Some D.C. Victims, Detectives Question 'All Hands on Deck' Crime Initiative

"Looks like 7/5, 7/6 and 7/7 are free to investigate my crime victim's cases," Hawkins wrote in the e-mail.

The resident wrote a follow-up message to a supervisor, Inspector Michael Reese, asking that her case be assigned right away. "After the attentive and painstaking work . . . it seems odd that this case would be virtually abandoned for at least two weeks," she wrote.

Reese declined to comment. Hawkins said he was able to check with a couple of pawnshops on his days off. He's scheduled to work the next All Hands the weekend of July 24.

"There are burglaries and serious assaults and armed robberies that are set aside because of AHOD," said Hawkins, a detective for 11 years. "Detectives should be exempt because it jeopardizes cases."

The tactic of flooding the city with officers is not new. Former police chief Charles H. Ramsey declared "crime emergencies." Lanier called her first All Hands in June 2007, six months after becoming chief. There were five details last year. Officials called them all successful because of the increased number of arrests, although few were for homicides or other violent crimes. The extra officers sometimes organize community events during All Hands weekends, which gives them a chance to spend time meeting and talking with residents, a hallmark of Lanier's community policing strategy.

Detectives in units other than homicide quietly grumble that they don't have as much time as homicide investigators to work on cases because they get pulled to do special duty, which can be an All Hands, a major protest or a presidential inauguration. As of June 20 of this year, the closure rate for homicide cases is 72 percent, up from 41 percent in 1997.

Kristopher Baumann, head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, said it doesn't make sense to put extra officers on weekend duty when agency statistics show that crime in some parts of the city spikes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

"If it's that's important, why hasn't the chief gone to the council to say we need 6,500 officers so we can have the equivalent of All Hands on Deck all the time?"

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who chairs the committee that oversees the police, said that All Hands has several benefits but that residents should not have to wait days for a detective to follow up on a crime report, no matter what the reason.

"The first 24 to 48 hours are critical for solving a case, and if you lose that time because you don't have a detective available, you make it potentially difficult to close a case," Mendelson said. "I don't know if one can blame All Hands on Deck, but one can blame the managerial decision of how the officers are being deployed and how they can work these cases."