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Crime & Safety

Montgomery County Police Differ Internally on How to Count Gang Homicides

Annual crime statistics for 2010 are set to be released this spring.

As Montgomery County Police officials prepare the 2010 annual crime statistics report, views differ internally on how homicides involving gang members should be counted.

Eight out of the 17 homicides committed in Montgomery County in 2010 were “gang related,” according to Lt. Dinish Patil, deputy director of the Montgomery County Police Special Investigations Unit, the division that handles gang crimes. Patil took over last August.

But only two of those eight were considered gang motivated by the Montgomery County Police Major Crimes Division, which only statistically counts homicides involving gang members as “gang related” if the homicide was ordered by a gang or committed to further gang activity, said police spokeswoman Lucille Baur.

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“Someone can be a member of a gang and commit a homicide, but it is not considered a gang-related homicide unless that gang membership is a causative factor,” Baur said last spring, following the release of the 2009 MCPD annual crime report.

Patil said he views homicides that involve gang members a little differently. If a gang member commits a homicide, it would now be considered a gang-related crime regardless of whether it was gang motivated, he said.

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Patil said he wasn't sure what the previous policy was, but that he and his team have been looking at gang-related crimes this way since he took over.

“If a gang member was a victim of a crime, I would [also] consider that gang related as we may not know who the perpetrators were, but there could be a gang nexus that we need to investigate," Patil said in an email. "Relating events to gangs is a way for us to make sure that we are evaluating incidents fully and exploring the motivations and connections that may not be readily apparent."

Baur acknowledged “an apparent internal discrepancy” in how police leadership view homicides involving gang members, but said any changes to policy would have to be agreed upon by the department as a whole.

She said that while the department has used the term “gang related” in the past, it would now be more accurate to use the term “gang motivated” when referring to homicides that were driven by gang membership.

“If you’re comparing apples to apples, there were no gang-motivated homicides in 2008, two in 2009 and two in 2010,” Baur said.

There were 249 gang incidences in 2010, a 13 percent drop from 2009. Overall, gang crimes made up 1 percent of county crime in 2009, and a similar trend is expected for 2010.

But Patil said not to be fooled by the numbers.

“While gang incidences were only 1 percent of overall crime, they tend to be more serious and violent in nature – more homicides, more rapes,” he said.

Total county homicides increased 31 percent from 2009, when there were 13, compared to 17 in 2010, according to police data.

In 2010, District 3 — which encompasses the greater Silver Spring area, including downtown Silver Spring, White Oak, Burtonsville and parts of Wheaton — was the highest crime area in the county and was host to the highest number of homicides, eight. 

District 4 — the greater Wheaton area, including Aspen Hill, Olney and parts of Silver Spring — had the highest number of gang incidences, according to police officials.

Montgomery County Police are in the process of finalizing 2010 crime data, which will be presented to the County Council Public Safety Committee this spring.

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