Police Response Times May Halt New Subdivisions in Police Districts V & VII

(Click on the image for Tracee Wilkins' News4 report)

Per County Planning Bulletin No. 7-2019:

• Currently, the first nine months of 2019 data shows that Police Districts V and VII have  priority/emergency times that exceed the 10-minute emergency benchmark in every month.
• Eight months in District V and five months in District VII have exceeded the 10-minute benchmark by more than 20 percent.
• . . . "if the actual response times for emergency calls and/or non-emergency calls are greater than 20 percent above the required emergency response time, the applicant may not mitigate. The police district will be in a subdivision moratorium for residential development" and
• . . . “The Planning Board may not approve a preliminary plan of subdivision if it finds that adequate public facilities do not exist or are not programmed for the area within which the proposed subdivision is located.” 

Thief Looks for Clues Like This to Select a Home to Break-in

Thief thinks "Thanks for the tip!"

Suburbs try Vision Zero to protect walkers and cyclists on roads designed for vehicles

(Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

(Click on the image for Katherine Shaver's Washington Post report)

• In Montgomery County, where more people are killed in road accidents than in homicides*, planners recently asked residents to tweet about their experiences as pedestrians.
• They responded with photos of four-lane thoroughfares lacking sidewalks, bus stops with no nearby crosswalks, traffic whizzing past without buffers, and narrow sidewalks that end abruptly or are blocked by utility poles and overgrown bushes.
• “We’ve had highway plans for 60 to 70 years,” said Montgomery planner David Anspacher. “This is the first time we’re doing a pedestrian master plan, and it shows. The pedestrian conditions aren’t great in Montgomery County.”
• Advocates of Vision Zero point to the success of Fremont, Calif., where wide roads designed for higher speeds reflect its growth during the 1950s. The city implemented Vision Zero in 2015, and traffic fatalities and serious injuries fell by 50 percent, from 36 in 2015 to 17 last year, officials said.
• Matt Bomberg, a senior transportation engineer for Fremont, said the city added bike lanes, painted crosswalks with higher-visibility stripes and installed flashing crosswalk beacons. Repaved roads get re-striped with 10-foot-wide lanes, down from 12 to 14 feet wide. After the city replaced its street lighting, nighttime crashes dropped by 23 percent, he said.
• Bomberg said the city also started focusing on the high-speed arterial roads where the “vast majority” of its most serious crashes occur.
• “We started connecting the dots and found that 10 percent of our road network had 90 percent of the fatalities and 57 percent of the serious injuries,” Bomberg said.
• * The same is true in Prince George's County. See https://dviicac.blogspot.com/2019/07/traffic-fatalities.html

Community Crime Report: November 20-26, 2019

Provided by COPS Officer Timothy Green, TDGreen1@co.pg.md.us, 301-292-5300.

There were 18 thefts from auto in the county on Tuesday.  Please remember to remove valuables from an unintended vehicle and LOCK your car!
Please be safe and secure during the Holiday Season. Keep your focus on your driving while on the road and stay aware of your surroundings while you are out shopping.
Enjoy the season with your family and come home safe.

Governor Hogan commemorates victims of drunk driving crashes

(Click on the image for the Nottingham.md report)

• Governor Larry Hogan on Tuesday joined state officials and more than 100 family members and friends of victims of impaired driving crashes for the 16th annual Maryland Remembers ceremony.
• “Too many Maryland families have been shattered and too many lives have been cut short, which is why we will never stop fighting to prevent more needless deaths from drunk or drugged driving,” said Governor Hogan. “On behalf of all the citizens of our state, let me say thank you and God bless you for choosing to speak out about the heartbreak you have endured, thank you for your courage and your bravery, and thank you for channeling your unimaginable grief and pain into such a positive effort to save lives and help keep others from experiencing the same loss.”
• The annual event – held this year at the Miller Senate Office Building in Annapolis – takes place at the beginning of the holiday season, when impaired driving crashes tend to increase. In 2018, of the more than 19,000 people arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, approximately 2,225 arrests occurred from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
• From 2014 to 2018, nearly 800 people were killed and 16,000 were injured in impaired driving crashes in Maryland. Impairment caused by alcohol and/or drugs is a contributing factor in roughly one-third of highway fatalities and serious injuries each year.

Protect Yourself from Package Theft

(Click on the image for an informative video)

Don't Be a Criminal's Santa!

Holiday Tips from Major Mitchell and Captain Smith.

While Police District VII has the lowest crime rate in the county, we do have some crime and we can reduce it more. Most of our crime is property crime, not violent crime.
During the holiday season when we are doing more shopping and we have more hours of darkness, here some things you can do to prevent crime:

• Keep doors, windows, and gates locked - don’t make it easy for criminals to get into your home and car.
• Do not warm up your can and leave it unattended. The vapor from your tailpipe is a giveaway to criminals that your car is ripe for them to take.
• Do not leave anything visible in your car to attract a criminal’s interest. Put packages in your trunk!
• Hide handicap placards when they are not in use.
• Take your garage door transmitter inside if you park your car outside your home. It’s a key to your home. 
• Be a good neighbor. If you see a neighbor’s garage door open, newspapers piling up, trash cans not brought in or packages in their car, let them know they are making their property a target for criminals.
• Mark your property with your driver license number so it can be returned if it’s stolen.
• Criminals prefer darkness so keep outside lights on. That’s cheap protection.
• Attend the District VII Citizens Advisory Council. The CAC meets the 3rd Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM in the District VII Community Room. (No meeting in November, December, and August.)
• Join Neighborhood Watch!