The minute an officer takes something personally, that’s when there’s trouble,”
— Officer Mark Blackwell
Over his 10 years in Alexandria, Officer Mark Blackwell has come to know just about every dark corner of Alexandria. Before he turns his patrol car down an alleyway around midnight on May 28, he flicks off his headlights and the car creeps forward. As he rounds the corner he turns on the spotlight and flashes it around the parking lot. This happens about once every half hour, and 8 out of 10 times there’s nothing there. But twice, in one evening, Blackwell finds a couple in the back of a car. After he checks their IDs to make sure neither of them are minors or have any warrants out for their arrest, Blackwell lets them go with a warning. He points to the fogged up windows of the car.
“It’s the windows” said Blackwell. “The windows always give it away.”
Blackwell said this kind of stop is emblematic of a lot of the average patrol work. Of the various fights Blackwell breaks up or traffic stops, there are no arrests that evening.
“Just because you can lock someone up, doesn’t mean you should,” said Blackwell, adding that if he arrested “drunk in public” in Old Town on a Thursday or Friday night, there wouldn’t be any room left in the jail.
“I always have a choice,” said Blackwell. “I can arrest someone for a Class-D misdemeanor and deal with the paperwork, but that means I won’t be available and on patrol if something big happens.”
Over the course of the evening, Blackwell gets called out to scenes where teenagers are “trespassing” on public city sidewalks and a “loud music” complaint from a city utility truck (with a permit) working North Union Street. According to Blackwell, most of the calls that come in are for non-police issues, including an unusually high amount of conflicts between taxi cab drivers and riders over fare issues. It’s usually not an issue where one party is committing a crime, but Blackwell says he still does his best to mediate.
This isn’t to say it doesn’t get more severe. Blackwell recalls several times he’s been called out to a home to find someone is the victim of domestic abuse or witnessed it on the street. Because of this, Blackwell enthusiastically appreciates section B of the new Virginia Code 19.2-81.3, which states that “any law enforcement officer with probable cause to believe that a violation of [Virginia’s domestic violence law] has occurred shall arrest and take into custody the person he has probable cause to believe … was the predominant physical aggressor.”
Once, Blackwell says, he came across a woman on the street with her boyfriend. She was crying, while initially hesitant to say anything, eventually admitted that her boyfriend had struck her. For the most part, though, Blackwell says crimes like this don’t happen out in the open on the city streets.
“No one does anything wrong on the main streets,” said Blackwell. “It’s all about knowing where to look in the alleyways.”
Blackwell patrols sector 1 of Alexandria: Old Town. The other two sectors are Del Ray and the West End. Blackwell has patrolled Old Town since he joined the department in 2006. Before joining the Alexandria Police Department, he worked for four years as a deputy in the Arlington Sheriff’s Department and served for 16 years in the Army infantry. Blackwell wanted to join law enforcement since high school, ideally at a federal level, but once he retired at 36 it was too late to apply for the organizations like the FBI. Still, Blackwell says local policing has its advantages, like getting to know and understand a local community. According to Blackwell, getting to know local citizens and businesses can help stop problems before they start.
“Also, there’s never a dull moment,” said Blackwell. “There’s always something going on. Most of the time, there are a lot of things going on at once. We have to find the things that are out of place.”
The first call of the night is a man in a red shirt reportedly threatening the staff of an Old Town restaurant. Blackwell, and eventually two other police officers, respond to the scene and separate the intoxicated man from the restaurant staff. A few hours later, coming back around the street corner to the same block of King Street, the same man is in another verbal argument with someone on the sidewalk. The argument stops as soon as Blackwell approaches, who warns the man to sober up and start walking home.
Blackwell is African-American and says he’s very aware of the spotlight the police have been put in concerning race over the past few years, but says that between having an African-American police chief and mayor he’s never seen it as an issue in this department. Blackwell says the only time it comes up is when he’s arresting a young African-American, and often times they throw slurs towards him and accuse him of racism.
Blackwell says he advises young police officers to take their work seriously, but not personally.
“The minute an officer takes something personally, that’s when there’s trouble,” said Blackwell. “We need to treat people fair. It can be hard, we’re all human, but you have to or you won’t last long in this job.”
As the evening progresses, the number of calls begins to die down.
“After midnight, Alexandria turns into a ghost town,” said Blackwell. “The bars are closing on King Street, but that’s basically it … After midnight, whether it’s traffic or domestic [violence], most crimes are going to be alcohol-related.”
As the bar scene on King Street begins to quiet, Blackwell shifts into speed-checking on Route 1. He doesn’t pull anyone over that night, but when he does pull them over, Blackwell says he always asks them why they were speeding. Sometimes, Blackwell says people tell him they were speeding because they’re tired and heading home from a long day at work, hoping to avoid a ticket, but Blackwell warned this is a red flag for being ticketed.
“Speed and fatigue do not mix,” Blackwell said.
While Blackwell doesn’t catch anyone speeding, at one point a person walks into the empty street waving a white sheet of paper over his head. Blackwell, suspecting the person to be a hitchhiker, pulls over and asks the young man what he’s doing. As it turns out, the paper is a map of Northern Virginia, and the man is attempting a spontaneous midnight hike to Arlington. Puzzled, but with nothing technically illegal, Blackwell points north and sends the hiker on his way.
“It gets weird sometimes,” he said.