[Senate Hearing 105-640]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 105-640
``KEEPING THE NATION'S CAPITAL SAFE''
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF
GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING,
AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 27, 1998
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
50-356cc WASHINGTON : 1998
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOHN GLENN, Ohio
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
DON NICKLES, Oklahoma MAX CLELAND, Georgia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Leonard Weiss, Minority Staff Director
Lynn L. Baker, Chief Clerk
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania MAX CLELAND, Georgia
Michael Rubin, Staff Director
Laurie Rubenstein, Minority Staff Director
Esmeralda Amos, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Brownback............................................ 1
WITNESSES
Monday, July 27, 1998
Charles H. Ramsey, Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police
Department, District of Columbia, accompanied by Terrence
Gainer, Executive Assistant Chief of Police, and Mike
Fitzgerald, Assistant Chief, Technical Services................ 3
James F. Foreman, Coordinator, Metro Orange Coalition............ 12
Kirsten Oldenburg, Editor, Crimemail, D.C. Police Service Area
109............................................................ 14
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Foreman, James F:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Oldenburg, Kirsten:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 48
Ramsey, Charles H.:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 42
APPENDIX
Inspector General's Report of Investigation 98-0205.............. 23
``KEEPING THE NATION'S CAPITAL SAFE''
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MONDAY, JULY 27, 1998
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government, Management, Restructuring,
and the District of Columbia Subcommittee,
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:01 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam
Brownback, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Brownback.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BROWNBACK
Senator Brownback. The hearing will come to order.
I want to start this hearing with a tribute to two heroes.
In an era when sacrifice to some seems foolish and only a
quaint notion of a bygone era to others, Officers Jacob
Chestnut and John Gibson sacrificed their lives so that others
might live.
They are true heroes of our day, people to emulate, and
people to pay tribute to. This grateful Nation will long
remember their unflinching response when duty called. What more
can a man give than to lay down his life for his brother? And
these men gave it all, and for that, we can never thank them or
their families enough.
I would ask those that are present, if you would, to join
me in a silent prayer for these two heroes.
[Moment of silence.]
Senator Brownback. Thank you.
We have an open Capitol to our Nation, and that is as it
should be. This is the people's place, where the people's
business is conducted. Nearly 18,000 visitors a day pass
through this Capitol Building of which we are but the current
trustees. We should not keep the people from their place
because of the craven acts of one. To do that, it seems to me,
would let fear win and faith lose.
We may need to tighten security, but let us not close the
Capitol. The matter of the Capitol security is under the
jurisdiction of another committee. It is under the jurisdiction
of the Rules Committee, and they will be reviewing this matter
thoroughly.
Our hearing today is about crime in our Nation's Capital,
Washington, DC, of which sadly Friday's shooting was only the
latest installment of a bad situation. That, I can, though,
note for the record, has been improving, but remains far, far
too violent.
The culture of violence and death that we see all too often
across our Nation continues to play out in our Nation's
Capital. One just has to ask and stop and think and reflect for
a moment when will we change. When will it be different?
I think the only answer we can say to that is when each of
us do all we can to change and to orient ourselves much more
towards life and towards living and caring and giving and
helping.
Tomorrow, I think it is fitting as well and appropriate
that we will be giving a further tribute to these two officers
that sacrificed so much that it just shocks the Nation and it
shocks our conscience. Hopefully, it will shock us to action,
too.
The hearing that we are focused on today is about overall
crime in the Nation's Capital, and in particular, we want to
look at the 911 system.
I would like to welcome everyone here today, especially our
new police chief, Charles Ramsey, who has been on the job for
some period of time. Chief Ramsey, we are happy to have you
here with us today.
I would also like to welcome our two DC residents, Kirsten
Oldenburg and James Foreman. I am looking forward to hearing
about their efforts to stop the spread of crime in their own
neighborhoods.
I certainly believe that close cooperation between law
enforcement and local community leaders is absolutely vital if
we are to change our Nation and if we are to improve the
situation. We cannot just depend on the police alone.
In May, the Subcommittee held a hearing with various DC
faith-based charities. We heard from a number of individuals
there who have been involved in trying to change the face of
the Washington, DC, community, with some success, one person at
a time. I believe we need more people like these involved in
the lives of their neighbors. The Police Department has a tough
enough job as it is without having to protect a passive
community.
A stronger bond needs to be built between neighborhood
leaders and the police. Crime in the city is not a Police
Department problem, as it is not in our Nation. It is the
result of a community in need, and any solution needs to start
within that community, or for us, within our Nation.
I wanted to call this hearing to take a look at some of the
grass-roots efforts that are being implemented to fight crime
at the neighborhood level and also to examine the recent DC
Inspector General's report on the emergency 911 system, of
which we will discuss some more here today.
Last month, the District's Inspector General released a
report critical of the Metropolitan Police Department's 911
emergency system.\1\ Unfortunately, results found that some of
the calls were not being returned or were not being answered in
a timely fashion. We want to review today, with the Police
Chief, what has been taking place to get those corrected so
that we can get response in the system quickly.
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\1\ The Inspector General's Report of Investigation 98-0205 appears
in the Appendix on page 23.
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I believe that it is crucial for communities within DC to
develop positive relationships with the Metropolitan Police
Department built on mutual respect and on confidence. Folks
should have a sense of security in a place that they live,
work, and do business.
I am aware of some programs that the MPD has established to
address this problem, such as the Police Service areas, and I
look forward to discussing those.
I also look forward to hearing from the citizens' side and
discuss what they are doing in their own communities to aid the
police in our Nation's Capital.
With that, I would like to welcome Police Chief Ramsey. If
you would care to come up to the table, Police Chief, to begin
the testimony here today and to introduce the other gentlemen
that are with you.
As I stated at the outset, I welcome you to your position
of Police Chief. I know you have been in the job for some
period of time. I have also noted that violent crime in our
Nation's Capital has gone down substantially, but it is still
at far too high of a level, and we see tragic events that
happen all around us that just draw that more into sharp focus
for us. So I look forward to your testimony here today.
