[Baltimore Citizen’s Academy] The Inner Harbor Project/LEAD/Bike Patrols
Lt Steve Olson is a bike patrol officer in the Inner Harbor, which sounds like one of the cushiest jobs you can get. Sure, there can be serious crime in the area, such as when the family from New Jersey was assaulted by a group of kids, but its, by and large, a very safe area. You could probably have money hanging out of your pocket and never have it taken.
However, we spent a few hours listening to him tell stories that show that the Inner Harbor really is at the forefront of how the BPD is dealing with some of its most systemic problems.
He spends his days pedaling around the harbor, and as he put it, “on a busy day I ride 5 miles, and on a less busy day I ride 40–45 miles”. He feels that his patrol should be the model for how the city could be handling patrols in an ideal world. Most officers are in their car going from call to call, but he is afforded the opportunity to basically be doing a foot patrol at a speed that is much faster than a foot patrol. He can easily stop, and chat with people that are walking around. It gives him a unique view on his beat.
The ideal situation for the police is that they are walking around their beat, talking with people, learning who the problem individuals are, and sniffing out problems before they become problems. However, Lt Olson said that would probably require the department to grow from 2400 officers to 15,000. But bikes are a way for officers to get their ‘legs’ back while still covering more distance than you could by walking around.
He also said that he does not carry around a taser or baton, because it sends the subliminal message that the police are there to hurt you (although he does keep his gun). He is looking to basically use the best possible practices possible on his beat.
Of course, there is a major difference between patrolling the harbor, and patrolling some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city, like Broadway East. But I think his point was that no matter where you are patrolling, the methods that you use are very important.
For example, he was talking about an evening where there were thousands of people down in the Pier 6 Pavilion section of the Harbor. Police Commisioner Batts was new on the job, and thought that the BPD needed to bring extra police out so that people would see them there and ready. He ordered 2 officers from each district to come down to the harbor to increase the police presence. It was already a peaceful evening, but the addition of 18 police officers changed the mood of the crowd, and put people on edge, because they thought that there was something was happening. His point was that even in situations like in the Inner Harbor where there isn’t a distrust of the police, too much of a show of force starts to feel like an occupation. That applies with the number of police, or with the severity and quantity of weapons an officer is carrying.
He even argues that it matters what language an officer uses. He said that he does not use the word ‘juveniles’, but instead refers to them as kids. Although the attitude also matters, because he told a story about his supervisor when he first joined the Inner Harbor beat, and how he was told to watch out for ‘those kids’, referring to black kids that were walking through the Inner Harbor.
But Lt Olson’s work extends far beyond the harbor with the Inner Harbor Project and Law Enforcement-Assisted Diversion (LEAD)
Inner Harbor Project
The Inner Harbor Project is an effort that Lt Olson is leading that has successfully reached out to kids from the city, and to get them engaged in a positive way with the Inner Harbor, the police, and their city. There used to be a lot more youth arrests in the Inner Harbor, but the Inner Harbor project set out to make the harbor feel like a place that was for teens of the city, and not just tourists or people coming for dinner from the counties. This effort has reduced juvinile crime in the harbor between 2013–2017 by 86%.
Let me repeat that. There has been an 86% reduction in juvinile crime since 2013. Anyone want stats based, inexpensive programs that actually deliver results?
They work with the four officers that are assigned to the Inner Harbor to help monitor and police the area from President St, around the harbor to the Rusty Scupper.
I would continue to explain it, but they have a really great site that explains very well what the project is, what its goals are, and what they are doing. It really is a great example of a low cost way to make our city a better place through engagement, crime deterrence, and positive reinforcement. Check it out at www.theinnerharborproject.org
LEAD
The Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Program is about identifying low level offenders that looks to divert low level offenders from jail, and instead offer them treatment.
In a LEAD program, police officers exercise discretionary authority at point of contact to divert individuals to a community-based, harm-reduction intervention for law violations driven by unmet behavioral health needs. In lieu of the normal criminal justice system cycle — booking, detention, prosecution, conviction, incarceration — individuals are instead referred into a trauma-informed intensive case-management program where the individual receives a wide range of support services, often including transitional and permanent housing and/or drug treatment. Prosecutors and police officers work closely with case managers to ensure that all contacts with LEAD® participants going forward, including new criminal prosecutions for other offenses, are coordinated with the service plan for the participant to maximize the opportunity to achieve behavioral change.
Lt Olson has been a big proponent of this in part because of his experience with his brother who got addicted to drugs, and eventually died from his usage. He has been the very public face of the effort to get LEAD into the city.
The LEAD program is currently in the second year of a three year pilot program that started in February 2017. The roughly $500,000 program is paid for by a mix of state and private money from foundations. It’s modeled after a similar program in Seattle that officials said reduced recidivism. In Baltimore this year, they have 60 active clients and only one has been re-arrested.
The program also will help someone who has not yet been arrested. An individual should feel safe going to an officer and saying that they need help. As Lt Olson put it, “if someone is trying to get clean, stumbles, and then we arrest them, they are much more likely to go back to crime and drugs than to continue trying to get clean… An arrest is additional chaos for someone that has a chaotic life. They will just go back to drugs after getting out. ”
Conclusion
I know that there are probably a lot of people that would not like this approach to policing. Or people who would think that this would work in the tourist mecca that is the Inner Harbor. But that there is no way that this would work in the much rougher streets where over 300 homicides per year have happened over the last three years.
But Lt Olson is making the argument that these techniques are working on a small scale, and they can be tried elsewhere. Maybe it seems like using kid gloves on an adult problem. But maybe its about treating people like they are people, and realizing that the ‘bash their heads in’ way of policing didn’t work. The police vs blacks mentality that caused the 60’s to burn across America, and then caused 2015 to burn in Baltimore isn’t a way to successfully police.
The police need to work with us. And Lt Olson is showing us how.
