Mount Pleasant DC Forum

[jack]

I was dismayed to discover, at the May PSA 301 meeting, that our foot patrols have been cut back (as is evident when one walks Mount Pleasant Street). It seems that, whenever there's any shortage of officers, the practice is to keep the squad cars fully manned, at the expense of the foot patrols.

Meeting with Lt Vines a week later, I explained to him how important these foot patrols are to Mount Pleasant, and that we want them fully implemented. I'm sure that I have ANC support for this. Everyone wants bad behavior on the Street controlled, and the foot patrols are the way to do that.

Following is the text of my May newsletter report on this issue. -- Jack

We have a new Lieutenant supervising our PSA. Lt Moses Vines, a lifetime DC resident, is Mount Pleasant’s fifth Lieutenant in four years, an unfortunate turnover rate. Lt Vines intends to be here for the long term, which would certainly be an improvement. I spent some time with him this month talking about the special problems of policing in in our very atypical neighborhood.

Due to a current MPD manpower shortage, our foot patrols have been cut back, in favor of keeping the squad cars fully manned. I told the Lieutenant that our foot patrols have, in the past two years, done invaluable service, improving conditions on and around Mount Pleasant Street, where disorder (rather than serious crime) is a problem. It is distressing to go to the Street and be confronted by unruly groups of youths, or drunks passed out on the sidewalk, or men urinating in public. This is small stuff by the MPD standards, because they want to focus on “real” crimes, like robbery and burglary.

But these problems of disorder are serious issues for us, and we’re pleased to see foot patrol officers impose an atmosphere of discipline that prevents such bad behavior. The dilemma of policing is that, if officers are very effective at preventing such activities, then there will be no arrests made, and their statistical scorecard looks bad. The higher-ups at the MPD want to see lots of arrests, and have no way to measure “deterrence”. The practice of counting only arrests rewards, paradoxically, failures to deter criminal activity. This unfortunate approach has cost us some very good officers, including
Scott Faucett.

I don’t believe that suppressing disorder on Mount Pleasant Street will reduce real crimes in Mount Pleasant, because the people who do the robberies and the automobile break-ins aren’t the same ones who are behaving badly on the Street. Nonetheless, the reduction of disorderly behavior on Mount Pleasant Street, to make the Street a more pleasant place for all of us, is a vital objective, and we will insist that the foot patrols continue.