Police Chief Ramsey, thank you for joining us here today.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES H. RAMSEY,\1\ CHIEF OF POLICE,
METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
ACCOMPANIED BY TERRENCE GAINER, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF
POLICE, AND MIKE FITZGERALD, ASSISTANT CHIEF, TECHNICAL
SERVICES
Mr. Ramsey. Thank you for inviting me, sir. I have looked
forward to being able to spend time now talking about a couple
of very critical issues.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ramsey appears in the Appendix on
page 42.
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Before I get started, though, I would also like to thank
you for the comments you just made regarding the two officers
that recently lost their lives last Friday. They are indeed
heroes. On behalf of the entire Metropolitan Police Department,
I would like to extend my condolences to the families of both
officers.
We were there Friday during that scene. It was a very
tragic situation that took place, but, again, it does point out
the fact that day in and day out, men and women across this
country do put themselves in jeopardy in order to see to it
that the rest of society can remain safe. It is incidents like
this that heighten that awareness of the sacrifices that are
made on a regular basis. So thank you very much for those
words. I am sure it means an awful lot to not just the families
of those officers, but to law enforcement families throughout
the country, it means a lot.
Senator Brownback. I thank you for what you do and what you
symbolize and represent in the police, and those that keep us
safe.
Mr. Ramsey. I would like to introduce two people that are
here with me. Terrence Gainer is the Executive Assistant Chief
of Police. He has been with us now for 2 months. He is my
second-in-command. He was formerly the director of the Illinois
State Police for about 8 years, and agreed to come with me here
to Washington.
I have Mike Fitzgerald on my right, who is the Assistant
Chief in charge of Technical Services. Technical Services is
the bureau that covers the 911 system. The Communications
Section is in his bureau.
Senator Brownback. Good.
Mr. Ramsey. So he will be able to answer some of the more
technical questions that you may have about this system and how
it functions.
I have prepared written testimony, sir, which has been
submitted in advance.
Senator Brownback. I would prefer if you approve not to
read from that, but rather to just let that stand and cut to
the chase and really get into the heart of the matter because
you raised some very important issues.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the 911 system is
something that we need to pay close attention to. It is a
lifeline, if you will, not only for citizens, but for our
officers as well. I think Friday's events points out the need
to be able to get people on the scene of an event very quickly.
Mr. Ramsey. Fortunately, that was one incident where
responses was quick. As a result of that quick response, we
were able to detain witnesses to that particular crime, get
emergency response there in the form of ambulances and so
forth, and I think that that kind of thing is something that is
not only expected. You should demand that from us that you have
a system that works. When you call 911, you should have a
reasonable expectation that the police will come, and come
very, very quickly.
Unfortunately, that has not always been our history here,
and Inspector Prettyman's report highlighted that. I would like
to just give you a glimpse of some of the things since that
report came out that we are doing right now in order to try to
correct some of those problems.
The long-term solution to the problem is a new center, and
I will talk about that later because the one we currently have
is really not adequate enough to handle the volume of calls
that come into our department. We handle almost 2 million calls
for service annually, and that is quite a few calls for
service. And we need a system that can handle that.
But just very quickly, let me just address a couple of the
findings that Inspector Prettyman had in his report, and let
you know where we are at right now in terms of trying to deal
with that.
The first finding, it dealt with our inability to answer
emergency calls within 5 seconds and non-emergency calls within
12 seconds. Those are considered to be national standards in
terms of response.
The report found that of the 250,000 calls that they took a
look at during the first 5 months of 1998, we had only
responded in under 8 seconds to about 167,000 of those calls. I
asked at the time whether or not any of those calls were
answered under 5 seconds, and I was told that they were unable
to really give us an exact count of the numbers of calls
answered under 5 seconds. So we do not know how many of that
167,000 was actually within the accepted time frame, but it
still points out to a problem that we are not getting to the
calls for service quick enough.
One of the reasons why, as pointed out in a report, was a
staffing issue. Since that report has come out, what I have
done is I have assigned 20 limited-duty police officers to the
Communications Section, to shore up personnel there. They bring
with them a great deal of experience in knowing what is
required in terms of answering calls for service, dispatching
calls to units in the field. These are people that, because of
injuries and other types of reasons, are unable to perform in a
full-duty capacity. So we did not take people off the street in
order to do this.
We utilized limited-duty personnel throughout the
Department in order to help us with some of the administrative
tasks that need to be done in the Department, and we have
detailed 20 people to the Communications Center. Now, that is
spread out across all three shifts. That is not 20 working at
any one time. That is spread out across the three shifts, but
that has added to our personnel.
When needed, overtime is approved if we need that in order
to fully staff our positions. Full staffing for us would be 15
call-takers and 11 dispatchers. That would be full staffing.
Because of the high rate of absenteeism in the
Communications Section, which is a problem that we have been
working on--my understanding, for several years now, we have
had a problem with sick leave abuse in that particular unit--
this has helped tremendously in that.
We have posted vacancy announcements for 26 positions that
are currently vacant in the Communications Section, and we have
posted those positions for hire. And our Personnel Office is
working toward trying to bring in civilians that can make up
the staffing so that we do not have to keep those officers
there for any extended period of time because there are other
functions, and some of them will be returning to full duty,
quite frankly, at some future point in time if it is a health-
related type of injury, if that is why they are limited duty.
Another thing that came out in the study was the fact that
our dispatchers are paid at a rate that is substantially below
our neighboring jurisdictions. We have proposed legislation to
upgrade the wages for those individuals assigned as call-takers
and dispatchers. It is currently pending before the Council for
the District of Columbia for their approval.
I think that is very important because one of the reasons
why we have difficulty in maintaining staffing levels is
because people, once they learn those jobs, leave us and go to
other jurisdictions because they can make substantially more
money doing the same thing. So it makes it very difficult to
keep people in those positions when you are not competitive
salary-wise, and we are taking steps to try to deal with that.
We are also looking at training that can enhance employee
performance. I do not think we do nearly enough in this
organization as it relates to training; in particular, training
of our civilian personnel. That is a very vital role in the
Department. Everything begins there at the 911 Center.
We need to have better training for our personnel so that
once they do respond and answer calls, they are capable of
being able to deal with any emergency that they may be faced
with at that particular moment.
