It's been a long, hot summer in many respects for Hagerstown. But on the last day temperatures broke 90, a storm was brewing — and not just from the remnants of Hurricane Debby.
For weeks, tensions had been growing over a rash of shootings — two of them fatal — and continuing struggles with behaviors associated with opioid addiction within the city.
Residents complained. Fingers were pointed. And an open letter to the city's mayor and council from a former councilman, now a state senator, distilled frustrations but brought matters to a boiling point, even as some members of the city council were pursuing action themselves.
And in the space of that one day, a series of events unfolded that help illustrate just how complicated it can be to coordinate a strategy to deal with the issue. More about that in a moment.
At press time, two separate meetings had been planned — one by the city government, to include Hagerstown Police, the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the Maryland State Police that was tentatively set for 6 p.m. Aug. 27, City Administrator Scott Nicewarner told The Herald-Mail on Friday.
Then over the weekend, a separate meeting was arranged to include a number of players, including the police, for Monday afternoon. These are agencies the city officials already had planned to meet with during a series of meetings Hagerstown City Council members requested last week.
Confused yet?
We'll break it down, going back to last Tuesday.
Tensions between Washington County, Hagerstown
During the Washington County Commissioners' regular meeting Tuesday, Aug. 6, Commissioner Derek Harvey referenced the initial letter, written by Sen. Paul Corderman, R-Washington. Harvey suggested the problems stem from an underfunded city police force.
Backstory: Hagerstown Police: Three shootings in 16 hours starts with homicide
"I hope that the city takes it seriously, acknowledges that the public has concerns and that they will work hard to rebuild one aspect of this, the police force," which Harvey said had "decreased in size considerably over the years."
Harvey said "they're substantially underpaid, and that's why they have a problem in recruitment and retention," and that he hoped the city would "work with us and others to try and address the crime and other underlying issues there."
Harvey said he looked forward to working with the city leaders and said county staff and Sheriff Brian Albert had "already been engaged … to try and help where possible."
In the audience was Hagerstown Councilman Kristin Aleshire, who attended the meeting in response to social media posts he said Harvey had made about the city government, and that he contended were untrue. And he found the commissioner's comments Tuesday to be condescending.
During a portion of the meeting when citizens are permitted to address the commissioners, Aleshire turned the argument back on Harvey.
"I'm here this morning because of comments made by Mr. Harvey on Facebook" regarding public safety in Hagerstown, he said. "And I don't do Facebook politics; I do face to face. I don't provide lies about politics on social media; I like to speak honesty and plainness and candor face-to-face with my fellow leadership.
"I want to speak to this notion, this ridiculous notion — Mr. Harvey is saying that the city is defunding the police … and this notion that you said you've spoken to city leadership in the last six months, let alone the last six days, about public safety is ridiculous. You haven't been doing that," Aleshire said.
"Instead, what you've been doing is filing frivolous lawsuits over annexation with the city and working behind the scenes to undermine the city's ownership and operation of its utility system. Those are the things you've been doing."
Aleshire was referring to a suit filed against the city last month on behalf of the county commissioners regarding annexation of properties at the south end of Hagerstown. Annexation, water sources and police and fire services have been a simmering point of contention between the local governments for some time.
Aleshire also suggested Harvey was trying to influence the upcoming nonpartisan elections for Hagerstown's mayor and council.
'City residents are county residents, too'
Aleshire, who also serves as town manager for Myersville, Md., noted that under Maryland law, municipalities are not obligated to provide public safety. "Under state statute, that rests with the county and the state. But we do that anyway," he said, spending $15 million of the roughly $30 million it collects in property taxes on the city's police force.
He also said Harvey's claims that a third of county public safety calls are in the city are what they should be.
"City residents, that are county residents, make up about a third of the county population," he said, "so that's about the correct amount of service that should be provided to those fellow county residents."
He said perhaps the county could consider relieving the city police from providing resource officers to county schools within Hagerstown, allowing them to go back out on patrol.
He added that a number of points in Corderman's letter involve agencies over which the city has no control.
Mayor's relations with police, others
In the meantime, Hagerstown Mayor Tekesha Martinez was expressing her own frustration in a Facebook post she later told The Herald-Mail was "personal." But in it, she addressed comments she said were being made about how the city was handling concerns about crime.
"I am not going to speak defeat," she said; "it doesn't make any sense.
"I'm a team player. And I believe for any team to win, whether it's team Hagerstown, team Washington County, team Black people, team women, team single moms, team Christian, any time a team wins, you have to do it together and you have to do it in one accord."
She emphasized the need for mediation, saying "power imbalances create more injustices than lack of resources or money. Conflict has a cost." Resources exist in the community, she said; how they are distributed, she added, is something the community should address.
And she denied claims that she had defunded police or was focused on a particular segment of the community. In 2020, she said, "I was running for a nonpartisan position in my community, and the entire city mattered to me, not just Black people."
Upon being appointed mayor, she said, "I instantly began to build relationships with the police department."
She also expressed concerns about businesses complaining about downtown Hagerstown when "business is booming," adding that "we've also got more growth than any administration; we went 50 years without having this type of growth or development within the city."
Martinez said she doesn't have time to explain herself. And she asked the business community to explain how the mayor and council could work better with them. While she did not mention him by name, she also addressed Corderman's letter.
"And this is my response to him," she said, "You wrote an open letter to mayor and council with a municipality that you are a state senator for, and you didn't come and address us?"
Council members ask for dialogue
Later that afternoon, the Hagerstown City Council met for a scheduled work session with a brief agenda that included a proclamation for National Farmers Market Week, a funding request from the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area and an update on the new field house under construction on Memorial Boulevard.
More: Shootings, letters and lots of questions: How can Hagerstown address crime issues?
But then the conversation returned to Corderman's letter and the community's response to it.
Aleshire, who had also spoken to various media outlets about the issue, noted a misconception that the city is running various organizations or programs that people are concerned about, such as the Washington County Health Department.
He called again for a series of meetings with each of the agencies involved to explore what their roles are in addressing crime and its underlying causes.
The other council members present, Peter Perini and Matthew Schindler, agreed. Schindler asked that the meetings begin right away. Martinez said she would arrange it.
Meanwhile Corderman released another letter, this one addressed to Gov. Wes Moore and co-signed by another state senator, Joanne Benson, D-Prince George's, a South Hagerstown High School graduate who later became a principal in the Prince George's school system. In it, Corderman and Benson sought money and resources for a task force "to address this public safety crisis."
Corderman told The Herald-Mail he had not spoken with anyone in the city government before drafting and releasing the letter, saying he had only had one response, from Aleshire, to the first letter.
What happens next?
On Friday, Nicewarner gave The Herald-Mail a tentative date for a meeting the city was arranging between local and state law enforcement agencies.
On Monday morning, Corderman contacted The Herald-Mail about his own meeting, scheduled for Monday afternoon, to which Martinez, Nicewarner, police agencies, school and health officials and county officials had been invited.
Staff writer Julie Greene contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: A rash of violence in Hagerstown has local officials squabbling. Can they come together?
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