gaithersblog.net

County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger held up his hands for silence after a meeting last week with Latino advocates became heated with people shouting at each other over immigration enforcement.

[Casa of Maryland spokeswoman Kim] Propeack and others said Manger’s experience in Fairfax made him a good candidate for the Montgomery post.

‘‘The department hired him because he had experience working with a diverse community like Montgomery County,” she said.

‘Breaks my heart’

Manger says the immigration issue should be dealt with at the federal level. The department’s policy is to not ask for immigration status of people officers come in contact with unless they are stopped for a traffic offense or are arrested on a criminal charge.

‘‘It breaks my heart,” Manger said of the immigration arrests. ‘‘I get accused of breaking up families and all sorts of stuff. But you’ve got to do the right thing.”

Immigration issues appear to be moving to a full boil, fueled by the county police policy of arresting people with federal immigration warrants and others’ belief that the deportation flags should be ignored.

Like many police chiefs, Manger wants the federal government to take the warrants out of the NCIC database. The warrants began to be added in 2002.

Since then, county officers have not had an explicit, written set of directives to follow. The police manual has not been updated since 1998.

Police do not have to charge someone with a crime in order to run their name through the NCIC. And while police are not required to check the database to issue minor criminal citations such as jaywalking and speeding, ‘‘95 percent of the time we do,” Hurtado said.

In the absence of specific guidelines, police follow what Hurtado called the ‘‘unwritten rule” of automatically taking people with immigration warrants to the county’s detention center on Seven Locks Road, where the Department of Corrections calls to see if federal agents want to deport the detainee.

‘‘Until that gets clarified, officers are going to keep doing it,” Hurtado said.

The police manual will be updated this year, Manger said at the Gaithersburg meeting last week.

I certainly hope that this doesn’t mean it will be updated to allow officers to pick and choose which warrants to enforce.

There were a number of short items in this article:

• The last step before mayor and City Council approval of a plan to redevelop the Broadstone Apartments was delayed until tonight.

  A commission recommendation to the mayor and council of the Broadstone redesign plan was rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. tonight at City Hall, 31 S. Summit Ave.

• Also delayed was commission action on a forest conservation and wildlife management plan for Aventiene, also known as the Crown Farm development. The topic was rescheduled to July 11.

• RST Development filed an appeal in Montgomery County Circuit Court after the Gaithersburg Board of Appeals last month denied the company the option to re-rent the West Deer Park Apartments, at 70 W. Deer Park Road.

• New youth center to feature recording studio

• Input sought on Kentlands Boulevard

• Buyout won’t affect Olde Towne

  A $22 billion buyout of Archstone-Smith Trust, a real estate investment trust, late last month is not expected to impact a major housing deal in Olde Towne, said Gaithersburg Assistant City Manager Fred Felton.

Most raise fees by $10 or $15 increments, while the largest is a $3,560 increase raising the maximum fee per acre for stormwater management waiver fees to $43,560.

The overcrowding violations, $200 for the first infraction and $1,000 for recurring incidents, previously were issued as $100 property maintenance fines. A $500 penalty also was added for not having an emergency exit.

Neighborhood Services Director Kevin Roman proposed the more severe penalties last winter after two separate house fires revealed that multiple families were living together in each house.

Gaithersburg has had 43 overcrowding reports so far this year, while there were 70 in 2002, Ossont said.

One of the 43 cases this year received a citation. Most violators resolve the issues soon after the first warning, Roman said.

Though the dispute about a $250,000 line item representing only about half a percent of the $50.6 million budget nearly brought the city to a halt, Schlichting and other city leaders said the root problem was not a personality conflict.

Council members and the mayor have focused less on listening than talking than in the past, and that will have to change, Edens said after the meeting.

‘‘We will just have to figure out a way to better understand our views,” she said. ‘‘I feel much better going home tonight. Now we can kiss and make up.”

Police suspect a group of teens are responsible for a series of burglaries inside Lakeforest mall early Sunday. Five males age 14 to 18 entered Lakeforest Shopping Center, 701 Russell Ave. in Gaithersburg, between 9:04 a.m. and 10:20 a.m., when no stores were open and the building was mostly in use by people who take walks there, according to a statement from Gaithersburg police.