I realize that we have problems with our 911 Center, but I
also do not want to overlook the fact that thousands of calls
come into that Center on a daily basis, and a vast majority of
them are handled efficiently and professionally. And the men
and women that perform that task day in and day out--and it is
an incredibly stressful job--deserve some credit for the
positive things they do, but, again, that is not to say that
there is not room for improvement because there is room for
improvement. And the Inspector General's report certainly
points that out.
His second finding, which I touched on briefly, dealt with
the fact that there seems to be an abuse of sick leave which is
one reason why we cannot maintain staffing. I will get into
that in just a little more detail for you now.
The director of Communications Division is closely
monitoring the use of sick leave, looking for abuse patterns
with particular employees, and we will take corrective action
against those people who are abusing the medical-roll system
that we have in place within the Metropolitan Police
Department, but a lot of the reasons, I think, why people tend
to go on the medical roll rather than report to work is really
because of stress-related types of illnesses.
One of the things that we have done is we have contacted
Dr. Beverly Anderson, who is the administrator of our Employee
Assistance Program, to come up with a comprehensive stress
management program. We have to find ways not only in the 911
Center, but I think policing in general. Very little has been
done internally in most departments to really help police
officers and other members of the Department effectively deal
with the stress associated with their jobs. It is very
difficult to be in a position where every time the phone rings,
someone's life could very well hang in the balance. That is an
incredibly stressful situation to be in, day in and day out.
We do not do a good job in helping people manage that. The
long hours that they have to work--I do not know if you have
ever seen our Communications Center. I would be glad to show it
to you, but it is certainly not a place that you would like to
spend a great deal of time in. It is an old facility. It was
not really designed with a lot of the more modern thinking that
we currently have relative to environment and the way people
function in those environments and how to help, you know, have
lounge areas where people can get away from the stress and be
able to relax and so forth. It is a very confined space, but we
are working with Dr. Anderson to put together a good stress
management program for our personnel, and also working with the
Renaissance Clinic Counseling Center that is also participating
in that.
The last finding, one that I take some exception to, but I
do understand and agree somewhat that perhaps there is validity
to this, and that is that we are not responding in a timely
phased fashion to the scene of emergency and non-emergency
requests for assistance. That basically was the result of their
reviewing 300 citizen complaints that came in during 1997
relative to slow response on the part of the police.
I think that when you stop and consider that almost 2
million calls for service came across that system, to pick out
300 and draw that kind of conclusion is a bit unfair, but I
think that there is room for improvement there, and let me tell
you a couple of things we are doing in order to deal more
effectively with that.
We had a practice in the past, when people called 911, the
dispatchers would not give them a time frame in which they
could expect the police to arrive. They would simply just say,
``We will send the police.''
Well, if you tell me you are going to send the police, I
immediately go to the window, start looking outside, do not
want to miss them. I want to make sure I am there when they
arrive. If they come an hour later, usually you would be upset
about something like that.
If you have a situation that the police are being
dispatched, but it is not of an emergency nature, a Code-1 type
of call, where our immediate response is needed because the
person has been injured, an offender is on the scene, what have
you, or there to take a report for something that is not
considered to be a priority one, oftentimes there is a delay in
dispatching. We now have changed our policy where if we know
that it is going to be because of the volume of work that is
taking place that particular night under that particular PSA or
in that district, we give people a realistic time frame. If it
is going to be an hour, we will tell them it will be about an
hour before the unit arrives. That makes it easier for people
in a lot of ways because I think that some of the complaints we
have, we can avoid by simply just communicating better to them
how long it is going to take.
As far as the Code 1, priority-one types of calls for
service, once that call is given to the officer, the response
time is pretty much within the time frames that exist in other
departments. It obviously depends on how close you are at the
time the call comes out, but our response once the call is
actually given out to the units in the field is really pretty
good for Code-1 types of assignments.
With the new PSA model--and I know you want to talk about
the PSAs--there was, again, another policy change that was not
effectively communicated to the public, and that is that
because we are trying to maintain beat integrity and we are
trying to have officers from the particular PSAs respond to as
many calls on their individual PSAs as possible, that means
that in many cases, some calls are stacked so that that officer
can respond personally to those particular calls. It gets back
to what I said earlier about not giving accurate information to
people about when they can expect to actually see the police.
In the past, the first available unit would be dispatched
regardless of the call, but what that does is it breaks down
beat integrity because now that officer that was assigned to
patrol a particular PSA is pulled off that PSA to answer a call
and another PSA and so forth, and it is kind of a domino effect
when you start to lose beat integrity. Once you have lost it,
it takes a long time to recover.
So we try to categorize calls based on their priority, and
the need for us to get there very, very quickly. Our problem
has been in the past that we simply did not communicate that
very effectively.
One last thing about response time that kind of indirectly
feeds into that is getting more active in marketing our non-
emergency number, 727-1010. Eventually, we would like to go
toward 311, which is being used in Baltimore, and we are
studying that now to really take a look at the feasibility of
having a 311 system here in the District, but the more calls
for service that could get off of our 911 system, the better
off we all are. And people need to understand when it is
appropriate to call 911 and when it is really better for them
to call 311. Save those phone lines so when that call comes in,
because we can handle up to 15 calls simultaneously. Otherwise,
people get a recording and are asked to wait on the line, but
if you have got a true emergency, you do not need to be waiting
on the line. Of those 15 calls, I would be willing to bet you
that at any given time, 6 or 7 of them are probably calls that
should be on the non-emergency system.
So that is something that we have to really pay a lot of
attention to, really market. We asked the community to help us
with that, so not to use 911 inappropriately. So, when people
call and really do need help, we are in the best position
possible to be able to provide that assistance to them.
Just real quickly on our PSAs, since you had asked about
PSAs, we are now 1 year into that new policing strategy, a
community-oriented policing strategy that really brings beat
integrity back in vogue.
Years ago, you had the old foot policeman and you had the
beat cops that knew very well everything that was going on in
their areas of responsibility. Back in the 1960's, 1970's, and
1980's, we just lost that in most jurisdictions. We got very
incident-driven. Police officers pulled further and further
away from the community, and beat integrity became something
that was a thing of the past.
Community policing brings all that back in place. We can
work with community. We can form effective partnerships.
