Posts about MPD

Any revenue bump will not last long as drivers adjust to actually following laws. Plus, it's a red herring to cast doubt on the program just because it's coming up in a budget cycle. DC needs to spend money to get cameras. Therefore, the program has to be part of the budget. MPD has been trying to buy the cameras for over a year, and budget and procurement have long been the obstacle.

Below are the candidates' answers:

Sekou Biddle: Putting aside the fact that these cameras will certainly change Tom [Sherwood]'s driving habits, I'm not a fan of this idea because, frankly, it looks like we're taking what was initially designed to be a public safety tool and turning it into a revenue generator. We see in the budget the claim that we're not having tax and fee increases, but we're looking to generate more revenue through speed cameras, and then using those cameras to do both speed and red lights. This really is disconcerting, and we need to really think about what we're using them for.

Vincent Orange: I do not support the idea. We've already raised in excess of $100 million through the speeding cameras and parking tickets and things of that like. I think that now it's become a revenue generator, and to say that we're going to cover the entire city with this apparatus is not a good idea in my view.

E. Gail Anderson Holness: I don't think it's a good idea. I think it's a waste of taxpayer money to use the funds to put those cameras in place ... I think there are other options to raise funds for the District of Columbia. I'm out there waving in the mornings and I see Maryland and Virginia tags coming into the District. There ought to be some kind of commuter tax.

You don't let the good suffer with the bad in this instance ... of course Tom, some of us go over the speed limit a little bit every now and again, and we're going to be subjected. But it's going through that green light piece is a major issue, so I'm not in favor of it all.

Peter Shapiro: I think there's a little bit of election-year pandering going on with this, because it's an important issue, and we've got some serious concerns with public safety in the city. Now the key is around balance, and so the red light cameras and even speed on green can be a very healthy thing. Now the idea of blanketing the whole city doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Kojo Nnamdi: Why not?

Shapiro: Because there are many many intersections where if we put this in place, then it's only about generating revenue. There are any number of anecdotes, you will hear people, I have my own experience with this, where it it feels like it's essentially a trap for folks. It's not making the community safer, so what you really have to do is make sure that we have a comprehensive plan, but that they're located in places where they actually will reduce speed in ways that keeps the community safe.

Shapiro is right that there's a lot of pandering here. During the debate, Vincent Orange repeated the phrase "livable, walkable," as he did at the Urban Neighborhood Alliance forum. It rings hollow from Orange, but it's nice that he has decided to play up the "livable, walkable" angle.

But "walkable" is part of "livable, walkable," and part of making a place walkable is making it safe to walk around. If Orange really believed in that, he might have mentioned in his answer that it's important to curb speeding and red light running.

Shapiro is right that we should only place cameras where they will improve safety, and it might be just fine to reduce the level of fines as DC increases the number of cameras. However, when Gray said he would "blanket" DC with cameras, he likely didn't mean one on every corner, but rather far more than we have today. Good for him.

All 4 candidates focused their answers around their complaints of the program. Perhaps they were all assuming that most people who listen to WAMU are driving. One day, hopefully soon, people running for office citywide will feel that if they pander, it's better to pander to residents who want safer neighborhoods than drivers who want to speed with impunity.

Meanwhile, if you are a Democratic voter in DC, vote for Peter Shapiro, whom we endorsed, in tomorrow's primary. It's not enough to just get a more ethical candidate if that candidate still won't take a stand on the important issues that actually affect policy. Ultimately, the reason to have a candidate who's not bought and sold by moneyed special interests is so they vote for better policies. Shapiro has demonstrated far more commitment to good policy than any other candidate in the race.

The technology, similar to night vision, has not hit the streets yet. Tests at a police shooting range have demonstrated the technology's effectiveness is limited to around 5 meters, but NYPD would like to achieve 25 meters.

DC is not involved in similar research.

"Our best bet is that the Secret Service develops it and then lets us use it," said Kristopher Baumann, Chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police's Metropolitan Police Department Labor Committee.

Baumann praised Ray Kelly, NYPD's Commissioner, for advancing his department's use of new technology to improve public safety. "Ray Kelly and NYPD are 100 years ahead of us," Baumann said.

But the Metropolitan Police Department has made investments in other technologies under Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

Public listservs now include more than 10,000 members and allow citizens to read arrest and crime reports in almost real time. MPD has installed speed cameras around the city, added closed-circuit television cameras, and ShotSpotter devices, which immediately alert police to the sound of gunfire, in high-crime areas.

