4 on council seek end to police patrols at Hopkins

They question diversion from more-violent areas

Some Baltimore City Council members are asking the Police Department to stop deploying officers to patrol the areas around the Johns Hopkins institutions in East Baltimore.

Four council members sent a letter to interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle saying they were “alarmed” to learn city officers are being diverted toward the Hopkins campus and hospital and away from some of the city’s most violent areas.

“In a City that continues to struggle with an understaffed Police Department, combined with consistent spikes in violent crime, the discovery that officers, who are provided taxpayer-funded salaries, have been diverted away from their jobs to work shifts for a private institution is cause for concern,” the letter says. It was signed by Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and council members Brandon Scott, Robert Stokes and Shannon Sneed.

Their request revives a politically charged debate over Johns Hopkins’ security measures. The university unsuccessfully pushed earlier this year for legislation that would have allowed it to create its own private police force.

In a joint statement, Johns Hopkins Medicine and university officials defended the police help. The crime in Baltimore,

HOPKINS ,

HOPKINS , officials wrote, has caused others to flee while Hopkins is investing and growing in the city.

They said Hopkins’ concern is to assure the safety of its thousands of employees, patients and students. “Recent Baltimore police deployment in these neighborhoods are all on city streets and neighborhoods, not on Johns Hopkins property; the officers are under Baltimore police command, and patrol areas are determined based on criminal activity and trends,” the statement said.

The practice of deploying Baltimore police for a specific Hopkins detail began under former Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, who was fired in January by Mayor Catherine Pugh.

In a tweet sent Monday, Davis accused the politicians of grandstanding.

“The city's largest employer, biggest university and world-renowned hospital experiences unprecedented crime and the BPD responds,” Davis tweeted. “Those who blocked JHU from starting its own police department now pull this political stunt.”

Young rebuked Davis’ assertion that the letter was about scoring political points. He said the council members are doing their jobs by sounding an alarm about officers being redirected from their districts, which are struggling with high crime rates.

“We’re facing all these murders and shootings and carjackings and robberies and he’s taking officers and putting them up at Hopkins,” Young said. “I’m appalled.”

Davis did not respond to a request for comment. Police spokesman T.J. Smith said only that Tuggle is evaluating the deployment.

It is unclear how many city officers have been assigned to the Hopkins detail. The Police Department said in a letter to council members that seven officers are involved, but Young said the department told him there are actually 12.

The council is asking the department to release information about how long the officers have been patrolling at Hopkins and what they’ve been paid.

Questions about Hopkins security have riled politicians before.

Earlier this year, the Baltimore delegation to the General Assembly introduced legislation that would have allowed Hopkins to become the first private university in Maryland with its own police department.

University President Ron Daniels, who pushed for the bill, said it was necessary to bring Hopkins in line with its peer institutions, especially after an uptick in crime near his campuses and across the city.

But amid questions over transparency and accountability — including from members of the City Council — state lawmakers killed the legislation. Student groups also protested the idea, saying there were widespread concerns about racial profiling and police brutality.

The university already has about 1,000 security personnel. Since the unrest of 2015, and the subsequent spike in violent crime in Baltimore, the university’s security budget has grown by 40 percent. It doubled to $24 million at the Homewood campus, according to information provided by the university in March.

In a letter given to council members, Deputy Commissioner Andre Bonaparte described the work of the city officers this way:

“They focus on the Johns Hopkins footprint as well as the neighborhoods that immediately surround the footprint,” he wrote. “The focus of the enforcement is engaging with business owners and citizens, as well as being visible to deter illegal activity to include larceny from autos and burglaries.”

Bonaparte’s letter said the officers in the Hopkins detail do this during their regular Police Department shifts.

In addition, officers working overtime also are deployed daily to the Johns Hopkins emergency room and the Kennedy Krieger Institute, Bonaparte wrote.

Police Department rosters for May showed that on some days more than 40 percent of patrol officers were working overtime shifts.