Crime Watch in Silver Spring
Police in 3rd District Strive to Make the Streets Safe in Revitalized Downtown

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008

At 5:58 p.m. last Thursday, Brian Merryman received the kind of radio dispatch that gets his attention: a fight in progress, just north of downtown Silver Spring, involving up to four teenagers surrounded by a crowd of spectators.

Merryman, a Montgomery County police officer, hit the sirens and, two minutes later, was one of three officers zipping around the area of Ellsworth Drive and Springvale Road. They all knew how such fights can escalate. In one extreme case, seven weeks before and a half-mile away, a fight between two groups ended with a 19-year-old accused of fatally stabbing an 18-year-old.

Merryman is one of about 125 officers -- along with 17 sergeants, three lieutenants and one captain -- in the Montgomery County Police Department's 3rd District, an area along the county's eastern edge, bordered by Washington to the south and Howard County to the north. The district of approximately 177,000 people includes the streets of downtown Silver Spring, apartment complexes in White Oak and spread-out areas around Burtonsville.

In 2007, the district recorded 214 aggravated assaults, 345 robberies and 3,568 cases of theft, all the highest totals for such crimes among the county's six police districts. Among the challenges:

· Keeping revitalized downtown Silver Spring safe enough that people continue flocking to its stores, theaters and restaurants.

· Reducing a deluge of car break-ins, in which thieves make off with MP3 players, Global Positioning System devices and laptop computers.

· Curbing street robberies, which sometimes involve transients from other jurisdictions or local teenage assailants motivated not so much by what they can get as the desire to be seen as a thug.

But, taken as a whole, crime is not out of control, police said. Robberies decreased from 213 per 100,000 residents in 2006 to 195 per 100,000 residents in 2007. There were three homicides in the district in 2007, the same as in 2006. No category is "truly alarming," said Lt. Eric Burnett, an deputy commander of the 3rd District.

During Merryman's shift, another call came through the radio: Two of the alleged participants in the fight, including one wearing a red baseball cap, were walking in downtown Silver Spring. Merryman and three other officers caught up with the young men near a Whole Foods store.

One of the youths, 17, told Merryman that another teen had squared off with him and ridiculed him about his pregnant girlfriend.

The tormenter tried to throw a few punches, the teenager told Merryman, but he said he let it go and left.

"I'm glad you guys walked away," Merryman said, telling the youth and his red-capped buddy to just go home for the evening.

Merryman, 26, works 10-hour shifts, from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., four days a week. Some days he races from call to call. Other days, the radio is quiet, as it was by 11 p.m. last Thursday.

"Tonight is dead," he said. "I can't even get a suspended registration."

The son of a detective in Baltimore County, Merryman received a criminal justice and criminology degree at the University of Maryland in College Park. He supplements his income by giving private drum lessons, and, until recently, he drummed for an alternative rock band named No Compromise. Patrolling alone in his patrol car, he listens to an eclectic mix of music: a band called Sick Puppies, but also Beethoven. Merryman, who lives in Hagerstown, joined the Montgomery force in 2003 and was assigned to District 3 that year.

During those five years, he says, downtown Silver Spring has gotten safer. Officers regularly patrol on foot and on bicycles. Merryman makes regular swings through the area in his car.

His challenge while on patrol is to distinguish between youths who might be up to trouble and those who are honor-roll students on their way to a bookstore. As Burnett, the assistant commander says, "Everybody dresses the same."

Late in his shift, with downtown Silver Spring's streets thinned out, Merryman spotted a professorial-looking patron exiting a pub. He was walking a little funny, but it was unclear why. The officer followed him to his car and tailed him for about a dozen blocks. No weaving. No rolling through stop signs.

"He's driving like a champ," Merryman said, giving up for other pursuits.

Also during the shift, Merryman addressed two of the top crime problems his district: car break-ins and robberies. Many of the car break-ins are in the denser southern part of the district, including parking lots of apartment complexes and parking garages in downtown Silver Spring. In 2007, robbers in particular hit areas around downtown Silver Spring and near Route 29 and Briggs Chaney Road.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Merryman slipped his cruiser slowly through the parking lot of apartments near Dexter and Georgia avenues, just north of the Beltway, which have been targeted by thieves. He didn't catch anyone, admitting that doing so at that time at night is difficult because there are a number of innocent people walking about. Merryman and other officers call car break-ins a largely preventable crime, if people would take valuables such as MP3 players and GPS devices with them, keep their car interiors empty and lock their doors.

As for robberies, weekly crime reports reveal the violence that underlies some of the robberies: Several suspects on Castle Boulevard on March 7 forced a victim into a vehicle, drove him around, beat him and dropped him off; March 21, three suspects, one armed with a baseball bat, beat a victim and took his belongings; at 6:55 a.m. March 30, two assailants in downtown Silver Spring, one carrying a gun, robbed two women of their purses.

Merryman had responded to a robbery the night before, near Springvale Road and Pershing Drive north of Silver Spring. A man walking to a restaurant, listening to an MP3 player, was surrounded by a group of about eight young people, who pushed him to the pavement and stole the music player and his wallet.

Now, taking a break from patrolling the roads, Merryman returned a call from the man's wife.

"Neither of you walked alone in the dark again tonight, did you?" Merryman asked.

They hadn't, she told him, and in fact she had gone door-to-door in the area of the robbery, letting people know what had happened.

Later, around 11 p.m., seeing a man walk down Georgia Avenue, seemingly oblivious to the world around him, Merryman observed: "We call that a robbery waiting to happen."

Burnett, the assistant commander, advised people walking at night to do so in pairs, and on the lighted side of the street. "I don't want to say walk with your head on a swivel," he said. "But walk like you have some meaning in your step."