Not all technology investments are working, however. A 2011 study by the Urban Institute concluded the city's more than 70 neighborhood crime cameras do not have a measurable effect on crime.

Surveillance of the city's foreboding corners and hardscrabble courtyards began in summer 2006 by Chief Charles Ramsey, now police chief in Philadelphia, with funds from the DC Council to install nearly 50 cameras. Cameras are reportedly monitored from a single control center with a police officer at the rank of lieutenant or higher present at all times. They retain footage for 10 days.

According to the study's analysis of DC's network, "[B]ecause the video cannot be zoomed in after-the-fact without distorting the image, the footage is often too granular to make positive identifications. Cameras are also sensitive to changes in weather and lighting and do not always maintain a continuous flow of coverage." The study cited the "limited use of camera footage in court cases" as evidence that cameras don't help solve or prosecute cases.

Another weapon police have used in recent years to combat crime with mixed results is the Global Positioning System. While ankle monitoring bracelets have been in use for nearly three decades, in recent years these devices have been equipped with GPS. To a determined executioner in the Barry Farm neighborhood this gadget was of no consequence; while equipped with a court-mandated GPS ankle bracelet prosecutors believe Alonzo Marlow committed two murders.

Last month the Supreme Court issued a ruling against the MPD and law enforcement agencies across the country, deciding that the warrantless use of a tracking device on a suspect's vehicle to monitor movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment. In response to the Supreme Court decision, the FBI announced last week they were turning off nearly 3,000 GPS devices, many of them stuck underneath cars.

In 2009, Chief Lanier declared, "We're targeting for under 100 [homicides], and I think we can do it if we give everything we've got." With 132 murders recorded in 2010 and 108 last year, Lanier is knocking at the door of her stated goal.

At this time last year, there were 15 homicides in the city. This year there have been 12.

According to the most recent statistics, MPD has recovered 311 illegal firearms this year. Last year, 1,919 total guns were recovered, the fewest recovered since 2003.

A DC law enforcement officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity envisions where and how new gun-spotting equipment could be used throughout our region. "It could prevent a lot of the violence at the Go-Go shows. You could single them out one by one," the officer said. "It could make everyone safer."

The stories, like many press accounts about traffic cameras, are fairly one-sided, assuming that all readers drives, not walk or bike, and all of the drivers care more about having to pay a ticket than about being safe on the roads. Fox reporter Brian Ackland starts out with the leading question, "Is it about safety or is it really about making money?" Then, he talks only about the money and not at all about the safety.

Like too many reporters, he also quotes AAA and nobody else. There's one paraphrase of something Mayor Gray said in "a recent interview" on the opposing side. There are actually many groups in DC, like the Pedestrian Advisory Council, which have advocated and testified around cameras, and could provide a meaningful perspective from those who like the safety effect of cameras.

Still, the original petition has a point. A $40 fine in Maryland seems to get people to drive slower. Does DC need higher fines?

It would make sense to lower fines, if DC adds more cameras to catch more unsafe behavior. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) issued an RFP in June to buy more cameras, including ones that can detect drivers blocking crosswalks, not stopping before turning right on red, and not stopping when another vehicle stops to let a pedestrian cross. Some of the cameras will be mobile, so MPD can periodically move them to hot spots where residents have complained about dangerous driving.

Unfortunately, the RFP is still stuck in procurement, and it's been well over a year since MPD publicly talked about getting these cameras. Whichever agency or official currently needs to sign off, for whatever step it's at, should move it forward swiftly, and start the process to get even more cameras. Then, it may make sense to lower the fines.

How does the level of fines relate to the number of cameras? To achieve the goal of deterring unsafe driving, we can either hit drivers with huge charges when they're caught, or just catch them more often.

Criminologist Mark Kleiman has done substantial research on the tradeoff between the severity of punishment and the certainty of getting caught. A long prison term might deter someone from a crime more than a short prison term, but a far better deterrent is simply arresting people more quickly and more frequently when they commit a crime.

Kleiman studied fairly complex policing strategies to achieve this in criminal law, such as focusing intense police attention on a certain area for a period of time. For traffic, it's simple. With cameras, it's possible to enforce more of the laws against unsafe driving behavior, more of the time.

