Policing the community
Crime affected by shorthanded department, increase in drug trade
By Evan Brandt
POTTSTOWN >> There is a fairly simple reason why violent crime in Pottstown seems to have been on the rise in 2014.
The police were short-handed.
“At the beginning of 2014, we were down by 15 officers,” said Pottstown Police Chief Richard Drumheller.
“As a result, we had to pull people off the drug detail and, not surprisingly, we saw an increase in the drug problem,” he said.
“We had several officers leave, several retire, some major injuries, it was just the perfect storm,” said Pottstown Police Corporal Mike Long who, with Sergeant Ed Kropp Jr., heads up Pottstown’s newly reactivated Community Response Unit.
And a storm like that is not what you want to face when you consider the volume of calls the Pottstown Police receive.
“One of our officers lives in New Hanover and he had to call police about some vandalism” in February, said Pottstown Police Captain Robert Thomas. “When he got the report, he said it was incident number ten for that month. We might do that in the first hour of a shift,” Thomas said.
“Often, one of our officers will respond to 1,000 calls per year,” said Drumheller.
Over the past 10 years, Pottstown police have averaged just under 22,000 calls for service per year, according to data provided by the department.
And 2014 — at 22,859 calls — was no different.
But with 15 fewer officers, that’s a lot of calls that need to be answered by someone.
“On a daily basis, we get an average of 60 calls per shift,” said Thomas, who confirmed the department runs two 12-hour shifts.
“But the calls are not evenly distributed,” said Thomas. “The day shift is much higher.”
“People in Pottstown lean on the cops a lot,” said Drumheller. “We have a very high volume of calls.”
Up to staffing strength
This year has an advantage over last year in that the department is back up to full strength and advertising to hire more officers.
That means Drumheller has put the department’s Community Response Unit back into operation.
The unit has a plain-clothes and uniformed component and they focus on drugs and quality of life issues, Drumheller explained.
This unit will act on tips, but also does not wait for them, he said.
“One time, they were out patrolling and they made a bust with $2,000 worth of marijuana that all started because they were walking past the house where they were dealing and they could smell it being smoked,” Drumheller said.
“Now we’re back to full strength, but we have only been back to strength for one month,” Long told a Feb. 16 citizens meeting called to address crime. “We can’t turn things around overnight.”
Utilizing data
The police use data to check for crime hot-spots in the borough.
That includes looking at monthly crime reports that break incidents down by ward, to see if any patterns emerge.
In the meantime, Pottstown is looking for help anywhere it can be found, Drumheller said.
“We’re collaborating more, everything from the federal government, the state, I’ve reached out to every agency and asked them what can you do for us?” he said.
One agency already up to its elbows helping out is the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office and the county’s Violent Crimes Task Force and Narcotics Task Force.
“They bring power and resources to the table, and we bring knowledge of the players,” said Drumheller.
Knowledge of those players can grow exponentially with help from Pottstown’s citizens, according to Kevin Steele, Montgomery County’s First Assistant District Attorney and Jason Whalley, who heads the DA office’s drug task force.
“Longer term drug investigations and police work are what changes a community,” Whalley told the citizens gathered at the Feb. 16 meeting.
“We’re after the guy who is supplying the low-level dealer, and that takes time,” Whalley said.
“We can’t think short-term. That’s not how we’re going to fix our town,” said Long.
The plain clothes members of the CRU are out every day making low-level drug buys with confiscated drug money in order to build cases against those low-level dealers, Long said.
“Those buys never make the newspaper,” he said.
“The focus is not to disrupt the single sale,” said Long. “We want to hit him with something that will put him up-state for a couple years.”
Going up the food chain
Once arrested, the police and district attorney have leverage on those low-level dealers to convince them to help gather evidence on those further up the food chain.
But it doesn’t happen overnight.
“Drug dealers have rights, too,” and it can take a year to get search warrants some times, said Long. “Sometimes, drug dealers are smart.”
But a year can be a long time to wait, especially for citizens spending that year living next to a drug dealer.
“You’re looking for the big fish, but that takes years. We don’t have years,” said Ross Belovich, who is a candidate for the Fifth Ward borough council seat.
“We need to take action to send a message,” he said.
“Just because we’re after big fish does not mean we’re not after the little fish,” Whalley replied.
But the residents were emphatic.
“We need some quick successes,” said Cindy Conard, herself a former council candidate. “That will encourage people to remain more involved.”
Citizens urged to speak up
Authorities say they need more people involved.
“Part of the problem here is people not speaking up,” said Whalley. “We understand why you might not want to, but someone has to speak up.”
“It can’t be law enforcement as the only remedy,” Steele said. “We have a chance to move things forward as a result of community involvement. The police can’t be everywhere.”
