Margaret Logan lived the first half of her life in New York and said she knew too well the randomness of crime. In 1978, she moved to southern Prince George's County, where rural back roads replaced the cacophony of the city streets.
Until recently, she said, her Clinton neighborhood could not have been more idyllic.
Chief Melvin C. High wants more officers in the 5th Police District.
(File Photo)
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"I left the city to feel safe here, and now I feel the same fear for my family that I did living in the city," Logan, 53, told elected officials and top-ranking police officers at a community meeting last week in Brandywine, organized in response to rising crime and a simultaneous personnel shortage.
Hundreds of residents packed a room at the Baden firehouse off Brandywine Road to discuss the dwindling police presence in the county's 5th Police District, which stretches roughly from parts of Upper Marlboro to the Charles and Calvert County lines, and where about 90,000 people live. Oftentimes, they said, crime victims wait hours before an officer responds to their calls.
"You hear all the stories, and everybody knows someone who has been through it," said Aloysius Briscoe, 76, who lives in the Aquasco area. "People call to report a stolen car, and they have to wait seven, eight hours for a response. We've had a few break-ins at the stores around here, and it took 45 minutes to an hour -- sometimes two hours -- before the police showed up."
Police officials and union leaders who attended the meeting, all of whom confirmed the long waits, said there's a simple reason for them: In the county's 5th Police District, geographically its largest, 31 officers are assigned to patrol its 180 square miles. Most shifts, four or five officers are on duty, and they often traverse the entire swath answering the roughly 150 calls the district fields each day.
In recent weeks, for example, as few as two officers have been on patrol, including Nov. 15, when two worked from midnight to 8 a.m. The night of the meeting, Nov. 17, four officers were on duty.
"It's become a situation where if all hell breaks loose, there will only be a small handful of officers who can respond, and if they are at the other end of the district, it will take them too long to get to the scene," said Donnie Bell, vice president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 89.
"Not only is the safety of the citizens at stake, but so is the safety of the officers," Bell said. "Officers need adequate backup for emergency calls."
As the county's population has grown, calls for service in the district, based in Clinton, have increased from about 22,000 in 1992 to about 38,000 in 2003. In the same period, the number of sworn officers assigned to the district has fallen from about 90.
In response to the criticisms voiced at the meeting, Police Chief Melvin C. High said he will commit more officers to the district, which includes the county's rural tier, an area that remains the least developed in Prince George's. He said that officers from other sections have been assigned there temporarily and that additional overtime shifts have been authorized.
"Each one of you might have had an issue where we might not have responded for a couple of hours, and that's what we're trying to fix," he said to the audience, which some organizers estimated at 500 people. "We recognize that we have to improve on our response times."
County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D), who sat near High and other elected officials, including Del. James E. Proctor Jr. (D-Prince George's) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), said he has authorized funds to hire 150 new officers in each of the next two years. If he's reelected in 2006, he said, he will continue to authorize the hiring of that many officers until 900 new officers have been hired.
"We are building our police department as fast as we can," Johnson said.
