Report from Emergency Neighborhood Watch Meeting - Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Over 50 Brentwood and Mt. Rainier residents gathered on the porch of a house on the 3700 block of Perry Street in response to the shooting and killing of two men (one from Mt. Rainier and the other from Landover) sitting in a car on the 3700 block of Quincy Street late Saturday night. Among those in attendance were Brentwood City Manager, Peter Jones, Brentwood Councilwoman, Margaret Terry, and Mt. Rainier Councilman, Jimmy Tarlau.



While a lot of the discussion was relevant only to Brentwood, I think it is important that Mt. Rainier residents hear about the meeting. We are truly one community and have to work together on most issues especially those dealing with public safety.



Residents discussed their concerns about the lack of police presence in Brentwood. There is one full-time officer who works 40 hours a week but that means there are 128 hours when the town has to rely on Prince Georges’ police for coverage. These hours are not consistent nor generally known or understood by the residents.



Residents in Mt. Rainier said that having a full-time police department wasn’t the cure-all since there were still shootings and break-ins in Mt. Rainier. There was also concern raised that the information regarding the shootings had not been sent out to the community in a timely fashion.



Residents also expressed concern that too many times they were placed on hold and waited a long time for the police to arrive when they called 911.



People should call 301-985-6585 for all non-emergency reporting and 911 when it is an emergency.



There was also concern that the police knew who were some of the main people involved in the violence in our community but were unable to arrest them.



Other concerns raised included the fact that there had been a number of break-ins in the area of 35th St. and Varnum but there was very little, if any, police presence in the area.



Residents also wanted to see the public safety officers spend more time out of their cars and walking through the 'hot spot' areas and talking to the residents in those neighborhoods.



People were encouraged to spend more time knowing their neighbors and to report any suspicious activity.



The group decided to take some of the following actions:



1 Set up a meeting with County Councilman Will Campos and see if we could get a better response from Prince Georges’ county on the policing of Brentwood

2 Have the next neighborhood watch meeting right on Quincy St. one of the hot spots in the area.

3 Meet with state delegate Jolene Ivey and see what could be done about getting the state more involved in convicting some of the main culprits

4 Brentwood said they would put up more ‘no loitering’ signs in the area.

5 Find out the status of the community grant for a police officer to do community policing which is supposed to be shared by Mt. Rainier and Brentowood. It was announced in August but doesn’t seem to have been implemented.

6 Discuss with the Chief of Police whether more information could be sent out to the community in a more timely fashion.

8 Possibly set up a police sub-station at the fire house.

9 Neighborhood watch volunteers will create an information sheet that explains the different phone numbers/e-mails for residents to use for reporting.

10 Discuss the possibility of more cooperation (even having a combined police force) between Mt. Rainier and Brentwood on policing matters.



There were a lot of other ideas discussed and what is listed above is just my notes of what took place. I will let everyone know about the next Neighborhood Watch meeting. If you would like to be involved in our Neighborhood Watch program, please let me know.