Police incident on Teaberry Lane

While walking my dogs on Teaberry Lane in Frostburg this morning about 8 a.m., I saw a Frostburg Police cruiser with flashing lights in a neighbor's driveway. Then I saw a lone officer on the neighbor's front porch, knocking on the front door. The officer's knocking got louder and more insistent, and I heard him yelling variations of, "Police officer. Open the door." Then the officer stood to the side of the door and drew his handgun.

That's when I started backing away, taking myself and the dogs farther from harm's way, while still keeping the officer in sight. He soon holstered the handgun -- it was visible for less than 30 seconds -- and continued banging on the door.

About 8:10 a.m., a second and third police car arrived simultaneously. A fourth arrived a few minutes later. I wasn't close enough at the time to see the markings, but later saw that city, campus, and county police were represented.

By now neighbors were gathering in their yards and in the street. Teaberry Lane is a cul-de-sac with little to no traffic on a Saturday morning, but the police made no move to block the street. Nor did they order the neighbors inside, take up defensive positions, or do anything else that would suggest a hostage situation or other cause for alarm. The officers simply covered all the exits and took turns banging on the front door and telling whoever was inside to open up.

Eventually I took my dogs home and fetched my iPhone. While I was gone, the police entered the house. A neighbor who was watching said the house's non-resident owner arrived and talked with the police, whereupon everyone went inside -- whether because the owner had a key and let them in, or whether the owner persuaded the occupant to let them in, I don't know. That was about 8:45 a.m.

Shortly after 9 a.m., after I had posted to Facebook and Twitter what little I knew, a single officer emerged from the house escorting a man in civilian clothes, his hands behind him as if handcuffed. The officer placed him in the back seat of an unmarked cruiser, then drove slowly away.

My neighbors had many ideas about the nature of the incident, which with collaborative retellings quickly took on what Stephen Colbert would call "truthiness," but the fact is, I don't know what brought the police in the first place, nor whether an arrest took place, nor the identity of the man who was led out in apparent handcuffs. Police reports will tell us more.

Update and context at 10 p.m.: According to Maryland Judiciary Case Search, it's a case of alleged domestic violence, and the defendant is under an interim court order (as of today) to stay away from the petitioner and the residence. In the interests of the petitioner's privacy, I won't publish the defendant's name and address, and I have taken down the photograph of the defendant in custody that I posted earlier (despite it being so distant and blurry as to render him unrecognizable).

The Women's Law Center of Maryland notes that interim orders are granted by District Court commissioners when the court is closed, for example on Saturdays. But an interim order is not a permanent one, and under Maryland law, if the request for a protective order is ultimately denied or dismissed by the court, the defendant (a.k.a. "respondent") can petition to have all the relevant court documents removed from the public record.

How common are such incidents in Allegany County? According to the Maryland Judiciary's monthly public reports, Allegany County saw at least 441 final orders in domestic cases in the year 2011 alone. (I say "at least" because the figures for one month, March, are missing from the site.) That figure includes both protective orders, which involve relatives and intimate partners, and peace orders, which involve all other cases, including stalkers. It also includes final reports for denial or dismissal.

Still, that's easily 450 domestic-violence cases processed in Allegany County court in a single year, more than one a day while court is in session. Think about how many domestic-violence cases never even make it to court in the first place. While you're thinking about that, note that the 2011 statewide total for final orders in these categories was 30,896, giving Allegany County only 1.4 percent of the total.