I went to a meeting earlier today for the Alliance of
Concerned Men that are very active in Benning Terrace, and
prior to their involvement, Benning Terrace was an area that
averaged seven or eight homicides per year. In the last year
now, they have had one homicide in that 1-year period, and that
is because the police, the community, the residents really
began working together and having an effect on gang violence.
And we need to extend that to the rest of the District of
Columbia.
We have been enjoying a decrease of crime. As of today's
date, we have a 19-percent decline in part-one offense over
last year. We are about 45 homicides below last year's total.
So we are seeing changes in crime for the better, but there is
still far too much crime that is taking place in the District
of Columbia, and until we are at a level where homicides fall
into single digits, in my opinion--in fact, there is no need to
have any homicides because one is too many for the family that
has to deal with the grief and the anguish of having lost a
loved one.
We have a long way to go to really get crime where it ought
to be to make our city the safest city in the country, which it
ought to be as our Nation's Capital, but we are moving in a
positive direction as it relates to crime.
I would be glad to answer any specific questions that you
might have. I apologize if I kind of rambled on a little bit
too long, but I wanted to give you an idea of where we are now
and what we are trying to do to correct some of those issues
that Inspector General Prettyman pointed out in his report.
Thank you.
Senator Brownback. I thank you for that, Mr. Ramsey.
I was just sitting here listening to it, and your
comments--to me, I was just sitting here thinking how thankful
I am that you are willing to do your job, and the officers on
either side of you are as well. We never say thank you enough,
and we pull people up here in front of these committees all the
time and say, well, why don't you do this and why don't you do
that. Thank God, you are willing to do what you do, and that
you are out on the streets and your officers are on the streets
protecting people.
I know on Friday, there was a slain police officer that was
buried. He had been an undercover officer, and we have had a
number of those happen in the DC area. And we just never say
thanks enough for you and your fellow uniformed officers, men
and women that protect us, and the Capitol Hill Police of what
they do here as well.
I am struck, though, too, as I sit here, and as I was
flying back from Kansas today, we are all tired of the violence
and the killing and the death that is taking place. So we hire
more police officers, or we build more penitentiaries, or we
pass more laws. Are there things we are not doing? Is there
something that we can reach out and do more ourselves? Are we
trying to do it too collectively and not individually? What is
it we are not doing that we are still having so much violence
and death in this culture?
Mr. Ramsey. Sir, I do think that there are things that we
are not doing, at least that we are not doing enough.
The focus traditionally had always been on building more
prisons and hiring more police officers. My personal feeling is
that we have to really look to prevention and intervention and
really put resources there as well.
For years--and I am a 30-year veteran in law enforcement,
and there was a point in my career where I thought just locking
folks up and throwing away the key was the way to solve all our
problems, but the longer I was in policing, the more I saw. And
do not get me wrong. There are some people who do need to be
locked up and the key thrown away, but I think that instead of
us just looking at ourselves as being responsible for feeding
the criminal justice system, we have an equal responsibility to
help starve it. You help starve it by preventing people from
going down the wrong path to begin with.
I do not think we do nearly enough to really work with
young people, to work with even ex-offenders; that once they
have paid their debt to society, helping them assimilate back
into society. I think prevention and intervention programs need
to be as much as part of what we do as the enforcement side of
things, and I do not think we do enough in that area.
Senator Brownback. Are there things you could recommend for
the Nation's Capital that we ought to be doing more of in that
prevention program area?
Mr. Ramsey. Well, there are a lot of areas, sir. One is
certainly in dealing with young people. We have our
Metropolitan Police boys and girls clubs, and, of course,
people tend to look at things like athletics as being the
solution to all our problems, and that is not what I am talking
about. That is part of it, but we also have mentoring that
takes place there. We have computer learning centers where
kids, underprivileged kids that probably would never know what
it is like to be able to use the Internet if it was not for a
place like that where they could really come and use those
kinds of facilities.
We depend on donations in order to be able to keep those
facilities up. Domestic violence is an area where more can be
done on intervention. We know from analyzing that particular
type of crime that after the first or second call for service
to that location--usually, when you come back, some kind of
violence has taken place, either a battery or, in some cases,
unfortunately, even a homicide. If social services could be put
in at an early-enough time where we are able to intervene,
perhaps we could avoid that more serious crime from occurring.
When you have domestic violence, oftentimes you have child
abuse, you have elder abuse. I mean, there are a lot of areas,
and we know a lot about crime now, where if at the right time
intervention strategies took hold, we could maybe do a lot to
change what ultimately winds up happening when people wind up
committing a more serious crime and actually going to jail as a
result of it.
Senator Brownback. Chief, you describe a situation that,
really, you have got to have a lot more of us involved. I mean,
as people in the community, we have got to be willing to reach
out and to find that person that is troubled or in a difficult
situation and either get involved in their lives or report it
at an earlier phase or try to work with people through some of
these organizations. You have talked with them, and I think
everything you describe is accurate and good. It is going to
take a lot more of each of us doing a lot more than we
currently are, even in the busy lives that we have.
Mr. Ramsey. It does take a collective effort, and a lot of
the breakdown is family. I think that the church needs to play
a stronger role. Certainly, many of the children come from
dysfunctional families or the family members are drug addicts
or, what have you, gang members. It is a very complicated
problem, but it is really going to take a comprehensive
approach with all of us sitting down together figuring out ways
to make a difference.
We have a huge role in this as police, and, again, we need
to focus on those people that are repeat offenders that are out
there causing harm to the public, find them and arrest them. So
I am certainly not saying that that is not part of the process,
too. It is part of the process, but we also need to have that
eye on that next generation and on the future and trying to
prevent as much of this as we possibly can. That is going to
take the collective efforts of all of us.
When you have folks that are willing to spend their own
time, like the orange-hat patrols throughout the city and
private service organizations that just--I cannot tell you how
much they mean to our being able to get out there and fight
crime.
My hat is off to them because these are volunteers. They do
not get paid anything, but they are willing to work to make
their neighborhoods safer, and that is what it takes.
Senator Brownback. I want to get Mr. Fitzgerald here
because the topic of the hearing, as we had said some time
back, was to look at the 911 system.
You have heard the police chief testify, and you have seen
his response. Are we going to be able to get ahead of the
problem there that had been identified with 911? What do you
think?
