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Montgomery Frederick Prince George's Carroll Business Politics

Better policing through better management

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

For more of your opinions, go to www.gazette.net/letters.

Eric E. Sterling, Silver Spring

As a Silver Spring business person, the recent robberies near the Silver Spring Metro are very alarming (‘‘Robberies plague area near Metro,” June 7 story). I fear the occurrence of these robberies may be a symptom of mismanagement by the county police department.

According to the Maryland Uniform Crime Reports, 856 robberies were reported in the county in 2004 and 310 robbery arrests. On the other hand, there were 2,746 drug offense arrests; 1,536 of the arrests were for the possession of marijuana.

It is shocking that as measured by outcomes — numbers of arrests — the police department would spend five times more effort on marijuana possession than on major crimes of violence like robbery. No wonder ‘‘robberies plague” areas of our country.

Does this sound like proper management of very expensive crime fighting resources?