In one week, Ton Zwaard had both of his cars broken into. He has watched families with young children stay shuttered in their homes because of drug busts near his Eastport neighborhood. And he has grown weary of his neighbors' stories of muggings and home break-ins in broad daylight.
The quaint Annapolis community that Zwaard moved to six years ago because of the marinas and sailing, tight-knit neighborhoods and coffee shops within walking distance, has become a "place of fear," he said.
Amid growing concerns about violence in Eastport and the city's record eight homicides last year, a coalition of state and federal law enforcement and criminal justice officials is about to help Annapolis authorities abate crime in the state's capital. House Speaker Michael E. Busch, an Annapolis resident, said he hopes the cooperative effort will become a model in the state.
Capital City Safe Streets, the initiative unveiled yesterday by Gov. Martin O'Malley and Busch, brings together the expertise of federal and state groups like the U.S. attorney's office and the Division of Parole and Probation to help the Annapolis Police Department, which is struggling with 20 vacancies, strengthen its identification, tracking and supervision of the city's most violent offenders.
The new partnership would give the police department access to sophisticated mapping software it needs to see where most crimes are occurring and tailor patrols and crime prevention efforts accordingly. The initiative will also help the Police Department serve warrants more efficiently and add a crime analyst to the department's staff to help officers evaluate crime trends and ways to suppress them.
Under the program -- which is expected to cost about $500,000, with $350,000 coming from grant funding -- police patrols will also be increased, along with additional lighting and security cameras installed in public housing communities and programs to mentor and counsel youth.
"Public safety is the most important thing our government does," O'Malley said. "If we don't take care of that we can't get to anything else. There was a time when we would heap all of this on local government. No more. It's not their problem; it's our problem."
O'Malley's announcement, in an Eastport church two blocks from two public housing complexes that have been a source of violence, drew leaders from the state legislature, law enforcement and criminal justice sectors, including U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, Busch and Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, superintendent of the Maryland State Police.
The effort comes on the heels of a similar broad-based collaboration that began last spring and appears to be stemming gun violence in Baltimore. Five state troopers were paired with city officers to trace gun trafficking. That effort and a renewed sense of cooperation among local, state and federal authorities, officials said, helped Baltimore record fewer homicides last month than in any other January in three decades.
In July, O'Malley also joined Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson to start a task force that more closely tracks guns used in crimes, share information on gun sales and improve cross-border coordination.
Doug Ward, a retired Maryland State Police major and director of the Division of Public Safety Leadership at the Johns Hopkins University, said such a regional approach is the best way to see a sustained decrease in overall crime and drug and gun trafficking.
"We get so caught up sometimes with jurisdictional boundaries," Ward said. "Criminals don't care; they're not bound by jurisdictions, they're moving around all over the place, St. Mary's County to Harford County to Baltimore County. If you don't look at it regionally, nobody knows all the pieces of the puzzle."
But he cautioned, all the cooperation in the world won't matter unless the agencies involved meet regularly to measure the effects of their efforts.
"It has to be data-based," Ward said. "Set your outcomes, see what's working, and if something's not working, find something new."
The coalition plans to meet monthly to discuss strategies and outcomes.
Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer said she was glad for the help. She and other city officials have faced strident backlash from community groups complaining that she and the Police Department weren't doing more to rein in the problem.
She and the top city police officials announced this month, however, that major crime in 2007 was down 9.6 percent from the previous year.
A look at Annapolis Police Department data since 2003 shows an overall uptick. Homicides are up from five in 2003 to eight in 2007. Rapes were sharply down from 17 to 5 since 2003, but robberies and aggravated assaults are up.
In the first six weeks of this year, three people have been killed in the city.
"We live in fear," said Zwaard, who got together with 15 of his friends to create the group Stop Gunfire in Eastport Now. The group has 83 members.
"They may say crime is down, but where we live, we hear gunshots every night, we see the helicopter land to take another bleeding victim to Maryland Shock Trauma," he said. "Crime is rampant."
Busch, who urged the governor to bring the coalition together, said he understands the concerns.
"I live here, Mayor Moyer lives here, Senator [John C.] Astle lives here.," Busch said. "We don't go to some foreign country after we leave [the State House]. My children go to school here. We want this community to be safe for everybody."
ruma.kumar@baltsun.com