Have you ever heard the expression, “Like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand?” Could it be that we are ostriches when it comes to crime? When we hear a radio news report about a murder in Baltimore, we pretend it has nothing to do with us – although it happened only two miles away. Our heads rest easy in the sand. But when crime creeps closer and closer to our own homes, it becomes harder to be in denial. And when our friends are victims in our own neighborhood, being an ostrich becomes impossible. And it is very scary!
I interviewed my
friend Miriam* last night about her experience a few weeks ago.
“I went shopping
and came home at around 10:40 p.m. I parked my car at the side of my house,
went around to the other side of the car to get some things from the passenger
seat. Then I went to open my trunk and take out the rest of my shopping. I had
noticed two young men walking past my car but I did not pay attention to them.
They seemed to be taking a stroll and did not look threatening.
“All of a sudden,
another car drove up alongside my car and some other youths jumped out. The
guys who had been strolling and the guys who jumped out of the car suddenly
swarmed me, grabbed my key and my pocketbook. One guy jumped into my car and
zoomed away, and the other two guys jumped into the other car and also drove
away. The whole thing took about 45 seconds. I screamed and screamed but nobody
heard me or responded.
“I was hysterical
and petrified. As soon as I got into the house, I called 911 and Shomrim. In a
very short time, four police cars pulled up to my house. They stayed outside
because of COVID. The police asked me to describe my attackers. I said that
they looked about 17 and were all dressed in black. They had not pulled a gun
on me so it was called a non-armed robbery.”
The police called Miriam’s
experience a crime of opportunity. In other words, these youths had seen a
vulnerable older woman alone and decided on the spot that it was a great
opportunity to make some money and get a car.
A few days later
Miriam got a call. The police found her car totally destroyed and empty. She also
got her pocketbook back minus her wallet. “I now have to get a new driver’s
license, credit cards, etc.,” says Miriam, “although the only thing the thieves
seemed to have used was my Dunkin Donuts card.”
Miriam does not
think she could have done anything different to protect herself. There was no
point in trying to fight off three strong young men. The only thing she said
was that at night it is more dangerous then in the daytime, because it is
harder to see who is around your car. Next time she comes home late, she will
ask her husband to wait outside for her.
I spoke to another
woman, Beth,* whose experience was even scarier because it involved a gun. She
and a friend parked their car and started walking into a store. All of a
sudden, a van pulled into the parking lot. Two guys jumped out of the van, and
the guy in the van backed up the van and looked as if he was going to run them
over. As Beth shouted to the two guys to be careful, one of them approached her.
He pulled out a gun and yelled, “Drop your phone and your keys.” She did. The
man pointed the gun at her friend, and then escaped in her car. The police came,
and soon there were helicopters searching for the young men. They found them a
little while later after they had crashed into another car. It turns out that
they were teenagers who did not know how to drive.
I asked Beth how
she is managing after this traumatic event. “I was shaken up for a few days,
now I feel better and am still taking walks outside with a friend.”
* * *
An article in Baltimore Jewish Home (November 26) about
the recent crimes states, “Two of the suspects have been charged as adults
while 12 of the suspects were charged as juveniles and have since been
released.” I am puzzled. Does that mean that teenagers who steal cars and hold
up people with guns are released to continue committing the same crimes? What
happens to criminals in Baltimore when they are caught? How can we be sure they
will not commit another crime?
I spoke to Maryland State Delegate Dalya Attar and
to Martin Cohen, senior partner at the Law Offices of Cohen Harris, to try to
understand the difference between a juvenile and an adult and what is being
done to prevent these criminals from continuing to disturb our community.
They explained that if a 15-year-old holds up a person with a gun, he
is
charged as a juvenile. This means that there is no permanent record of the
crime. It gives the subject a chance to have a fresh start, and when he turns
21, his record is sealed. Adult records, on the other hand, are mostly
permanent and not expungeable.
Another difference between being charged as an
adult or a juvenile is that a person convicted as an adult will potentially
have to serve time in an adult prison, while a juvenile is usually sent to a
juvenile facility that is geared toward rehabilitating
youth. Rehabilitation focuses on education and training programs for real life,
mental health or substance-abuse treatment, and life skills. Most people who
are incarcerated are eventually released, and if not rehabilitated while
incarcerated, they often return to crime upon their release.
A person is charged as an adult when he turns 18, but there are
certain crimes for which a person can be charged as an adult at a younger age.
For example, in a robbery or carjacking, a 16-year-old could be charged as an
adult or a juvenile. For murder, a 16-year-old can only be charged as an
adult. But for most crimes, if the child is under 18, he is charged as a
juvenile.
What happens to a
juvenile or an adult before the trial? Is he just let free to do another
crime? Ms. Attar and Mr. Cohen said that pre-trial, a person is taken
before a commissioner and then to a judge, and they decide under what
conditions, if any, the criminal can be released pending his trial. Most
of the time, a significant charge like carjacking will be taken very seriously
by a judge, and it will be less likely the person will be released, but it’s a
case-by-case issue. A juvenile is more likely to be released pending trial than
an adult, as indeed happened to the teenagers above. In these times of the pandemic, many people who would have been held previously are being
released to home detention.
Often, the juvenile will be put on GPS home monitoring or some
other type of supervision. The value of the GPS
monitor is that it can track where the juvenile is at all times, and restrict
the juvenile’s movements. Just as
in adult court, a juvenile judge has discretion and can release a youth on his
own recognizance without monitoring.
I next asked how we can
find out what happened to the people caught for specific crimes. I was told
that everything that happens in adult court is public information, and
the victim can easily track the case and observe all hearings. If the person
is charged as a juvenile, it’s more difficult since the information is not
public. The State’s Attorney’s office can provide some information to the
victims, and the victims can contact the Juvenile Detention Center, which may
be able to provide some information.
Delegate Dalya Attar is submitting a
bill this session to create a database that will provide information about
juveniles who commit crimes. This would enable victims, witnesses, and communities affected by crime to
see all the information surrounding a particular case and any prior incidents
by the same suspect as well as the outcome. Only the juvenile’s name is omitted.
Delegate
Sandy Rosenberg, a delegate for the 41st District in the
Maryland General Assembly, said that he and his legislative colleagues had a
meeting with residents of the Glen Neighborhood Association and the Department
of Juvenile Services on Wednesday, December 2. “There needs to be negative
consequences to your freedom when a serious crime is committed and appropriate
rehabilitation,” Delegate Rosenberg says. “It is something that we are still
working on.”
It is a pretty depressing situation. As Mr. Cohen said when I
asked him what can be done to fix this problem, “It’s such a big issue that the only solution is, and must
be, complete changes in society. Unless there is
a significant change in the way the government acts, we will never have
respite. I wish I could give a better solution, but the solution is political. With
the way we prosecute these crimes, nothing will change significantly.”
This article
cannot really end on a positive note because crime is an ongoing and worrisome
situation. We long for the day when we can feel that our neighborhoods are safe
and that we can go about our business without worrying that we will be accosted
either by day or by night. We will be happy to go back to being ostriches
again!
* names and details changed
