Police Officer of the Month

July 2002

Chief Livesay selected PFC Jason Starr as Police Officer of the Month for July 2002.

PFC Starr has served both the community and the department with the utmost professional service. The following outlines his excellent work for the month of July.

Early this spring, PFC Starr noticed that his shift and other shifts were responding to an increased volume of nuisance calls in the Colt's Crossing complex on Corporate Court in Ellicott City. The community, a Howard County-owned development of subsidized residents, was plagued by an increase of nighttime foot traffic, vandalism, assaults, burglaries and general disorderly conduct of some residents and their visitors.

PFC Starr began solving the problem by speaking to residents and hearing their concerns as well as soliciting information from police-weary individuals. He coordinated with other shifts to create a plan to enforce the loitering laws and get word out to non-residents that their company in the development was unwanted.

Next, PFC Starr met with county housing inspectors and learned that they were frustrated in their efforts to evict contract violators and ban unruly and unwanted individuals from the county property. While working with inspectors, PFC Starr researched federal, state and local laws that resulted in him hand-delivering banning letters to numerous individuals.

PFC Starr received calls on a regular basis from informants providing detailed information about criminal activity. Most recently, he began investigating information on suspected drug transactions in the complex.

PFC Starr interacts with the development's children as they play basketball on the court or play at the playground. He has held neighborhood clean-up days helping the children clean up the trash laying around and awarded them football and baseball cards as a reward. He also organized the community's first National Night Out.

The quality of life has clearly improved for the residents of Colt's Crossing. Recently an off-duty police officer who lives near Colt's Crossing was driving his child to work when PFC Starr passed them going the opposite way. The child stated "That's Officer Starr." Knowing that PFC Starr and the child had never met, the officer asked the child how he knew that. The child replied, "Everyone knows Officer Starr."

In addition to PFC Starr's efforts at Colt's Crossing, he served as an F.T.O. during the entire month. PFC Starr was also nominated for a Maryland Governor's Award in Crime Prevention. He recently received e-mails and praise from the Burglary supervisor for his work in handling some false reported burglaries and, most recently, received a Memo of Recognition from detectives for his assistance in nabbing a burglary suspect.

Congratulations and keep up the good work!