October 12, 2007
MPD's 'Operation Full Stride' Begins Today
Last week Mayor Fenty ordered more beat cops out of their cars and on to the streets in the wake of a series of eleven shootings over the course of one weekend. Today, the MPD is launching something they're calling "Operation Full Stride." The name is easily mocked, but are its intentions?
Two hundred officers will go door-to-door today in neighborhoods like Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, the Georgia Ave. corridor, and North Capitol Street, handing out calling cards with their contact information.
"This is old-fashioned policing at its best. There is no better way for residents to get to know their neighborhood officers than to see them out every day, up close and personal,” said Chief Lanier in a released statement. “Residents should know the officers assigned to their communities by name, and rely on them as a direct line of communication to MPD.”
Make sure to let us know if you encounter one of these 200 officers today. We're curious to see who and where they actually go and how residents react to meeting them.
Photo by Eye Captain
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Two hundred officers will go door-to-door today in neighborhoods like Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, the Georgia Ave. corridor, and North Capital Street, handing out calling cards with their contact information.
And an excellent opportunity for the police to collect their much-deserved protection money. Always nice to be able to associate a face with the malevolent voice over the phone that demands their payment once a month.
There is no better way for residents to get to know their neighborhood officers than to see them out every day, up close and personal.
Too bad they'll only be in that particular PSA for six months tops, before they're rotated to another neighborhood. On the other hand, you now have a constant supply of new faces that you won't help for fear of retribution.
I was very pleased to see DC's finest bust three totally obnoxious teenagers from our block for drug possession. They were a group of sexist, racist thugs who pestered everyone and now they get to pester and annoy the big guys in their cells. Their arrests put a big smile on my face yesterday and I'm looking forward to more guys who hang out on the street getting busted.
Beat cops are a great idea--the program should be made permanent.
north capitol street, not north capital street
monkey:
why do you bother inserting these sorts of insinuations after virtually every post here? And you don't have the courage to make your points plainly. Instead, you paint on some thin, rote satire, or add an absurd non-sequitur for cover. You may pride yourself on your jaded and wacky internet persona but it's just tedious.
DC does something like this every few years. It doesn't take. The cops seem to stop after a few weeks when the noise dies down.
I remember the neighborhood temp. stations they setup a few years ago. Haven't seen or heard about them since. My feeling is that DC cops are too lazy.
And, by the way, I hope to provoke debate on this. I hope a DC cop or someone else can prove me wrong. Why not have more foot patrols ALL THE TIME????
He means if you give them your weed they won't arrest you for it.
Yeah, MS, I hear your complaint that DC cops are lazy. Since I mostly see them driving around talking on cell phones, I'm inclined to agree.
The best cop I've seen in my neighborhood is the one who busts people running red lights on Columbia Road. I only wish she would do something about the chronic double-parking between 18th and 16th Streets.
I think I saw one of them last night, at the door of the liquor store at Columbia Heights (Monroe and 14th), across the street from the Tivoli Square Ruby Tuesday. He is followed by two camera men with camera rolling and a tall, attractive female reporter. Didn't know what this was about at the time.
#5 - I do it to irritate you.
Maybe you can wrap your tiny little buttondown mind around this: if the cops weren't enforcing the law behind a two-ton automobile, what makes you think they'll do it after a long day of pounding the pavement talking to idiots like yourself? Think they'll take care of the doubleparking on U and 14th, now that they're WALKING past it and it's PEEING IN THEIR FACE?
Beat cops are the sort of feelgood policy that has little impact on crime but sounds great during election time. Neighborhood Crime Stations, anyone? Community policing? Anyone here ever sat through a neighborhood meeting where the cops just spat out rote statistics of how many cars got broken into? How about the standard reply, "We're doing everything we can but we need your help"? So you click your red slippers and say "there's no place like home" but you're still sitting in a church basement listening to canned plattitudes that were tired and worn out when you first heard them three years ago and you're wondering if you have any f***ing Hot Pockets left back in the fridge because putting up with all this b******t is giving you an appetite.
Talk about tedious. But hey, what do I know? I'm sure it will work THIS TIME. THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT. That's right, baby. I f**k her but I LOVE YOU.
What about Shaw?
"I remember the neighborhood temp. stations they setup a few years ago. Haven't seen or heard about them since. My feeling is that DC cops are too lazy."
There is supposedly one of those inside the 7-11 at South Capitol and M St SW. There is a big sign in the window (with Ramsey's name on it) and a podium near the ATM machine with an MPD logo on it.
Never once I have ever seen an MPD offer "staffing" the post however. There is, however, a US Park Police officer that is often in there eating her dinner behind the counter.
"Yeah, MS, I hear your complaint that DC cops are lazy. Since I mostly see them driving around talking on cell phones, I'm inclined to agree."
I actually brought this issue up with a high ranking member of the MPD. He told me that every single time an MPD officer uses his cell phone in a car it is because he is facing a true emergency situation that can not be handled by the radio system. He actually said that with a straight face.
