Carol Marie Brown (File photo / December 28, 2012) |
Before coming to Hagerstown in 1999, Smith served with the Baltimore Police Department, where he rose to the rank of major and retired after 26 years.
Smith, 61, replaced former police Chief Dale Jones, who resigned to head the law-enforcement branch of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
At the time of his appointment as chief, Smith said he was aware of Hagerstown’s continuing problem with an open-air drug market and considered suppressing it a challenge.
Smith had a different education than most officers.
He said he received a bachelor of arts degree in mathematics from American University in 1973 and a master of science in economics from the University of Baltimore.
He also attended the Senior Management Institute for Police at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
From 2005-06, Smith took an unpaid leave of absence from the city and worked under contract for the U.S. State Department in Afghanistan, where he served as an adviser to a provincial police chief in the southern part of that country.
Capt. Mark Holtzman has served as acting police chief since Smith retired.
— Dan Dearth
State police barrack
April 30 — Washington County got a new $11.3 million Maryland State Police barrack in 2012, a facility that replaced one built in 1973 and was designed to meet the agency’s law enforcement needs for years to come, officials with the department said.
The Maryland State Police Western Operations Center on Col. Henry K. Douglas Drive off Sharpsburg Pike gives state police in the Hagerstown barrack their first fingerprint center and a crime lab that has six times more space than an old lab.
Security measures in the facility include a five-layer checkpoint system that one must pass through to reach the building’s crime lab and surveillance cameras inside a drug evidence room that can be monitored at Maryland State Police headquarters in Pikesville, Md.
State police troopers work out of the first floor of the building, which includes a flexible dispatching area that can be transformed into a central command center in case of a large-scale emergency in the area, said Lt. Thomas Woodward.
The building has dorm space that can accommodate up to seven people. There was dorm space in the old barrack but that was lost to install a “very small crime lab,” Woodward said.
— Dave McMillion
Precious metals targeted
May through November 2012 — The problem of precious metal thefts continued to make headlines in 2012 when grave sites were targeted and people were charged with stealing metal from an electric substation and from a former Hagerstown furniture factory.
Police over the last two years have been dealing with theft of metals such as copper pipe, some of which was stolen from homes up for sale or in foreclosure.
Scrap metal processors said they were aware of the problem and had set up systems to help prevent the thefts, like setting aside suspicious loads of metal brought into their facilities so police can examine them.
