Baltimore crime reporter profiles Shomrim of Baltimore

Posted on November 30th, 2009 by JewishByte

JewishByte Baltimore - Justin Fenton is a crime reporter for the Baltimore reporter, who sees the worst of the city streets. With daily updates on crime in the city, Baltimore may appear to have no bright side. As he builds the ethos for Shomrim he can’t help but describe the contribution of Shomrim to help make the Northwest District one of the only practically crime-free zones in the city.

By Justin Fenton | The Baltimore Sun –

At 10 p.m. on a Monday in Northwest Baltimore, more than 20 Orthodox Jewish men are packed into a two-room apartment with a couch and maps of the nearby synagogues, eating kosher chili and discussing how to respond to the next neighborhood emergency.

Those gathered here are members of Shomrim, Hebrew for “watchers,” and they make up a round-the-clock citizens patrol, complete with matching jackets, radios and a hot-line number that area residents know as well as 911. Members have intervened in suicide attempts, divided the neighborhood into quadrants and fanned out to look for missing people, thwarted bicycle thefts and saturated areas hit by burglaries to report suspicious people to police.

“They’re an invaluable service to the district,” said Maj. Johnny Delgado, commander of Baltimore’s Northwest District. “There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not in contact about something.”

Here’s how serious Shomrim members are: Last year they brought a playbook to an informal game of flag football with a group of district police officers and won, 40-13. This year’s rematch, a fundraiser at Northwestern High School earlier this month, raised $21,000 for the Police Department’s mounted unit and was attended by Mayor Sheila Dixon and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III ( and covered by JEWISHBYTE.INFO HERE)

The group, which counts among its members a lawyer, an auto mechanic, a pharmacist, a jeweler, a psychologist, a salesman, a roofer and an accountant, started in late 2005 after a rash of burglaries in the city’s Orthodox community around Upper Park Heights and Greenspring. Several men, including business owners, decided to start patrolling the streets in the early morning hours.

“We had guys out from midnight to 4 pretty much every night, with the concept that anybody out on the street between then is a possible suspect or victim,” said Ron Rosenbluth, one of the founding members and owner of Tov Pizza, a kosher pizza place on Reisterstown Road. “And we got lucky in the first couple days to catch one of the burglars.”

Service to the community is an important part of Judaism, and Shomrim is not alone in supplementing city services in Northwest Baltimore. Hatzalah, an all-volunteer ambulance service that responds until Baltimore EMS resources arrive to take over patient care, handled more than 700 calls in 2008. There’s also Chaverim, a volunteer road service that changes flat tires, provides jump-starts and responds when community members lock their keys in a car. Chaverim’s Web site claims more than 3,000 calls annually.

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