“Everything starts with people in the community,” said Whalley. “We don’t just need confidential informants, we also have to have concerned citizens.”
But for citizens to be willing to be the eyes and ears for police, they have to believe they are part of the process, many residents say.
Angela Kearney, co-founder of Citizens Action Committee of Pottstown, said she contacted police regularly about a problem property on South Street and it took more than a year for the residents to see something done.
“Even if you don’t see immediate action, Pottstown Police will respond, but it may be behind the scenes,” said Whalley.
That doesn’t encourage repeat cooperation, Kearney argued.
“I’ve called the police to give tips, I e-mailed the chief and he never got back to me,” Kearney told The Mercury. “Even a computer-generated e-mail would be nice, something that acknowledges they at least got my information.”
Police working to be more open
Drumheller said police are trying to become more open with the community.
“We do have a tendency, when we do something, to be naturally clandestine and we don’t talk too much about it,” he said. “But we’re trying to address that, to let people know more about what we’re doing and to get feedback and give feedback.”
He has recently initiated a tip e-mail site (drugtip@pottstown.org), to allow better give-and-take between police and community sources.
In recent weeks, the department has been stressing the role community tip information has played in pointing police in the right direction.
But in the age of instant information, people have become used to seeing an immediate response.
The founder of the Crime in Pottstown Facebook page said he calls police all the time with information about drug activity in his neighborhood and often does not feel like his information is appreciated or acted upon.
“All the crimes I’ve reported and indicated I’m willing to testify, I have not been contacted by police once about any of it,” he said.
“These were real tips I was making,” Kearney said of her calls to police, “like the influx of New York tags I was seeing, but I wasn’t getting any response.”
Detailed information makes difference
Ironically, details like license plates, the make and model of vehicles and physical descriptions of suspects are exactly the kind of detail Long said police need from tipsters.
He said a Feb. 20 drug raid on a home in the 700 block of North Charlotte Street came about exactly because residents there had been informing police about a stream of cars and their license plate numbers.
Inside, police found three guns, roughly $15,000 worth of drugs and $900 in cash. The drugs seized included crack cocaine, and heroin, packaged for sale, as well as powder cocaine, marijuana and unused packaging materials.
The resident of that property, Omar White, turned himself in to police and is being held at Montgomery County Correctional Institution on $100,000 bail.
Long said White tried to avoid detection by serving primarily “out-of-town” drug customers. “His customers were primarily from the Boyertown and Gilbertsville area,” said Long.
Some of the dealers are from out of town, too.
“Some are local,” Long said of Pottstown’s drug dealers. “But we do have a large influx of people from other communities that bring that mentality of benefitting from addiction into our town.”
‘Cheap housing’ attracts drug dealers
Another thing that brings drug dealers into a town is “cheap housing” — at least that’s what Berks County District Attorney believes attracts drug dealers to Reading.
“We definitely have a transient population here in the city,” Adams told The Mercury. “They come because of cheap housing and that’s probably true in Pottstown, too.”
That observation inevitably leads to the frequent narrative about Pottstown landlords who rent property to drug dealers.
During the Feb. 16 crime meeting, resident Lou Augustine said, “I’m on my fourth drug dealer in the house behind mine. I’ve told the police and I’ve told the landlord. Can he be charged for repeatedly renting to drug dealers?” Augustine asked.
Using the “drug nuisance law,” as is being done in Philadelphia, “could force landlords to take a more active role or risk losing their investment,” Augustine said.
If a homeowner can be charged for what is going on in their home, why not a landlord? Augustine asked.
Whalley says landlords can be charged if they are “facilitating” drug dealing, but it has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and there is no specific law that addresses a landlord’s involvement in his tenant’s illegal activities.
But what about simply keeping track of how many times police are called to a location?
Councilwoman Sheryl Miller asked if information about incidents at individual properties is being collected, as Long said it is, why aren’t landlords being fined under the borough’s charge-back ordinance, which requires property owners to cover the cost of repeated police calls?
“It’s not being enforced,” Miller said. “If there is a problem with the law, tell us, and council will work with police to fix the law so it can be used.”
But Kearney said it’s not as simple as just blaming landlords.
“I was a manager of a 354-unit complex in Philadelphia, I know how hard it is to evict someone,” she said.
“You do a background check, they seem nice in the interview, and then they sign the lease and turn into a nightmare,” she said.
Now a law student, Kearney said, “I have an even better idea of what you can and can’t do, and I am reluctant to point a finger at any one thing,” she said.
“It’s all a great big puzzle, and you have to fit all the pieces together as best you can,” said Kearney.