So that pretty much tells you how much the MPD cares about their officers and that law.
Can we flag this thread so that a year from now when they're doing "Last year in dcist...", you can say that I predicted that beat cops were sent back to their cars after violent crime increased? If I'm wrong, I promise to buy everyone in this thread a round of pina colonics (one per customer, no sharing, three colonic minimum, ladies free after 8pm).
I also predict that the mayor will implement a Youth Crime Initiative that will involve opening up playgrounds, new after-school activities, bookmobile services, and other programs that teenage criminals have been demanding for years.
monkey:
Beat cops are the sort of feelgood policy that has little impact on crime but sounds great during election time.
http://www.fsu.edu/news/2005/06/24/more.cops/
Oh sorry, you don't do argument or thought. Forgot. You do banal satire and wacky prose, in which your last post was again abundant. Does your "outrageous" online personality appear in your personal or professional life? Are you the guy in pink sunglasses at the office?
Jonathan Klick, the Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law at FSU, and Alexander Tabarrok of George Mason University, found a 15 percent reduction in crime in the police district where the White House and National Mall are located when additional officers were on duty during high terror alert days. The study was published in the Journal of Law and Economics.
You're quoting a guy who cuts his hair with a cereal bowl? Who can argue with such a broad-ranging longitudinal study? I mean, jeeze, the whole Mall? The most wretched hive of scum and villainy this side of Mos Eisley? And nothing about beat cops, just officers on duty? I thought we were talking about beat cops? Maybe you got confused and thought I wrote "beating off into a cup and calling it statistical proof."
The increased police presence had no effect on murders and other crimes that typically take place out of sight.
FAIL. See that's what happens when you use the first Google hit as "proof." Besides, if NYC is a model for community policing, it's going to take a s***load more than a handful of beat cops to have any impact on DC street crime. But by all means, keep beating that dead horse. Eventually it will sing opera.
Why Operation Full Stride and not Operation Ain't Nothin' Gonna Break My Stride?
Wow. I never thought watching someone take on Monkey would be so amusing! But there you have it.
I have something to say, but I have to stop laughing at the previous witty comments first - no - really they were funny!)
Okay, I agree that having police walking a beat probably reduces response time to calls for service, but makes people feel good. People feel good because they think somebody in MPD finally understands what's really going on inthe hood. So instead of taking cops out of their car, why don't have a new group of officers - 200 sounds good - who are dedicated to walking the beat and acting as the eyes and ears of MPD at large.
You could also have them or another group respond only to 311 calls so the excuse you always hear calling 311 "sorry but all available officers are responding to real crime" is no more.
During a high-alert period, the D.C. police department increases the number of patrols, increases the length of shifts in order to put more police on the street, and activates a Joint Operations Command Center, which is run by the D.C. police but also includes federal, regional, and other local officials.
[...]
We hypothesize that the level of crime decreases on high-alert days in D.C. because of greater police presence on the streets.
The Journal of Law and Economics, vol. XLVIII (April 2005)
Monkey, come on, the pink sunglasses and/or wacky hair colors. We want to know.
The problem with a dedicated beat cop cadre is that perennial problem with the DC police force: retention. Every year the Council gives them more money for recruiting and retention and every year they lose more than they hire. It's like DC Public School teachers, except they've got guns instead of chalk.
I'm no fan of Ramsey, but one of the many reasons crime continued to decline on his watch was that he didn't cave to community pressure to put beat cops on the street. He maintained to the day he left that the best use of the finite resource of cops is having them in cars, covering PSAs, and focusing on improving response time.
Of those 200, a third will be gone within a year to Montgomery County or Loudon where they will make twice as much for half the amount of policing. Until the Council pays wages comparable to the cheaper and safer suburbs, beat cops are a luxury DC can ill afford.
No sunglasses. No wacky hair. I'm just building a stairway to heaven...IN MY PANTS.
"HEAR THAT MA? TOP OF THE WORLD!"
Until the Council pays wages comparable to the cheaper and safer suburbs, beat cops are a luxury DC can ill afford.
Seriously, why can't we at least match the salaries of those jurisdictions? Isn't there like a $100 million surplus in the District this year. Can't we use say 1/2 for higher salaries or retention bonuses tied to length of service?
FWIW -- I find the apathy problem worse with the Fire Dept. and EMS workers who can often be spotted strolling from the ambulance or fire truck to the scene of a medical emergency more slowly than I'm walking on my way back from lunch.
I have to disagree that cops in cars is the best use of resources. There is a sort of detachment about them, an aimless staring into space that I've noticed countless times. At least being on the beat will get the blood circulating.
I'm pretty sure that the Council will give Fenty $80 of that $100 mil to fix the schools. Because that $1.2 billion he's already got just won't effin cut it. I mean, lets get real here.
