On Baltimore's Mean Streets

In this case, the 22-year-old woman has also left behind two bewildered and frightened children; her father has said he’ll look after them until she’s free. The woman has begged the detectives, and they have agreed, to wait until she gets to the car before they cuff her. She doesn’t want to be humiliated in front of her neighbors. In the car, tears streak her face. The detectives ask why she missed her court date, where she was to testify against a former boyfriend who had held a gun to her head, threatening to kill her and her 8-year-old daughter. “I got a lot of phone calls telling me I was in trouble from his family and I was just scared,” she says in a meek voice, adding that she thought the taped statement she had given the police earlier would be enough. Moreland is sympathetic but tells her she has to come to court. “You can’t let them intimidate you to the point where you get yourself in trouble,” he says.

Moreland and Conaway say they often empathize with the witnesses they have to arrest. But the law is the law; without these witnesses in the court, Moreland knows, the prosecutors’ cases would collapse. As for empathy, it has its limits, as I discover when I ride along with Baltimore’s Homicide Operations Squad.

After cruising the streets for 15 minutes and failing to find their witness, Valenzia and Roussey decide to they will come back and hit the house where they believe he is staying early in the morning, hoping to catch him in bed. For now, they will move on to another target.

Along with Matulonis and Detective Frank Mundy, they stake out a West Baltimore house where they believe a witness and his family live. Through the front curtains, they can see lights on inside but no one answers the phone. The detectives, who are all white, are becoming impatient. They worry that some young men hanging out in a nearby yard may have spotted them and tipped off the man they are hunting. The detectives drive around to an alley behind the house and through the sliding glass rear door they glimpse figures watching television. They spring into action. After letting Valenzia off to guard the backdoor, they quickly drive around front again and park the van. Matulonis, Roussey and Mundy walk up to the front door and knock loudly. No one answers. The detectives pound on the door again.

Eventually a 20-something woman answers. The officers have decided in advance that they will not identify themselves as homicide detectives. Instead they claim to be parole officers checking up on the witness. They believe in this way they may be able to trick the woman into letting them into the house even if she claims the witness is not home.

The ruse works. Although the woman says the witness is not there—that she has not seen him in months—she lets the detectives in. The front door opens directly onto a small living room, where four small children race back and forth. In the back, two older relatives watch TV. The detectives say they need to look around. While Matulonis questions the woman, Roussey heads upstairs. The woman tells Matulonis that the man the detectives are looking for is the father of her children, but she insists he does not live there and that she has no idea where he is.

Within minutes, however, the woman is betrayed by her five-year old son, who has followed Roussey upstairs. Too young to have imbibed the Stop Snitching ethos, the boy doesn’t yet know well enough to lie to the police about where daddy lives. It turns out their witness does live there and has only recently left to go over to a nearby house. While Mundy guards the woman, the other detectives call for uniformed backup and race over to where the boy has said his daddy has gone. They surround that house, enter, and, while the occupants—one middle-aged woman and 10 children, ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers—are kept rounded up in the living room, search it. It’s too late though: their witness is not there.

Back at the first house, the detectives are furious. They claim they are going to charge the girlfriend with making false statements and impeding a police investigation. They cuff her and put her in the unmarked van. “Waste my fucking time, I’m gonna waste your fucking time,” Roussey screams at her. But in reality the woman is just bait: they tell her they might let her go if she can reach her boyfriend and convince him to turn himself in. “You’ll make a good hostage for us,” one detective says to her on the ride back downtown.

Once back at homicide, they stick the woman in an interrogation room. “If you help us, we’ll try to help you,” Matulonis tells her. She tries to reach her boyfriend on his cell phone. But he doesn’t pick up. She leaves a message telling him that unless he calls back soon, the officers are going to take her to jail. “If he really loves you, he’ll call,” Roussey tells her as she begins to cry. But the boyfriend never calls.