Mr. Fitzgerald. Yes, I believe we are going to get ahead of
it. What we are doing now, instead of what we have done in the
past, just as with the communities, the Police Department no
longer works in a vacuum, the same way with the technology
efforts. We are looking at integrating our systems not only
with the Police Department, but with the Fire Department, to
have that centralized communications center, also looking at
having our systems connected directly to the Internet and
reference the information to be passed down.
There is a lot of things we are doing instead of having a
quick response in regards to trying to fix it, and we still
have a long-term problem. We are looking at not only long term,
we are looking at short term, plus long term, and I assure you
that basically within the near future, this problem would
correct it.
Senator Brownback. Good. Well, that is what we need to have
is a system that does work in a timely fashion so that people
can feel comfortable in it.
Chief, just one other question. Do you have programs
dealing with gangs? What are you doing to try to stop some of
that crime from spreading?
Gangs, as we have heard several people testify, form the
family nucleus for too many troubled young people. Are there
things we are trying to do to integrate them back into their
own families or into a good family situation?
Mr. Ramsey. Yes, sir. In fact, one program called GREAT is
a program that we are implementing through the schools. It is a
program that is used in other cities. It is much like DARE,
where kids at a young age are taught about the dangers of
gangs, because, again, part of the strategy is dealing with
current gang members, but the other part is the up-front
prevention to keep the youngest members from becoming gang
members in the future.
As far as current gang members, working with the Alliance
of Concerned Men, the group I referred to earlier, they do
extensive work with current gang members, trying to turn their
lives around.
Now, it becomes far more difficult when you are talking
about the more hardened gang members. Some of them, we need to
be able to really just focus on and just remove them from
society because they have gone beyond the point where
prevention is really going to make a difference. In that case,
we are working with probation and parole, where we are really
trying to identify some of those hard-core gang members, look
at their conditions of probation or conditions of parole, and
really monitor them and see to it that they are adhering to
those conditions and do not get back out here and commit other
crimes.
So those hardened individuals that want to continually
create havoc in our communities, we are monitoring them as
well, but on the prevention side, working with the schools,
working with churches, working with other groups, trying to
reach young people and give them alternatives to gangs is
something that we are very actively involved in. Again, we
could do more, but we are involved in that.
Senator Brownback. Thanks for doing that. If anybody is
watching or listening to this hearing and wants to get involved
in somebody else's life and help turn it around, they can feel
free to contact, I am sure, your office or mine, and we will
put them with whatever organization or person to reach out.
I am just convinced myself and thankful that we have folks
like you that do put the uniform on and protect us all, but the
rest of us are going to have to just get involved a lot more if
we are going to turn this overall situation around.
Thank you very much for being here with us today and for
your testimony and for your work as police chief. I look
forward to that day, too, when we do not have any homicides. We
are a long way from it today, although the trends are moving in
the right direction on violent crime, and we can hope those
keep going the same way.
Mr. Ramsey. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, again, I
look forward to working with you. You have been a big supporter
of law enforcement in the past, and I look forward to working
with you in the future.
Senator Brownback. We will keep doing it. God bless you
all.
Our second panel is James F. Foreman, Coordinator of the
Orange Hats Patrol, and Kirsten Oldenburg. She is the Editor of
the Crimemail. It is an online crime newsletter to citizens
groups that are helping out in the DC crime situation.
Thank you both very much for joining us. We appreciate your
volunteer work that you do and appreciate your being willing to
come here today.
Mr. Foreman, welcome to you first, and we would be happy to
receive your testimony. Did you want to give it orally or in
writing?
STATEMENT OF JAMES F. FOREMAN,\1\ COORDINATOR, METRO ORANGE
COALITION
Mr. Foreman. Yes, sir. I would much rather--good evening.
Glad to be here. I am always glad to come on the Hill. That is
for sure. Perhaps something will be done because I made a trip
to the Hill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Foreman entitled ``Metro Orange
Coalition, Where Caring People Meet,'' appears in the Appendix on page
44.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is James Foreman. I represent a group called Metro
Orange Coalition. It is made up of people throughout the
community, throughout the neighborhoods, everyday people, from
every walk of life, from every nationality and every religious
group, and political group, too.
We have a membership in the Metropolitan Washington Area of
over 17,000 people, still growing. We are located in 34
different States in the Nation now, and still growing.
The organization started in the year of 1986, and it
started because of a drug problem we were having in the
neighborhood that I lived in.
We had an open-air drug market that was running rampant in
the community. It was growing bigger and bigger every month.
Nothing and no one was doing anything about it.
So a couple of fellows and a couple of young ladies in the
community got together and decided that we had to do something
about it. So we did. Over a period of time, we did. We got rid
of that particular open-air drug market, wiped it down. It was
some of the baddest guys in the world, some of the most heavily
armed guys in the world, and they were perceived to be that way
by everybody within the community, but nevertheless they fell.
From that point on, other communities called trying to find
out exactly what they could do to get rid of their problem. So,
in return, we went over and helped this group here, there, and
pretty soon, we are doing it all over the city.
At our peak, we had 334 different groups in the
Metropolitan Washington Area made up of men and women and
mostly female. As a matter of fact, it was made up of 86-
percent female and only a very few fellows, really. Some of our
groups were made up of 100-percent female, but they were very
effective. They got the job done, and they made it work.
When we started, we had a Police Department that was ready
and willing to become a part of what we were doing. After they
found out what we were doing, they were willing to be a part of
it. After they found out that we were not a vigilante group
that was willing to come out and by any means necessary take
the streets back, after they were found we were not about that,
they came out and became a part of.
Collectively, together with the Metropolitan Police
Department, the people that live within those community, within
the city, DC National Guard, FBI, Park Police, and the Metro
Police Department--collectively, we together made it happen in
this town.
Open-air drug markets since 1995 do not exist in this town
any longer. It is hard-pressed to find an open-air drug market
in this town. I think the last one, the FBI knocked off down in
the Southwest a few months ago. Other than that, open-air drug
markets do not exist in this town anymore.
Drugs are being sold. There is no question about that.
Drug-related crimes still occur. There is no question about
that, but the people who live in those communities made doubly
sure that open-air drug markets fell. They came out trying to
save their children, grandchildren, and the children of the
communities. They made a concerted effort to do something to
solve the problem with those communities.