They should probably put the other $20 mil towards the Zipcar lawsuit before they blow it on Hurricane and Lotto tickets.
I'm pretty sure that the Council will give Fenty $80 of that $100 mil to fix the schools. Because that $1.2 billion he's already got just won't effin cut it. I mean, lets get real here.
They should probably put the other $20 mil towards the Zipcar lawsuit before they blow it on Hurricane and Lotto tickets.
Monkey:
Why just ladies free after 8 pm? Are you saying us 'mos don't rate a free drink or two as the twilight descends on us all, making sweet nuanced evening happy magic for us all?
Or is it because we say shit like 'making sweet nuanced evening happy magic'?
I'm not policing expert (despite having 'dated' a few cops in my time), but I think there are certain types of crime that beat cops can be very good at getting rid of.
That is, the repeat offender and recurring crime problems in a particular block or area, for everything from pissing in your yard to petty theft. Everybody in the neighborhood knows who these losers are and see their same BS day in and day out for years, but try telling that to a cop who won't get out of the car. It's a familiar pattern - the loser spends all day pissing in your yard and looking for shit to steal. You call the cops, and an hour later when one shows up he has no idea who you are talking about, who you are, where this guy hangs out, etc. So you get frustrated and you stop calling.
If the cops are forced to walk a beat, they will at a minimum disrupt the comfy piss and theft patterns of some of these losers, at least causing them a minimum of discomfort. They will have to get to know the neighbors, especially the annoying ones like me. And the block won't seem like such a 'free shit zone' to the pissing and steal loser.
And that's a shitload more than DC cops are used to doing.
And the institutional knowledge beat cops can gain can be very valuable. If you never get out of your car you are NEVER going to get witnesses to actually talk to you or trust you. You will never get to know the players in the community.
Most importantly, it would open the door for the possibility for PREVENTIVE policing. DC police are almost totally reactive...... they show up an hour later, ensconced in their Pepsi Police vehicles, to clean up AFTER the crime. They never seem interested in actually preventing the crime.
Getting out on the street at least has the potential to prevent a few crimes. I'd rather prevent the crime then worry about the cop being delayed in showing up after the crime. I mean, what's the difference between the cop showing up an hour later versus showing up an hour and five minutes later?
Will it be permanent or useful enough? Who knows. But at least I'll feel like a least a few cops are actually doing something (and as we know just feeling like some good is being done is often all we have to look forward to from any DC government entity.... perception isn't as good as reality, but when the reality sucks sometimes perception is all you got).
Am I fooling myself into thinking it's more valuable than it really is? Possibly. But Lord knows what we do now isn't working, so how about we give this a try and see how it goes?
With the exception of the last comment, I do not see a single intelligent or informed opinion on policing in any of your statements. First, Loudoun County Deputies starting salary is in the mid-30's. MPD officers will be making 50 within 2 years. MoCo has a lower starting salary as well. The only higher paying departments in the area are WMAAAPD, Arlington County PD, and Capitol Hill PD. DC officers can get overtime very easily... An arrest means papering your case. Unless you're on daywork that means OT.
If any DC officers leave, it probably has more to due with the fear of reprimand that was instilled into the department during the Ramsey-reign than due to salary. Some may leave because being a city cop just isn't for them. I know of a few guys who did this. They went on to have very rewarding careers in other departments.
I think officers on foot is great. Police presence is felt by any criminal element when they see a "beat cop" walking towards them. It forces officers to take better note of what is around them as well.
it worked on "the wire"
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My monkey-sense is tingling. It's saying that the mad s****ers and corner dealers are just going to shuffle a few blocks away when they see the beat cops, then back to the usual alley pissing and breaking-and-entering. It's neighborhood hotspot deployment writ large, with similar consequences: more overtime, a handful of arrests, declare victory, move elsewhere, then business as usual. And what are the chances of a beat cop just happening upon a crime in progress? You've got a better chance of catching the Pope banging a buffalo in the Vatican.
ANCs and Business Improvement Districts need to take it to the next level. I hear Blackwater is looking for domestic work. Sure, a few pedestrians might get ventilated by friendly fire, but you can't make an omlette without breaking a few heads. Or something.
True, it may just move crime around a bit, but a lot of these losers are creatures of habit. Especially since they often don't venture more than a few blocks from their favorite liquor store or panhandling spot.
Actually the chances of a beat cop happening on minor crimes in DC is pretty high. Whether he's willing to do anything about it is a different story.
I'm actually looking for a little good old fashioned harassing - everybody knows these losers by face and reputation..... make it clear that their little routines are going to be interrupted indefinitely and maybe they'll move on. Eventually they may tire of the game and either alter their ways or move to PG County. Either way, I don't have to deal with them anymore. And that is my admittedly selfish goal.
I live in Columbia Heights, and the first time I saw ANY cops at all for the past 2 weeks was today (the 16th), and yet my councilman keeps reassuring us all that the cops are there. I call shenanigans.