Hundreds of people who took advantage Friday of the Baltimore Police Department’s Community Partnership program, which gave citizens the opportunity to ride along with officers on their rounds, sit in on roll calls and briefings, and challenge commanders with questions in face-to-face meetings.
“That’s something people in the community say they want — more interaction with the police,” said political scientist John Bullock said the passenger seat of a Ford Explorer patrol vehicle as a 30-year veteran of the force, officer John Fabula, drove around the parking lot of a mall, looking for anything out of the ordinary.” We want to show the citizens of Baltimore what we do and what we do best,” the Western District’s commanding officer, Maj. Robert L. Booker Jr., said at roll call for the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. He said the aim of the Community Partnership program was to find out from citizens “exactly what they need from the Police Department” and to “show us how to be better police.”