CRISIS IN COURTS PROVES OBSTACLE TO CRIME PLAN

Crisis In Courts Proves Obstacle To Crime Plan News Conference Delayed On
Campaign To Cut Homicide Rate; U.S. Attorney Backs Out

A crisis in Baltimore's court system prompted representatives from 14 city,
state and federal law enforcement agencies to postpone their announcement
last week of an unprecedented campaign to lower the city's homicide rate.

The news conference, planned for Thursday, was abruptly postponed despite
being on Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's public calendar. Officials
overseeing the plan's implementation attributed the delay to scheduling
conflicts.

But had they gone forward with the announcement, a key participant would
have been conspicuously absent. U.S. Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia said
yesterday that she backed out because officials are not ready to implement
the ambitious plan, which would fundamentally alter the way crime is fought
in Baltimore.

"I'm not going to go to a news conference to announce a program until I'm
clear that it has a chance of working," Battaglia said. "All of us have to
give the public assurances that what we are doing is totally collaborative
and that we can make a difference. This is a massive undertaking. None of us
want to be part of a potential failure."

Sources said problems within the city's court system -- that had police and
prosecutors blaming each other for bungled cases -- prompted concern that
officials would be hard pressed to sell such a cooperative agreement with a
straight face.

Over the past year, The Sun has documented a series of problems in the court
system. The newspaper recounted how acute trial delays and other missteps
led to the dismissal of serious criminal charges -- including murder --
against several defendants. Federal authorities intervened in one case,
winning a conviction in U.S. District Court where the state system had failed.

Articles last week highlighted cases in which prosecutors failed to turn
over evidence to defense lawyers during the trial procedure known as
discovery. That problem led to more suspects being set free and, in one
case, a man wrongfully convicted of murder. The stories also told of
snipingbetween prosecutors and police over who was to blame.

Several state officials said Battaglia's objections triggered the
announcement's postponement and identified the city's court system as a
major obstacle.

"I don't know if the U.S. attorney's objections are petty and personal or
whether they are more substantive," one of those sources said. "This
[announcement] was a go until the discovery issue in your paper."

The squabble seems to offer evidence that internal disputes among law
enforcement officials are hampering the city's effort to reduce crime.

Some aspects of the proposal, such as the arrest of more than a dozen
hard-core criminals, are under way. But that is just part of a complex plan
developed by Harvard criminologist David Kennedy, who in 1997 set up a
similar program called Operation Cease Fire in Boston that gained national
attention and is credited with dramatic reductions in that city's homicide rate.

Kennedy has been studying Baltimore's entrenched drug culture for 18 months,
but his work has been shrouded in secrecy. He has declined interview
requests, as have city officials who are working with him. The cost of the
study is more than $600,000 -- $100,000 is from public money; the rest is
being paid through grants from private foundations.

Yesterday, officials publicly played down the delay.

Hathaway C. Ferebee, executive director of the city's Safe and Sound
Campaign, which is coordinating the study, said Kennedy might be available
for an interview today.

Ferebee said last week's news conference was postponed "because of a
scheduling conflict." She said that it was difficult to get everyone there
on time and that they wanted a full complement public of officials "to
demonstrate the collaborative nature of the program."

Townsend's policy director, Adam Gelb, said he was also told that a
scheduling problem was behind the delay. But he emphasized that "the first
phase of the operation is under way, and that is what is most important."

Much of Kennedy's plan builds on Townsend's Hotspot program, which places a
variety of anti-crime resources in concentrated areas of violent crime, but
on a far broader scale. Her office gave Kennedy $100,000 for his project.

"We are obviously excited about the announcement because it builds on our
neighborhood strategy and is the next step in beefing up enforcement in
communities that are hardest hit by violence and addiction," Gelb said.

Most of Kennedy's conclusions have been previously documented: A small
number of criminals are responsible for most of the city's violent crime,
and the fragmented nature of drug dealing makes the activity difficult to stop.

"The city has a lot of challenges," said Diana Morris, director of
Baltimore's Open Society Institute, which put $350,000 into Kennedy's
project. "The first challenge was to learn who was killing who and who has guns.

"The challenge was to understand the dynamics of the tremendous homicide
rate that we have."

Internal documents obtained by The Sun show that Kennedy's solution --
outlined in a program called Operation Safe Neighborhoods -- is to identify
and target a core group of offenders and monitor them not only through the
courts and prisons, but when they are released back into communities.

Police say that they are doing this now, but not on the scale Kennedy is
proposing. His plan would call for a variety of autonomous agencies to agree
on how to identify the worst criminal offenders and how to keep
neighborhoods safe.

It would require almost daily cooperation among the U.S. attorney's office;
the FBI; police agencies from the city, school and housing departments;
federal and state probation officers; and the Baltimore City state's
attorney's office.

Programs that now operate separately would have to combine. For example,
Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy's FIVE program, designed to
give special prosecutorial attention to gun offenders, would merge with
Battaglia's Project Disarm, a similar program but with much stiffer federal
sentences. Officials would have to decide together which suspects would be
prosecuted in federal court and which in the state courts.

Despite the lack of a public announcement, many agencies have started to
implement Kennedy's findings and begun to assign people to the project. An
assistant state's attorney has been working with Kennedy full time, and a
federal prosecutor is also on board.

Baltimore police are in the midst of an operation to arrest several of the
city's most violent offenders, and officials from various agencies meet at
least every two weeks in a designated "war room" at police headquarters to
discuss strategies.

Police also put out a "hit list" every week and send it to parole and
probation officers, so they can target released inmates who detectives
believe have guns or are selling drugs.

Kennedy conducted detailed studies of homicides and found that of 303
victims analyzed in 1997, 223 had criminal records. Of 211 suspects, 184 had
prior criminal records.

Those 184 suspects had been charged with a combined 1,752 offenses --
including 397 violent acts, 160 weapons violations and 507 drug offenses --
for an average of 9.5 offenses each.

The 223 victims accounted for 1,871 offenses -- including 382 violent acts,
182 weapons violations and 578 drug offenses -- for an average of 8.4
offenses each.

Kennedy also found that nearly half of the suspects and more than one-third
of the victims had been involved in drug organizations or loose-knit
neighborhood gangs. More than half of the city's homicides in 1997 occurred
in an identified street drug market.

The study found 20 large, well-structured drug gangs in the city, 130
neighborhood groups that sell drugs and more than 100 "free-lance groups,"
also involved in the narcotic trade. Kennedy estimated that up to 4,000
people were involved in various criminal factions.

Kennedy's report indicates that a concentrated effort by every available
criminal justice agency can target these individuals, put repeat offenders
in prison for lengthy sentences and work toward eliminating an underlying
social cause of crime: drug abuse.

Ferebee, of the Safe and Sound Campaign, said the program is quickly moving
toward full implementation.

"We really have a chance for change in this city," she said. "I'm hopeful
that people will remain focused on that."