These are people, working-class people, professional
people, retirees--everybody pitched in, made it happen, made it
work.
It was 4 or 5 years ago, we had a change in the
Metropolitan Police Department. We had a police chief that made
it very difficult to operate within town. We had a police chief
that made it so that we had more trouble with the Police
Department than we had with the crooks on the street. No
question about it.
The chief was very unwilling to work with the citizens of
the city. He did not work with the citizens of the city. By him
not doing what he should have done, it passed around to his own
senior officers, and they likewise fell away, but,
nevertheless, the people in those communities did not stop
doing what they were doing. But quite often, we had no help at
all in a situation from the Metropolitan Police Department. If
we needed help, we had to call the Park Police. We had to call
the Metro Police. We had to call the FBI to assist and help us
on the streets.
It got so that we stopped calling the Metropolitan Police
Department at all because we were not receiving services from
the Metropolitan Police Department. This was the largest
volunteer group in the city, and they turned their backs on the
group and the city, but, nevertheless, we never turned out
backs on the Metropolitan Police Department because a lot of
the individual officers that worked the beats, they rode the
beats, they in return--they still offered their service,
irregardless of what they were instructed by their superiors.
They, nevertheless, offered their service to the community, and
they kept it going and they are still doing it.
The Metropolitan Police Department today--the leadership of
the Police Department today, I do not know. Again, I do not
know him. The chief of police, I met for the first time today
here. His assistant, I met for the first time today here. I do
not know him. I do not know any of them really.
I called a couple of times to request a meeting with them,
but I have not had an opportunity as of yet to meet with the
chief of police or the hierarchy of the Metropolitan Police
Department, hoping that some day soon, we probably will.
Senator Brownback. Well, hopefully, we will crack through
that for you here.
Mr. Foreman. That is right, no question about it, but,
nevertheless, though, irregardless of whether we meet with them
or not, we are still not going to stop working the street
because those are our communities, our children, our homes, and
our businesses within those communities. So we must keep it
going.
We found out one thing, that people can make it work.
People are the key ingredients to making it work, and without
the people that live in those communities being involved, it
will not work. And the best thing about it, the people who live
in those communities will get involved if you show them how to
get involved. There is no question about it, and this is
exactly what we do.
Senator Brownback. Good. Thank you very much, Mr. Foreman,
and that is absolutely right.
For too long, I think we have tried to shove responsibility
of things we are responsible for off to somebody else or some
other entity. That is why we have paid our taxes, all of which
are important, but, nonetheless, we have got to take
responsibility and do a lot our selves.
Ms. Oldenburg, thank you for joining us today. I appreciate
your being here, and I appreciate your volunteer work that you
have done and look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF KIRSTEN OLDENBURG,\1\ EDITOR, CRIMEMAIL, DC POLICE
SERVICE AREA 109
Ms. Oldenburg. I did prepare a statement, and I have
provided it to your office, but I would like to just provide
you with a summary, an oral testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Oldenburg appears in the Appendix
on page 48.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Brownback. Please.
Ms. Oldenburg. I have been a resident of Capitol Hill for
15 years, and I have been working with the police in my
neighborhood for almost a decade. Most of this was under what
was then called Beat 26, and we were the first organized
community group in DC around a police beat. That was mainly due
to the efforts of a Sergeant Wally Bradford, who at those days
was an anomaly in the Police Department in that he believed in
community policing.
Now I volunteer about 10 hours of my time a week to what is
called PSA 109. Much of this time is consumed in operating an
E-mail crime alert system that I started more than 2 years ago,
and we now have over 500 subscribers. I send out a message
about once a week, depending on criminal activity in our
neighborhood. We also have lively discussions among subscribers
of issues of concern.
In addition, I publish a paper newsletter, unfortunately
not often enough these days to properly inform the 4,000
households of our PSA of what is happening around them.
We also have a web site where people can go and, for
instance, view a map that we produce once a month showing where
crime has occurred and what type of crimes have occurred in the
PSA. We have several orange-hat patrols. We maintain statistics
on the PSA, and we are now trying to put together a court-watch
group because one of the problems we have in DC is that the
pieces of the criminal justice system are not well linked
together. Once an arrest is made, the police hand the case over
to the court, and we lose track of what is happening. Often,
the police do as well. So we are trying to sort of link those
two pieces of the system together.
As you know, a year ago, MPD switched from the beat system
to the PSA system, and I really believe that this has caused a
major improvement from my perspective on the street. It
signaled a major policy shift within the Department toward
community policing. It put more officers on the street, and
officers who stay in their assigned PSAs. Sergeants now have
the authority to make critical resource decisions based on what
is happening in the PSA, but I do feel that the PSAs suffer
today from a lack of proper leadership, staffing levels, and
training to tackle the kind of issues that the PSA model
suggested they would.
I think the basic problem is that MPD officers are trained
to be reactive, in other words to chase after criminals, rather
than proactively work on the problems that foster criminal
behavior in the neighborhood.
I also do not think they well understand the long-term
coincidences of the actions they take in the community to the
community. Right now many of the people in our community, our
PSA, do not feel that the officers are making much effort to
get to know the community, and, from my perspective, without
this community policing just cannot work.
Another issue is that our PSA has proven to be too large
and too diverse to support a functioning community organization
on the personal level that we were able to do with Beat 26. Our
PSA is too large for even those of us who are quite active to
get to know or even recognize all of the officers that are
assigned to our PSA.
I think that over time and with commitment from MPD and the
community that these problems with the PSAs will be solved, but
as an operator of an E-mail system that enables the community
to discuss issues that bother them, I am most concerned today
with the Department's communication and outreach skills. And
these affect the way the community is willing to come forward
and work cooperatively with the police.
I want to give you a number of examples. In PSA 109, we
have a designated block captain on every block, but the police
do not use these people as a major conduit of information from
them to the community or vice versa.
In PSA 109, as you know, we have the E-mail system. Well,
there are three other PSAs on Capitol Hill that also have E-
mail systems now. We probably have a combined 1,000 people
linked together online. However, police officials rarely
voluntarily use this resource as a way to get out information
to the community, nor have they set up a system to assure that
we get timely information.
