CRIME REDUCTION or DUPING THE GULLIBLE?

By: Joel E. Gordon

A Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) was implemented by the Baltimore City Police Department. This strategy aims to address the norms perpetuating violence in Baltimore by focusing resources on individuals identified as being at the highest acute risk of involvement in gun violence. GVRS is also known as focused deterrence requiring sufficient manpower to step up police interactions in crime-ridden zones.

With limited manpower and shifting coverage priorities, the question has become whether crime is being actually reduced or simply being moved or displaced.

Baltimore’s Mayor and former Police Commissioner Michael Harrison claimed there was no evidence of Crime Displacement but the numbers may tell a different story.

"It is important to note, a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania’s crime and justice policy lab found no evidence of displacement when analyzing whether the focus population moved from the Western District to adjacent districts," said Harrison.

So, people are asking why is crime to the north and south on the rise? In the Northeastern District specifically, homicides have exploded by 111% in the last year. And in the Southern District, they've jumped 28%. Meanwhile, city-wide homicides have still surpassed 300 for the 8th straight year in 2022.

"Displacement is a real thing. Displacement is something that we do see when any type of enforcement or criminal justice strategy is employed in a particular area, we do tend to see increases elsewhere," said former Baltimore Police Deputy Commissioner Jason Johnson.

A police presence can be a deterrent for criminal behavior. My own goal as a community cop with a primary area of responsibility was to eradicate criminal behavior on my watch in my area of responsibility. In fact, I was always proud to belong to a shift or agency where crime prevention, to the extent possible, was a number one goal behind staying safe and returning home unharmed at the end of each tour of duty.

One evening just past dusk back in my inner-city policing days, I remember noticing a young teenager standing on a corner near a hardware store. This didn’t look right, as he appeared to be nervous. I did not tip my hand, driving past him and parking out of his sight. He must have either frozen, or maybe I really tricked him into thinking I wasn’t paying attention, because he failed to sound the customary “5-0” signal verbalizing a police presence (as in Hawaii 5-0). Upon my walking back toward the store, I saw that the kid was a lookout and his accomplice was chiseling out cinder blocks with a hammer in an attempt break in to the store without activating its alarm. Both were arrested before they could gain access to the inside of the store. In a response to attempt to reduce crime and juvenile mischief later at night, the city had enacted a curfew law for those underage. (By the way a new curfew has been recently enacted despite police manpower shortages).

Then there was the group of teenagers who were breaking into businesses on my post while I was working midnight shift in the summer of 1982. In Baltimore City, the curfew existed for school-age youth past 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends where they were not allowed on the street without adult supervision. Numerous burglaries were occurring on my post in ways not easily detected, such as through rooftop ductwork and the like. Mind you, I was very good at “trying up” or checking to see that my businesses were locked up tight. In the winter, supervisors would occasionally meet you to see if you had been out of the car checking by feeling to see if your badge was cold. I would also leave “tell tales” at areas and doorways already checked. A tree branch or Coke bottle would do. When I spotlighted past these areas, the “tell-tale” would have to have been moved for an intrusion to have occurred at that potential point of entry. In spite of this, just about every day of the week, dayshift was getting a call at one of my businesses for a burglary.

I stepped up my patrol efforts and began to discover a group of four or five teenagers in violation of curfew, nightly. I would catch them and transport them to the “Best Western” as we would refer to our station. There they would wait for their parents to sign for their future court appearance and pick them up. They were back out before I completed my paperwork on them. After several nights of charging the same kids for curfew violations, my problems with businesses being broken into ceased. Being the most southwestern post in the Western District, the Southwestern District was at the southern and western boundary to my post. The officers who worked on the other side of the street worked off of a different radio frequency than I did and reported to a different station for roll call. It was really not much different than if we worked for different jurisdictions.

You see, the curfew violators got tired of dealing with me and my burglary problem stopped. But 834 post of the Southwestern District, to the south of my Baltimore Street boundary, saw a sudden spike in midnight shift commercial burglaries. The police and the criminals know these artificial boundaries and the juveniles just moved their activity to the south. Although I never caught them at it, they were the burglars.

I learned a valuable lesson from this that would later serve me well as a security consultant in the private sector years later: You can’t always truly prevent crime, but you can move it by taking opportunity away through increased risk of being caught. This is why signage and a well-placed alarm/surveillance system reduces your chances of being a victim and increases your unprotected neighbor’s chances of a break-in.

Although displacement of crime is real; do police ever truly prevent crime? Yes, but in the absence of incarceration, diversion or rehabilitation of the offenders, crime displacement based solely upon street-level police enforcement efforts is, in fact, often a likely result.

In spite of what is known, Baltimore’s new police commissioner, Rich Worley, has vowed to continue the GVRS strategy despite a turnover in personnel in the unit; even bringing back a previously retired police commander to lead the effort. Let’s hope that lessons learned will bring about real solutions to positively impact crime rates in Baltimore and elsewhere.

Joel E. Gordon, Managing Editor of BLUE Magazine, is a former Field Training Officer with the Baltimore City Police Department and is a past Chief of Police for the city of Kingwood, West Virginia. He has also served as vice-chair of a multi-jurisdictional regional narcotics task force. An award winning journalist, he is author of the book Still Seeking Justice: One Officer's Story and founded the Facebook group Police Authors Seeking Justice. Look him up at stillseekingjustice.com