Baltimore County prosecutors are hoping that two detectives recently assigned to their office will stem the increasing number of cases wrecked by a nationwide problem for law enforcement: reluctant witnesses.

Especially in urban areas, many witnesses will skip town, hide from police or simply ignore summonses to avoid testifying, prosecutors said. Whether their reason is a mistrust of law enforcement or a fear of retribution, prosecutors said witnesses' actions too often force charges to be dropped and potentially dangerous suspects to be freed.

In Baltimore City, prosecutors dropped or indefinitely postponed 12 attempted-murder cases in October because they could not find witnesses, according to the city state's attorney's office.

In the county, Assistant State's Attorney S. Ann Brobst said there was hardly a docket where a case was not nol-prossed, or dropped, because of missing witnesses.

But now in the county, the two detectives will work full time tracking down no-shows. "I hope we're going to be trying a lot more jury trials," Brobst said. "And that we're not going to be offering pleas because we're having proof problems."

In the city, the state's attorney's office says it needs a similar arrangement to quell its tide of lost cases and released suspects.

"You can't go forward with your cases without your witnesses," said Margaret T. Burns, spokeswoman for Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy. "You don't go out and bring in witnesses without a gun and a badge."

But Mayor Martin O'Malley said recent initiatives in the city, such as a new detective squad that tracks down witnesses in homicide and shooting cases, and new "case preparation conferences" where prosecutors tell detectives about problematic witnesses, will help reduce dropped cases.

"We are making progress on improving our cases and keeping track of our witnesses before trial," O'Malley said. "Especially right before trial when it's most important."

Prosecutors in both jurisdictions said they need to avoid outcomes similar to the one in the county's case against Bernard McCullough, 21, of Baltimore, accused of armed robbery last year.

According to police reports, it was near midnight Oct. 25 last year when Issa Farousi, a driver for Nino's Pizza on Harford Road, was jumped, beaten and robbed at gunpoint in the stairwell of a Dowling Circle apartment building near Hillendale.

Latisha Battle, who lived in the building, told police that she saw her roommate's boyfriend leave the building after they had ordered food from Nino's. She said she saw the boyfriend, who was wearing a bandana and carrying a gun, follow the deliveryman into the stairwell.

But by this fall, all of the witnesses -- including Battle -- had disappeared. Without their testimony, prosecutors had no case. So the state dropped charges against McCullough, the boyfriend.

Few statistics, locally or nationally, are available on the number of cases dismissed because of witness problems. But prosecutors say that witnesses in affluent jurisdictions are more likely to go to court.

"We don't have very much of a recalcitrant witness problem in Montgomery County," said that county's state's attorney, Douglas F. Gansler. "We mail most of our subpoenas and people show up."

In higher-crime areas, where witnesses might be involved in illegal activities, or where they fear retaliation from a suspect or a suspect's family, prosecutors say they have to deal with frequent cases of reluctant witnesses.

In DeKalb County, Ga., which includes part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, 17 investigators work in the district attorney's office. Much of their time is taken up tracking down uncooperative witnesses, often immigrants living in communities where gang activity is rampant, said DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan.

"Retaliation is a problem," he said.

In Anne Arundel County, one officer and two nonpolice investigators work in the state's attorney's office, in part to help prosecutors track down witnesses in the county's high-crime "hot spot" areas, said spokeswoman Kristin A. Riggin.

'How am I going to feel'

Baltimore County prosecutors worked to get detectives on board when they realized they were dropping too many charges, particularly those that involved violent but nonfatal crimes.

Brobst said she had one docket recently where she had to drop two cases because witnesses were unavailable.

"I was like, 'How am I going to feel if one of these guys that I'm nol-prossing today goes out and kills somebody?'" she said.

County prosecutors and detectives worked closely on murder prosecutions, where detectives are able to focus on one case and track down reluctant witnesses, said Brobst, the assistant state's attorney. But officers involved in the "lesser" crimes often are too busy with new cases and daily shifts to be at prosecutors' beck and call.

Two veteran detectives now in the office, Mike West and Gary Fischer, will fill the gap in those types of cases, she said, keeping people from escaping prosecution as in the McCullough case.

In Baltimore, O'Malley recently approved a witness protection coordinator suggested by Jessamy, said Kristen Mahoney, executive director of the mayor's office on criminal justice. He also gave the go-ahead for a group of detectives to work on locating witnesses in homicide and shooting cases, she said.

Additionally, meetings among prosecutors and detectives during the case preparation stage will alert everyone to potentially problematic witnesses, she said.

"We identified the problems this summer," Mahoney said. "There are a lot of practical things being done."

But Burns, Jessamy's spokeswoman, said the office needs more.

The mayor's office "is still not assigning people full time to be at the disposal of the prosecutors," she said. "We're quite jealous of Baltimore County."

She said that under former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, there were detectives who worked directly in the office. But she said that in the general decentralization of police operations that came with the O'Malley administration and the arrival of police Commissioner Edward T. Norris, those positions were eliminated.

"It is critical that we have detectives working directly for the state's attorney who are available at all times to go out and locate witnesses and bring them in," she said. "It is a missing link now. Cases are being lost solely due to the fact that we are unable to locate witnesses and bring them into court to trial."

May not solve problem

But even in-house detectives may fall short of a solution to this perennial prosecution problem, said University of Maryland Law School Professor Abraham Dash.

"Even with detectives, I wish [the prosecutors] luck," he said. "Outside of threatening witnesses, it's very hard to get them to say anything. And I don't fault a lot of the witnesses by any means. They have to live in these neighborhoods."