The substation on Capitol Hill does provide us with updates
on reported crime, but only when Officer Rita Hunt is
available. When she is not there, the information flow stops,
and as you know, crime does not.
In June, PSA 109 was hit with 28 burglaries, a record for
us in the last year and a half. Our PSA sergeant alerted us to
this in mid-June. There was an arrest in July, but we know that
in July burglaries are continuing. Incoming E-mail messages are
starting to reflect a frustration with a lack of information on
what the police are doing to handle this problem. People are
getting tired of hearing about what they can do to prevent
burglaries and want to know what the police are doing.
To me, this is an example of police failure to volunteer
information about an issue that they must understand that is of
concern to the community, and let me add, we have the district
commander, the First District substation captain, our PSA
sergeant, and several officers on our E-mail list. So they can
read what is of concern on a weekly basis to the community.
Back in April and May, we had a lot of discussion on the E-
mail list about the drug activity, drug markets we have in our
PSA, and lack of any evidence that police were doing anything
about them. Finally, Commander McManus of the First District
came forward, and he told us that he had arranged for a drug
enhancement unit to operate in our area. And this pleased
people immensely. However, all this goodwill has now eroded
because 2 months later residents never saw any increased police
activity.
The markets are still up and operating, and so this is a
case of police who initially did the right thing and responded
to the community's concerns, but now dropped the ball by not
periodically coming forward with information on progress or
lack thereof.
I would like to conclude with an example of what I think
was a tremendous officer with really good communication skills.
He is not an MPD officer. He is a U.S. Park Police bicycle
officer. This Officer Godfrey is assigned to the parks on
Capitol Hill. He is now a subscriber to our E-mail via his
personal E-mail, and when somebody submits information or there
is a discussion on the E-mail about something that is in his
jurisdiction, he immediately gets back to us on suggestions of
how he could improve the situation or requesting more
information so that he can track down what happened. I feel
that he is doing a tremendous PR job for the U.S. Park Service,
but he also does tremendous follow-through. So people are
becoming very confident of his capabilities.
I would like to conclude by saying that I think that MPD is
definitely moving in the right direction, and, obviously, as a
community, we wish it would move quicker, but we know these
kind of changes just cannot happen overnight, but I hope that
they will take a real serious look at their communication and
outreach efforts with the aim of developing credibility in the
community. I think they will get a lot back once they do that.
Thank you.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Ms. Oldenburg, for that
testimony.
As I stated to the police panel, we are all very
appreciative each and every day of them getting up and putting
the uniform on.
Ms. Oldenburg. I agree with you. We have great officers who
work in our PSA, and I am trying to generalize. We have great
individuals who we know of.
Senator Brownback. We all appreciate that.
What we are searching for here is that if we are to get
crime down in this country, in this Nation, it is not just a
matter of hiring more police officers. We have all got to get
more involved with it, and the reason why we brought both of
you forward today is to recognize your efforts, volunteer
efforts of people who are willing to get involved and the
people around you to get involved. We have got to integrate
those efforts of people volunteering along with the Police
Department and all the efforts that they do by putting on the
badge and going out and putting their lives on the line each
and every day.
I also highlight it from the standpoint of we are not
powerless in this Nation. Too much of the time, I think people
view themselves as powerless to be able to get anything done. I
think both of you are testimony that that is not the case. You
can do something. We can work together and get this situation
in a better case, and we need to get it much better, but each
of you have helped in preventing crime and getting it
decreased. So, for that, I commend both of you and thank you
for what you are doing.
In looking at that, Mr. Foreman in particular, you note the
number of people that you have involved in the Orange
Coalition. Could you just describe for the people here today
what they do every night? What do folks go out and do?
Mr. Foreman. Well, usually, after they get home from work,
those who work, and those who are retired, after they wake up
from their evening nap, they usually put the orange hat on
their head and they head out towards the street corner.
Senator Brownback. Together? I mean, there will be several
together or an individual?
Mr. Foreman. Usually, groups together. We try to make
doubly sure that there will be no individuals on the street by
themselves at any given time, while they are wearing the orange
hat on their head on the street corners.
We usually have groups--some groups are of different sizes.
Some may have 20. Some groups may be 30. We have even some
groups that we have as high as hundreds at one time in a group
throughout the community, and, usually, what we usually do--
most areas, we do more standing than walking. We usually stand
on different corners throughout the community because, you
know, like I say, as long as you are standing you can see
everything. As long as you are moving, you are out of sight,
you are out of mind. So you mean nothing to anyone. So we
usually stand throughout the community.
The groups usually have radios that they usually keep with
every group throughout the community. As a matter of fact, in
some groups, everybody in the group does have a radio, really,
though, and we use video camcorders on the street. We use
cameras. We use everything on the street to deter those who are
coming to the community to do harm and wrong, and we usually
set the video camcorders up on the sidewalk within the
community, as those who come looking for drugs in the community
are right around--they have to ride around through cameras the
whole trip throughout the community. So they have a tendency
not to stay around. They have a tendency to leave, and leave
quick.
We found out one thing. With this setup that we utilize,
most drug markets fall and they fall quick.
Senator Brownback. What is that?
Mr. Foreman. Most drug markets, they cease to operate, and
they case to operate very, very rapidly, really within a few
days, because we found a long time ago that the average guy
that is selling drugs needs to sell drugs and need to sell the
drugs quickly, and he needs to pay his bill for the drugs. He
needs to pay the bill for the drugs that he has in his
possession, and if he cannot sell within my community, he has
to leave. What we do, we stop the customer from getting to the
guy who is selling drugs. That is our main purpose out there,
to stop the customer from getting to the drug dealer. We put a
buffer in between those two. As long as we are there, the
customer will not come in because most of the customers are
people like each and every one of us. We are the customers. We
are working people, work for a living, who make a payroll, and
once a month, every week, whatever the case may be, these are
the people who buy drugs.
These are the people who ride up into people's communities
where they do not live to buy drugs, and these are the people
that we put the cameras on. These are the people that ride
through our cameras on the street, and these are the people who
ride straight through the neighborhoods and stop buying drugs
in that particular neighborhood, and 2, 3, 4 days of this, no
sale by the drug dealer, he cannot operate any longer. He has
to leave. He must go someplace where he can sell his drugs.