At a recent policy forum, I met Kleiman and asked him what he thought of cameras. He said the ideal enforcement system would be one where running a red light, or speeding, triggered a fine every time, but the fine was fairly low.

We'd need to make sure it's high enough that wealthier people don't just decide to constantly run red lights (which is dangerous) and then pay the extra cost, but it doesn't need to be very high. Experimentation could determine the lowest level of fine that actually deters the dangerous behavior.

And what of the argument that this is all about money? Lower fines but more cameras would prove it's not really about money. So would a policy of keeping the camera revenue out of general spending. Camera revenue used to go into a special fund to pay for traffic safety programs. Mayor Gray ended almost all such funds when he took office, but keeping the fund would ensure that nobody is trying to soak speeders just to pay for other priorities.

Regardless, DC needs to break the infuriating logjam in procurement. These cameras pay for themselves through tickets. In a for-profit company, a division that brought in revenue that covered costs would get to keep growing. Government budgeting doesn't work that way, and MPD can't simply take the money from camera tickets and buy more cameras. They need the Mayor and Council to allocate budget to buy and maintain the cameras, even when the effect is to return all the money to the budget for the next year.

Mayor Gray and the DC Council: Please put more cameras on the streets. Then, let's seriously look at whether we can still deter unsafe driving with lower fines.

On the evening of May 14, 2009, about 40 Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers showed up at our house and attempted to execute the warrant they secured for the suspect. When no one answered the door, they proceeded to attempt to break down our back gate. After 45 minutes with a battering ram, drill and a crow bar they succeeded in damaging our security gate we installed before moving in, the door frame and parts of the house's exterior near the door, but they had not gotten in. They were in the process of getting a ladder so that they could break in through the second story window when my wife arrived.

After determining what was going on and showing the officers her ID, my wife was able to convince them to stop trying to break in. She coaxed them into showing her the search warrant and then allowed them inside. They briefly searched the house and admitted that they had made a mistake. They gave her some forms about how to be reimbursed for the damage, apologized and left.

We weren't angry. Police work is often time-sensitive and the impression they gave was that they were eager to catch some bad guys—which we support. They made an effort to avoid mistakes, but still mistakes will be made when one is in a hurry. No one was hurt and we expected to made whole.

Unfortunately, we had to pay to repair the damage first, and then ask to be reimbursed. To replace the door and the frame cost several thousand dollars, which we were able to pull out of our savings. But fixing damage to the exterior of the house would require removing much of the wall and the windows, and would have set us back over $10,000. We couldn't afford to float DC a loan to fix this and we were concerned that we might get stuck with the bill. Since the damage was only cosmetic we decided not to repair the exterior.

We had the repairs done over the course of the summer and fall, submitted the paperwork in November of 2009 and received a reply in January of 2010. We were advised that while the District intends to compensate residents for damages for which it is liable, it was not liable for damages in our case because the search warrant was valid.

However, DC MPD General Order 309 states, "In those instances where a forcible entry occurs as a result of misinformation, misinterpretation of information, or erroneous judgment, the Department will provide an explanation to the owner/occupant, and will repair the damage as soon as possible."

We started a dialogue with the city's Office of Risk Management (ORM) which makes the decision in these types of claims. They informed us that they have to follow the decision of the MPD, which said the claim should not be paid. When we contacted our District MPD, they said it was for the ORM to decide—though the police have their own ORM which the city's ORM accused of stonewalling.

Feeling like both sides were trying to blame the other, we asked if we could have a meeting with both agencies together. MPD declined, saying that, "The matter has been properly addressed by both agencies, DC and MPD's ORM... Although the MPD ORM does not decide whether to award or deny a claim, we do support and stand by the DC ORM's ruling that your claim is denied." I called MPD's ORM and was told, somewhat rudely, that my claim was denied, and "how hard is that to understand." After that my calls and emails to the MPD's ORM went unreturned.

Left with seemingly no other recourse, we filed suit against the District.

Property damage complaints related to police investigations are not new: the Police Complaints Board investigated them in 2005, finding that officers occasionally failed to inform people why their houses were being searched and left without arranging for repairs or informing the owners how to have repairs reimbursed. We learned from that report that MPD is supposed to immediately contact the on-call Facilities Management staff member to make necessary repairs when it appears MPD is responsible for repairs. This was not done for us.

