Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-07-17 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

“This,” says Det. Lamont Davis, holding out a book the size of a cops-and-robbers novel, “is the bible.”

“The bible?” asks City Councilman Keiffer Mitchell, who is here to learn.

Davis works out of the Eastern District of the Baltimore Police Department, and he stands here in the dreariness of a little corridor by a row of cells with Detective Dennis Workley. This is their work space. In a time when the great law enforcement thinkers of Baltimore tell us gang activity is exploding and that everybody should be pretty anxious, these two say they are precisely one-half of the police department’s full-time gang unit, the only ones whose work consists of nothing but gang-related enforcement and intelligence.

“The Blood bible,” says Davis, opening the pages of the book. By “Blood,” he means the notorious, nationally connected street gang with a dramatically increased presence in the Baltimore metro area — the one that’s heavily contributed to a computerized file and a large loose-leaf notebook, filled with the names and profiles of roughly 1,100 alleged members of Baltimore street gangs.

Fascinating as this, we need everybody’s hands on another bible at this moment. For on the day after the detectives’ repeated claims, in this space Monday, that their little unit is the only one in the city assigned full time to such important enforcement and intelligence work and no other, the police brass say otherwise.

“We’re the only ones in this department working full time on gangs,” Workley said during a lengthy interview with Mitchell and me.

“We do the enforcement, and we do the intelligence,” Davis said.

“Let’s just focus on the facts,” police spokesman Matt Jablow said Monday. He pointed out that there is a criminal intelligence unit, operating out of police headquarters, that coordinates gang enforcement activities and that each district has a separate liaison officer connected to the headquarters unit.

“We meet every two weeks,” Jablow said, “with people from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the State’s Attorney’s Office to cover all kinds of information on gangs. Also, every single district has a top 10 list of criminal suspects. Many gang members are on those lists.”

“This headquarters unit, they hit the streets to go after gang members?” Jablow was asked.

“No,” Jablow said, “they’re not involved in enforcement.”

“These district liaison officers who report to the headquarters unit, there’s one liaison officer in each district?” he was asked.

“Yes.”

“And they hit the streets to go after gang members?”

“No,” Jablow said, “they gather information, and maintain it, and pass it along. They’re not enforcement per se. But, understand, throughout the city, officers are going after gang members.”

Nobody’s disputing that for a moment. As this column stated Monday: “Other police are arresting gang members, and other police share information with the unit operating out of Eastern District — and vice versa.” And nobody’s disputing that police are deeply concerned about the gangs.

But questions arise: How are the police expressing that concern? By denigrating the word of the two Eastern District gang unit detectives and trying to say coverage is more extensive than it really is?

“What the detectives told you is true,” Paul Blair said Monday. He is president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

“The ones working out of headquarters, that’s not a gang unit,” Blair said. “We need something like New York or Los Angeles, fully staffed units where they’re serious about this. I think they’ve got four guys at headquarters trying to gather intelligence when they get free time.”

(Asked about the staff numbers at headquarters, Jablow said he was not sure but would call back. At press time, he had not.)

“The guys at headquarters,” Blair said, “they’re not out in the streets every day. They’re not even a 24-7 unit. Then you’ve got one guy in each of the districts trying to collect data. One guy, what’s that? But the four guys out of Eastern are the only ones in the department dedicated strictly to gang issues, enforcement and intelligence.

“The real problem here,” Blair said, “is that we’re so desperately short of police, it’s considered a luxury to put people strictly on gangs. Everybody in the department’s concerned about them. But these guys at Eastern are the only full-time guys. What they said is true. But I hope they didn’t commit political suicide by saying it.”

Maybe we can talk about such things tomorrow.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com