of being fair. I know that I work hard to show trainees that earning a reputation on the street for being fair makes everyone’s lives easier. I know that at least at the patrol level, the cultural changes that have taken place within the department have been significant. But cultural shifts take time to fully set in and one of the side benefits of being understaffed is that there is a lot of new blood coming out of the academy who are learning how to police the modern way.

BPD still has a lot of work to do to earn trust from the public at large. But I think that the public simply does not see the things that might sway their opinions. The public does not see the daily interactions we have with our “regulars.” The public does not seem to know or does not seem to care about the training that BPD puts its officers through. The public attributes a large amount or issues with the city to the police, even when the issues are outside of police control.

So yes, there is work to be done. Yes, the public still isn’t 100% on board with BPD. But I know that on my post and in my sector, the public wants us there. The community members feel comfortable enough with me to walk up to me and talk about their issues. It’s only the dealers on the corner who don’t want me around - and they may not like what I do, but they have never accused me of being unfair.

GTTF is something that BPD does not shy away from. The officers that were involved and their conduct are used as case studies in the academy. Every trainee that hits the streets has GTTF as a reminder of what happens to them if they do things the wrong way.

>but the conventional wisdom is that BPD you don't learn shit.

That’s not true. If you spend a year in patrol, you are likely to have responded to multiple homicides, shootings, cuttings, robberies, car jackings, residential and commercial burglaries, and domestics. Very few other agencies offer that kind of experience.

Furthermore, the consent decree has made BPD’s law course extremely solid. It is popular on this sub to disparage the perceived knowledge of case law that BPD officers possess; but the truth is that BPD’s law program is one of the best ones in the nation and the BPD law staff is comprised of actual lawyers. Trainees come out of the academy with a solid law foundation and when they go through field training, they learn how to functionally apply case law to their actions.

When I have trainees, I always explain which case law is applicable to the actions I did or did not take. Before we arrive at calls, I tell them to explain to me what case laws may be applicable when we arrive and what that means for what we can and cannot do.

Officers with a year in patrol will respond to multiple hot calls that get their adrenaline pumping. They will participate in multiple foot chases. This means that they will develop effective strategies to manage the adrenaline dump and stay focused under stressful conditions and have a lot of experience doing it. They will be comfortable calling out suspect descriptions and locations on the radio. They will be comfortable dealing with subjects on scene screaming at them. They will have plenty of experience driving code in an urban environment.

In addition to the volume of critical incidents BPD officers will respond to, they will also be immersed in the narcotics trade. They will learn to recognize the players in the drug trade. They will learn how these crews operate, recognize the various drugs sold and how they are typically packaged and distributed. They will learn to recognize behaviors and signs that dealers are concealing drugs or weapons on or near them. They will learn to recognize the various paraphernalia that users keep on or near their person and what those objects are specifically used for. They will probably administer Narcan on an overdosing patient and probably administer CPR once or twice their first year.

I went to a conference with about 1000 cops from various agencies across America and very few outside of major cities have responded to a single homicide call. I was also shocked at how few of them were taught more than Terry v Ohio and Graham v Connor.

I admit that BPD has a lot it could do better, but it is a fact that officers with even a year on the street in Baltimore make for very strong candidates. It’s one of the reasons that we have such an immense staffing problem. Officers graduate and complete field training, then put in applications for other agencies who are happy to hire an officer with the kind of experience that BPD offers.

Curious to see where Zella’s at Hollins Market stacks up