PROSTITUTES, drug addicts and petty thieves were on display at the city's North Avenue District Court one recent morning. Police were also on hand. In one courtroom alone, some 20 uniformed or plainclothes officers waited to testify. Instead, most were told their cases would be postponed.
Constant delays have become the bane of Baltimore's court system. These delays have placed the city Police Department in an impossible bind: If officers do not show up for a scheduled hearing, they risk letting a criminal walk, to say nothing about departmental disciplinary action. If they do attend and the case is postponed, those who are on duty have left their posts uncovered for nothing. Officers who are off-duty cost taxpayers money in useless overtime -- a minimum of two hours' pay.
Either way, officers feel misused and demoralized. Some who are tired of court runarounds avoid making arrests altogether, according to lawyers and veteran officers.
This waste of taxpayers' dollars is no small problem. For the fiscal year that will end in June, court-related police overtime is expected to increase to $4.6 million -- 30 percent higher than just three years ago. That money would hire 160 entry-level officers.
Police say much of the increase in overtime is because of a deeply ingrained District and Circuit court culture in which trial postponements are frequent and plea bargains aren't worked out early or communicated to police. In fact, delays and postponements are so common that murder and armed robbery suspects have had charges against them dismissed because their cases have languished too long.
The backlogged courts are now trying to crack down on the misuse of postponements, which in the past were granted routinely when lawyers filed a court form -- without even so much as a hearing before a judge. While all delays cannot be eliminated, their devastating effect on the Police Department budget can be contained.
Just ask Baltimore County police. Four years ago, they initiated a mechanism that has drastically reduced the need for the physical presence of officers in courtrooms.
"Out of 1,000 officers, we call about 90 to testify over a six-month period," reports Cpl. Cary Koch, a police liaison in the courts.
This is how Baltimore County does it: A full-time liaison officer reviews in advance all paperwork related to criminal cases in the District and Circuit courts, including chemical analyses from drug tests. If a defendant wants a trial, the liaison officer alerts the testifying officer by 9: 30 a.m. to be on call.
Defense lawyers acknowledge they were skeptical at first about the Police Department's ability to produce the arresting officer on short notice. But after police proved they could deliver, an interesting thing happened: Defendants and their lawyers more readily accepted plea bargains, reasoning the deal would be worse if an officer were called in.
"When I started this job, we used to have 10 to 15 officers sitting in the courtroom; now we just have maybe one," says Corporal Koch.
After pilot programs in the Northern and Southwestern districts, Baltimore City police have appointed court liaison officers citywide. Yet the system can work only if police get cooperation from prosecutors and a prior review of the day's cases is held.
This may prove more difficult than it sounds. In the past, police and prosecutors often have been at a loggerheads over jurisdictional issues. Also, prosecutors' work load is so heavy that there is little advance planning in routine cases.
Tomorrow, the City Council will consider a resolution that would transfer $1 million of police overtime money to the State's Attorney's Office to fund changes aimed at clearing court backlogs. Such a transfer is pointless, however, unless it is coupled with better coordination between police and prosecutors.
Requiring officers to automatically show up for court -- whether they're needed or not -- is inefficient and expensive. It's time to return police officers to the streets.