The Silver Spring Penguin

People in Silver Spring’s residential neighborhoods plan to powwow over crime and how they can scrape it off the streets, a rep for the area’s civic groups announced.

The “crime summit”, a series of meetings scheduled to start Sunday in Woodside Park, aims to spit out an action plan that’ll put the kibbosh on crime now and in the future, Tony Hausner, a rep for Silver Spring’s civic organizations, explained to the neighborhoods committee Monday night.

“The county executive’s budget is calling for a reduction in new police recruits,” Hausner said. “We feel the police department is already understaffed, so what can we as a community do to reduce crime in the area?”

According to the most recent crime statistics available on the MoCo PD website, crime in the third police district increased 8 percent between the first quarters of 2007 and 2008. Things like burglary, assault and robbery experienced a year-over-year decrease. But auto theft and larceny increased by 12 and 22 percent, respectively, in the same period.

“My neighborhood had a doubling of crime,” Hausner, an Indian Spring resident, said.

The PD doesn’t break things down by specific neighborhoods, but the H1 sector includes residential neighborhoods beyond downtown Silver Spring. In that sector, burglary and theft from vehicles increased within the month of October, from three burglaries and three vehicle break-ins in the first half of the month, to 10 burglaries and seven vehicle break-ins in the last half.

In the G1 sector, which includes downtown Silver Spring, burglary rates remained low (two for the month of October). However, 27 vehicle break-ins were reported that month, compared with 10 in the H1 sector.

On top of theft, the crime summit hopes to examine education-based neighborhood watches, active community patrols, gang-busting efforts, and what Hausner described as “quality-of-life offenses like crude, offensive behavior”.

But talks on crime should be rooted in cold, hard facts, not just perceived conditions, Megan Moriarty, the neighborhoods committee’s newly elected chair, said. “People’s perceptions and actual incidents of crime are sometimes different,” she told Hausner.

Moriarty also suggested reaching out to downtown Silver Spring’s apartment dwellers, who are not represented by the civic organizations involved in this crime summit. Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board might co-sponsor the summit, but only three of its 18 members — Moriarty, Evan Glass and Lucinda Lessley — live in downtown apartment buildings.

The Silver Spring Crime Summit takes place on Sunday at the St Luke Lutheran Church (9100 Colesville Rd), starting at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Photos courtesy of Flickr user TiareScott.

One guy sits in the joint, accused of fatally shooting a 14-year-old boy on a bus in Long Branch earlier this month; two more suspects are on the run. Now, the victim’s classmates remember him as a friendly, happy boy.

During a video montage played Monday night inside the Montgomery Blair High School auditorium, one unnamed girl recalled her first encounter with Tai Lam, the honor student shot to death Nov 1 after an argument on a Ride-On bus. She had seen Lam outside a shoe store on Ellsworth Drive and asked if she could use his cell phone. Afterward, she told him he was cute; he just smiled and walked away.

A memorial to Tai Lam in Downtown Silver Spring.

Another girl remembered how Lam playfully proposed marriage and promised to get her a ring. And the boys said Lam was always happy and friendly. More said they would wear a purple scarf, as Lam always did, in his memory.

Grief counselors are available to students at the high school where Lam was a freshman, Luis Cardona, with the county’s department of health and human services, told about 200 people gathered in the school auditorium for a community meeting. But Cardona also emphasized parents’ roles in the grieving process, and in discouraging their kids’ participation in street gangs.

“The most important thing parents can do is listen to their children,” he said. “I’ve been at this for a few years, and I’ve buried 30 kids. This is something we don’t want to get comfortable with.”

Tai Lam's family during Monday's public meeting.

While there was no evidence that Lam or any of his companions on the bus that night were gang members, the alleged shooter is believed to be with MS-13, a gang with roots in El Salvador. Twenty-year-old Hector Mauricio Hernandez, an illegal immigrant and resident of the 8600 block of Flower Avenue in Takoma Park, was charged last Friday with first-degree murder and is being held without bond.

And this wasn’t Hernandez’s first run-in with the law, according to Chief Thomas Manger, MoCo’s top cop. Hernandez had been arrested Oct 3 for carrying a concealed weapon (a switchblade knife), but was released on his own recognizance when a witness refused to cooperate with police.

Two more men have also been indicted in Lam’s death but remain on the run: 20-year-old Gilmar Leonardo Romero, suspected of first-degree murder; and 30-year-old Ernesto Milan-Canales, who has been charged as an accomplice. Both are believed to be members of the same gang.

Exactly what sparked the incident that Saturday night is coming into focus. According to a police investigation, about a dozen teens — including Lam — hopped the Ride-On bus in downtown Silver Spring and headed for Long Branch. Another group of four or five men got on the same bus at two different stops. Words were exchanged, though what was said is still under investigation.

When the bus reached Piney Branch Road at Arliss Street, the men got off the bus. But before the bus’s rear door closed shut, one of them turned and fired on the teens with a handgun. Three kids were shot and taken to area trauma centers. Lam died; two of his companions — a 14-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy, both unidentified — survived and were released from the hospital.

“This was random, as far as we can tell,” police chief Manger said.

Memorial inside Montgomery Blair High School

While the public meeting’s emphasis was on preventing kids from joining gangs, third-district top cop Capt Don Johnson told attendees that the PD was doing more to sweep existing gangs off the street. The police district has increased its gang investigators to two officers, and graveyard-shift cops are told to arrive early in order to address street crime, Johnson said.

For Ride-On’s part, the bus system is increasing the number of rides with security cameras, Ride-On spokesperson Pete Buckley told the audience. Currently, 227 of the fleet’s 375 rides have cameras; that number should be up to 325 buses by December 2009. According to The Gazette, the bus on which Lam rode that evening was not equipped with a security camera.

And then there’s a matter of practicing discretion, Cardona, with health and human services, said.

“Think about who you’re talking to, because you never know,” he suggested.

Photo credits: J. Deseo/SSP.