He owes a bill. He must pay his bill on time. If he does
not pay his bill on time, he is in trouble, and whoever he owes
money to is going to deal with him harshly. So he will not stay
in that community.
We know we can, wherever we go, within a few days--any drug
market can fall. We found out one thing, with the help of the
Police Department, no question about it, with the help of any
agency that we can get to help, it makes it much easier, but we
know without the commitment of the people who live in those
communities, it is not going to happen.
In most instances, if the people in the community are not
involved, the police cannot get into that community because
most of the communities are not open to the Police Department.
We usually go in and we usually open the community up. The
police come in and deal with the people once we go in because
it is easier for us to open it up than it is for the Police
Department to open it up because, in most cases, most
communities do not trust them, do not want to deal with them,
and are very leery of them. So we usually go and open it up,
and once the Police Department comes in, they usually end up
with a great working agreement with the people who live in that
community. They usually get along very well after that.
We do what we do, and we do it very well, and that is good
because people--we found out one thing. The great strength in
fighting crime is people in the communities. We can put 20,000
police in this city on the street, and they cannot stop it.
They do not live there. They do not have that great commitment
that the people who live in those communities have for their
own community. They do not have that great commitment for a
person's own son and daughter or grandson and granddaughter as
a person who lives there do.
Our police officers come in, and they do a great job, no
question about that, but the hard-core commitment is still not
there. And it cannot be there. They live someplace else. They
have to have a commitment for their own community, and I hope
they do go and work within their own communities, but at the
same time, we must have the people in the communities. And the
best thing about the whole thing, the people in the community
want to do--they want to work. They have a big problem.
Most communities, people do not know how to, and we usually
go in and show them how to. Usually, once you go in and show a
person how to do it, you cannot stop them from doing it after
that, no question about it, but you can mention one thing. When
you go up before what people perceive to be the baddest guys in
the world, the most heavily armed guys in the world, everybody
perceives that every kid selling drugs on the street is heavily
armed or his comrades around him are heavily armed. In a lot of
cases, it is true, no question about that. They do not be on
the street naked. That is for sure.
But at the same time, they are scared to death of the
people who live there. The people who live in those
communities, the crooks that operate in those communities are
afraid of the people. Whenever the people step up, they step
back every time. Every time.
We go out on the street. Nobody in the group is of this age
here. Everybody in the group--well, your age, yes--are older in
the group, and we have people in the group from 45 all the way
up through 80. This is the main bulk of the group, no question
about it. In later years, we have had some younger folks come
on, but mainly it was old-timers who made it happen, people who
could not pick a physical fight with anyone at no given time.
But seven, eight senior citizens walking in a community or
standing in the community can wipe a drug market out just by
mere presence along.
Most people do not know and do not realize that the crooks
on the street are afraid of them, scared to death of them
really, providing you do it in a controlled situation and do
not get yourself in trouble.
Senator Brownback. That is the point, I guess, that I
wanted to emphasize with you, too, and I appreciate it, Mr.
Foreman, that--there is an old saying, and I am paraphrasing,
that the only way that evil triumphs is for good, not to step
forward. So, if people just step back and keep back, their
communities will continue to go down.
Mr. Foreman. No question.
Senator Brownback. If they will step forward, they are not
powerless in this system, and I appreciate you for giving them
the organization, the vehicle to do that.
Ms. Oldenburg, I understand you are looking at a new E-mail
project to track the criminals released from the DC criminal
justice system. Is that correct?
Ms. Oldenburg. Well, yes, that is partly it, or at least to
let people know what is happening. Part of it is just the kind
of information that we can get out to the community. I mean,
people on our list--they are constantly saying that it gives
them a sense of community to be belonging to it, even though it
predominantly provides them with bad news, but it is a
phenomena that the more news you have about your community, the
better armed you feel to protect yourself and be preventive in
your actions.
So one of the things that happens in DC is that the street
officers, the PSA officers operate in the immediate, you know,
what is happening today, taking care of what is happening
today.
Once, for instance, somebody is arrested or even once a
crime is committed, it moves out of the arena of the PSA, and
if it is a crime that has been committed, it is all of a sudden
turned over to a set of detectives who are removed from the PSA
in large part.
So the information of what is happening about--we had nine
homicides in PSA 109 in the last year and a half. We rarely can
get any information about what the status is of those
homicides. As far as I know, not one of them has been solved.
Seven of them are drug-related. So that information sort of
moves out of our arena. We can go chase it, but it does not get
to us. So that is one thing.
The activity moves elsewhere once the crime is committed,
and the information moves. The other thing is that once an
arrest occurs and it becomes part of the court system, part of
the prosecutor's office and through the court system, again,
there is no tracking of this person being arrested and as they
go through the process. The prosecutors have a system, but we
cannot tap into that. So we cannot readily track what is
happening to the people who get arrested in our community.
We know they normally get out on personal recognizance once
they are arrested. So they come right back to the community and
continue to commit the crimes that they committed before they
were arrested, waiting for their court hearing on the previous
crime.
So we want to be able to track that activity, what happens
when people get into the court system and the resolution of
court cases should that occur. We are starting to be better at
that as a community. PSA 108 and 106 seem to have established
the sort of connections they need to track a criminal beyond
the police, better than we have in 109 at this point.
Senator Brownback. Good.
Thank you both very much. I also want to thank the Police
Department for all the work that they do. Crime is going down,
but we have got a long ways to go to get it in the situation
that we need to.
I appreciate the volunteer efforts of a lot of people in
trying to get that situation better improved as well.
Mr. Foreman. I would like to say one thing.
Senator Brownback. Yes, Mr. Foreman.
Mr. Foreman. Our efforts in the Metro orange-hat group, we
have not so far wrote one proposal for any money from anyone,
except for the Heritage Foundation. They forced money upon us,
and they made us take it. We did not want it, but they made us
take it, anyway, but other than that, there are no government
funds. Everything that pertains to the organization is self-
funded by people who live in those communities, throughout the
area.
We are writing up proposals, do not want to--we always say
as long as it is your problem, take care of your own problem,
and so we take care of our own problem within our own
communities, anyway.
Thank you.
Senator Brownback. Thank you all very much, and thank you
all for attending today as well.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:08 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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