Baltimore's top cop and about to be top prosecutor hit the streets early Saturday to survey the crime scene. They found little, which in their world couldn't be better news.
This was the upcoming State's Attorney's Gregg Bernstein's second ride with cops and he got a slow night, though he did see a few traffic stop and ran into a house where a man had been hit over the head with a glass bottle. He missed double stabbings in Curtis Bay and downtown, but experienced a night of unusually slow crime and even lower crowds for the all night party.
"There are more cops than people," Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III noted about 30 minutes after the fireworks had ended, as he walked the Inner Harbor's waterfront walkway. In police parlance, it's simply "the bricks."
The photo-op of the night?
Bealefeld and Bernstein pushing a broken-down car out of an intersection on East Madison Street.
It's certainly valuable for the incoming top prosecutor to get a feel for the streets and the cops, but Bernstein enjoys a close bond with Bealefeld, who took the unusual step of openly campaigning for him to unseat the sitting state's attorney.
Also in the car was Bernstein's wife, Sheryl Goldstein, who runs the mayor's crime office.
Bernstein didn't get too much crime to prosecute in the opening hours of 2011, But soon he'll be pouring over the files of these very same officers, deciding what and how and whether to prosecute the people they're locking up on nights like this.
As for Bealefeld, he's hoping for more nights this.