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Chief Malik Aziz reveals battle plans that will deploy officers in specific micro-hotspots to suppress and expected spike in summer crime.
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — A teen curfew will not be part of Prince George’s County’s summer crime fighting strategy, at least not at first, according to Police Chief Malik Aziz
The chief revealed plans Thursday to suppress an anticipated spike in crime now that school is out. But Aziz did not rule out reverting to a curfew if a plan to target crime hotspots does not produce results.
“Implementing the curfew remains a viable tool," Aziz said. "However, it is not in the first phase of this part of our summer crime initiative. We intend to keep it as a tool as we assess, evaluate and reevaluate this initiative.”
Aziz is hopeful a new, data-driven plan will result in targeted arrests that will prevent a summer crime spike. He revealed new maps that break the entire county down into hexagonal zones exactly 1,000 meters wide. The zones are color coded to indicate crimes.
Aziz said the hotspot mapping will be used to deploy officers in specific areas.
“This year, it calls for a more strategic deployment," the chief said. "With the hexagons, the grid, what we have decided from close analysis of the empirical data from last year and the year before was to deploy in smaller geographical areas in order to address those crimes. We cannot arrest our way out of crime. We hope to focus on quality arrests instead of the quantity of arrests.”
Each police district will have an area of particular focus, according to Aziz.
Those areas are:
- The Lewisdale section of Langley Park along University Boulevard
- The Good Luck Road corridor in Lanham
- The Kentland section of Landover
- Southern Avenue and Wheeler in Temple Hills
- Old Branch Avenue in Clinton
- The intersection of Contee Road and Laurel-Bowie Road in South Laurel
- The Fort Washington section of the south county
- Brooks Drive and Marlboro Pike in District Heights
Frustration continues to boil over about juvenile repeat offenders who are released by courts back into the community, according to Prince George's County's Deputy Chief Administrative Officer of Public Safety and Homeland Security, Barry Stanton.
"We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem," Stanton said. "But let's be clear, parents, we cannot have our youth out there at three o'clock in the morning with no supervision and the answer cannot be the Prince George's County Police Department."
Stanton called on courts to detain repeat juvenile offenders and called on judges to order parents to pay restitution for their children's crimes, which is allowed by Maryland state law.
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