The progarm started in 2009.
A milestone was reached in the Frederick's Most Want program. The Frederick Police Department and the State's Attorney's Office are highlighting the 200th capture in the program since it began in 2009. That person, Brittany Harris, turned herself in on April 4th, 2012. She was wanted for violation of her parole and assault.
During a news conference on Tuesday in front of the Court House, Police Chief Kim Dine says Frederick's Most Wanted involves sharing information with patrol officers, allied agencies and the community. "This program is basically about making the community safer through commitment, information sharing, teamwork and cooperation," the Chief says.
With the 200th capture, that brings the list of Frederick Most Wanted down to 81. Many of the speakers at the news conference expressed hope that that list could be further whittled down, with the exception of State's Attorney Charlie Smith. "I'm going to disagree with everybody. I want the list to keep growing and growing and growing. The larger the list, the happier we are as prosecutors," he said. "Basically, what that means is that people are going be captured, be held responsible, they're going to be on the third floor of the Court House, where hopefully my office and my prosecutors are going to seek justice and hold them responsible."
Smith says Frederick's Most Wanted also helps inform the public of the work of his agency. He says it's not "nail and jail 'em," but community prosecution. Smith says Chief Dine told him about a grant that could be used to promote community prosecution. "We got together. We got a grant. We got a prosecutor. And now we have a community prosecutor whose doing great stuff, like working with the Frederick Police Department to work on who we need to put on the Frederick's Most Wanted list, who we need to capture, take off the street," says Smith.
That community prosecutor is Ed Lulie.
Frederick's Most Wanted is one component of a state violence-reduction grant. The pictures of the most wanted are published in the Sunday edition of the Frederick News-Post.