We were not eager to go to court and were concerned that the District would win for reasons of sovereign immunity. So I made a last ditch effort and wrote letters to then-Mayor Fenty and Chief Cathy Lanier [My wife joked that I might as well write Barack Obama too, as much as that it likely to work]. I cited the general order that calls for the city to repair damage in cases like this.

I was impressed when Chief Lanier wrote me the next morning to inform me that she would get involved. By the following day, a representative of the MPD's ORM told me that, "in light of the recent development," my claim would be paid. By recent development I assumed he meant getting chewed out by the Chief of Police.

In the end we were reimbursed in full, about 5 months after making our claim, but there are three key ways this frustrating and time-consuming debacle could have been avoided.

DC needs better electronic record-keeping. Before the warrant execution, we sent back dozens of pieces of official mail, including checks intended for the previous residents, to the District. And there were at least four places in DC records where the sale, ownership and new residents of the home were documented. If the MPD is going to rely on these records as the basis for a search warrant, they should work to link them so that when changes to the recorder of deeds records are made, for example, a flag goes up in other records.

Ideally the system could be searchable so that they could search for an address and get a time-ordered listing set of records pertaining to that address. Had that existed, they could see that the person they were looking for had lived there, but that all the newest records related to a new set of owners. The information they needed was in their possession, but their system couldn't easily access it.

When property is damaged in this way, MPD needs to follow policy and offer to make repairs immediately. I'm not sure we would have taken them up on it as we preferred to use our own contractor, but not everyone is able to front the money. I have visions of people living with a broken down door for months, and that's not acceptable.

MPD should be proactive and let residents know if they're going to reimburse them for damage, and for which damage, within a very short time after an incident (i.e. a week) instead of only after the repairs are made. We were left to guess as to which damage would be covered and which would not, and to worry that none of it would be covered. A slow, mysterious bureaucratic process is not a productive way to handle these kinds of situations.

The Metropolitan Police Department publishes data online starting from 1998 indicating each homicide victim's race. Combining the MPD data with population projections derived from official Census figures allows computing the homicide rate per 100,000 residents by race.

An analysis of FBI victim data and population estimates based off of Census Bureau findings reveals that from 1998 to 2003, the number of homicides ranged from 61.6 to 72.9 black victims per 100,000 black residents. Starting in 2004, even as the number of black District residents dropped, the black homicide victim count decreased at an even faster rate.

The rate fluctuated from 49.6 to 58.1 during the five years from 2004 to 2008. Over the past few years rates dropped at an even faster rate, to 43.0 in 2009 and 37.7 in 2010. Although these are notable improvements, for comparison, the national homicide rate was 16.5 black victims per 100,000 black residents in 2009.

Among white residents the homicide rate ranged from 3.3 to 11.3 during the period of 1998 to 2002. From 2003 to 2010, the figure further decreased, ranging from zero to 3.1 per 100,000 residents over the 7-year span. During the five most recent years with data available (2006 to 2010), the rate averaged 1.5 white homicide victims per 100,000 white residents.

In fact, white residents face a lower homicide victim rate in the District than the nation as a whole. Nationally, 2.7 white residents are homicide victims per 100,000 white residents. But, among DC white residents, this figure is lower both when looking at data from either of the most recent two years (zero and 1.3 in 2009 and 2010, respectively) or the latest 5-year average (1.5).

There are many limitations to expressing homicide rates in these terms for any geographic entity smaller than the nation as a whole. Victims at a state or city level may or may not be actual residents of that state or city. Urban areas tend to have a much larger actual number of people present compared to residents because of commuters, tourists and business travelers. However, the data still provides a useful measure of the relative safety of any given location.

It should be noted that a comparable analysis is not available for other races, more than one race, or residents of Hispanic origin. The US Census Bureau tracks Hispanic origin as a separate identifier than race, while MPD uses it as one of the possible race categories. This difference coupled with a consolidated "other" category makes it difficult to extend this analysis to other races and individuals of Hispanic origin.

Of course, race alone does not explain differences in homicide occurrences. Each death is tragic and occurs under different circumstances as Homicide Watch D.C. strives to document.

Nonetheless, analyzing racial trends can provide insight into the perceptions and realities that District residents must negotiate with regard to personal safety. The trends may also prove useful in identifying some of the possible targeted opportunities that relate to public safety, family and community support, education and economic opportunities.