
DATE: Saturday, May 3, 1997                 TAG: 9705030451

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  165 lines

"OPEN GATES" - LESS CRIME

Eighteen months ago this week, when the Navy started flinging open its local bases to the public, more than a few old salts predicted trouble.

By withdrawing guards from its gates, the service was inviting criminals to run roughshod over its installations and removing a hindrance to terrorists, the naysayers said.

But even with a reported robbery and kidnapping Wednesday at the Norfolk Naval Base, crime has fallen overall at its Hampton Roads bases since the ``open gate'' policy began, statistics from the Navy show. And, Navy officialscontend, the service's readiness to deal with terrorists hasn't been lessened.

``My assessment is, it has worked,'' Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer, commander of the Norfolk Naval Base complex, said of the policy.

In spite of this week's incident, which is still under investigation, Navy officials said there is no plan to reshut the gates.

Largely to help speed traffic flow, the Navy eased access to the Norfolk Naval Station-Norfolk Naval Air Station complex and the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in November 1995. In August 1996, Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach followed suit.

Other major Hampton Roads Navy properties - such as Dam Neck's Fleet Combat Training Center Atlantic, and the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station - continue to rigidly limit public access.

In the past, motorists entering the three open bases had to slow down or stop at the gates to allow sentries to check their base decals or passes. With the change, they were freed - at least during daylight hours - to drive right onto the installations.

Only at night have gates been manned - and even then, not in all cases. Two months ago, Little Creek removed guards from its gates 24 hours a day.

The effect of the changes was indisputable. The bases' famous early-morning and mid-afternoon traffic jams have been diminished. That translated into a valuable ``quality-of-life improvement'' for sailors and civilians who work on the bases, Ziemer said in an interview last week.

Companies that do business with the Navy have heralded the change. ``It's given us easier access to our customers,'' said Caroline Hitchens, president of the Tidewater Association of Service Contractors.

And for the most part, the public has cheered the policy. ``I think it gives the community more a sense that this is their Navy, the more we can welcome them onto the bases to look at the ships,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Roxie Thomsen Merritt, a spokeswoman for the Norfolk-based 2nd Fleet.

The Navy's new policy wasn't new to the military. Army installations, among them Fort Story and Fort Monroe, have had open gates for years.

But that doesn't matter to Navy traditionalists.

Retirees still ``are really uncomfortable with it,'' Ziemer acknowledged. ``It's a change from the good old-fashioned way.''

Ziemer said: ``To them, the figurehead of a guy standing at a gate . . . indicates a commitment to security.''

``Frankly,'' he added, ``I miss that, too. There's nothing better than a sharp-looking sailor with a white hat and white spats saying, `Welcome to Norfolk Naval Base, the greatest Navy base in the world.' ''

But in an era of tightening resources, he said, that sailor could be more effectively employed elsewhere.

That elsewhere, at the Norfolk Naval Base, has mostly been on the streets.

Taking guards off the gates freed as many as 35 more security personnel for patrols on a typical day, said Milt Hemmingsen, the base's community policing division officer.

The beefed-up patrols are one of the reasons why Hemmingsen said major reported crimes at the Norfolk Naval Base dropped last year, continuing a five-year trend. Reported robberies dropped to four last year from 20 in 1995. Cases of burglaries, assaults and vandalism also fell.

The trend likewise held at Little Creek, where reported crimes declined last year in every major category.

Little Creek's head of law enforcement, Lt. Hal Oakley, attributed the decline to ``the entire base doing a better job . . . of being security-conscious.''

Oakley said Little Creek officials are focusing more on crime prevention - improving lighting, and removing trees and bushes from near windows that burglars might enter. He said security officers also spend more time developing beats and talking to people on base, and less time inside police cruisers. Little Creek has switched more security personnel to bike patrols and plans soon to put them on all-terrain vehicles.

Oceana officials declined to be interviewed, but provided statistics for 1995 and 1996. They showed the number of serious crimes there also dropped last year.

At Norfolk Naval Base, Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Schmitt has been on the front lines of change since the open-gate policy began.

Outfitted in black helmet, jump suit and combat boots, the tall muscleman saddled up on his 21-speed Diamondback mountain bike and set off last Monday morning from the base's police headquarters, within sight of Gate 1.

It was spitting rain, but Schmitt and his partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Cenen Camerino, had a job to do.

They're among the 21 bike patrol personnel who cover the base and its three housing areas. That's about three times as many bike patrolmen as there were before the open gate policy.

After pedaling past a line of piers jammed with cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers, Schmitt and Camerino weaved through parking lots packed with thousands of cars. Then, maneuvering around fences and bumping past road construction, they eased through an alleyway into the base's Admirals' Row, where senior officers and their families live in stately old homes.

When he signed on to the bike patrol a few years ago, Schmitt conceded, he took some ribbing from comrades in police cruisers. ``Hey, I see you've got your tricycle out,'' they'd laugh as they pulled alongside.

But, he said, the bikes have proved their worth. ``I've done about everything on this bike,'' he said, even chased down thieves.

``One of the great things about the bike is its stealthiness,'' Schmitt said. ``I can be up on somebody before they even know what hit 'em.''

Bikes aren't the only tools at the bike patrolmen's disposal.

Inside a small room at police headquarters is a wall of TV monitors displaying live pictures from a dozen closed-circuit cameras mounted on utility poles near the base's waterfront.

Bike patrol members at a desk below the monitors take turns zooming the cameras in and out by typing commands on computer keyboards.

Since the cameras went up in April 1996, Hemmingsen said, police have captured several crimes in progress, ranging from car thefts to vandalism. He said the cameras have prevented even more.

Would-be wrongdoers think twice, Hemmingsen explained, when ``they're afraid they're going to be caught on tape.''

Much of the crime on local bases even now is committed by insiders. As many as 75,000 sailors and civilians work at Norfolk Naval Base on a typical day.

But Hemmingsen said that even before the open gate policy began, criminal outsiders found their way onto the base, too: in cars they'd acquired with unexpired decals, at rush hour when guards couldn't possibly check every car, even in tour buses.

And, he said, base police have been forced to be more creative in dealing with them.

In February, base security teamed with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in an investigation called Operation Gridlock. Using surveillance, they bored into a car-theft ring operating on the base, arresting 17 people. Some of those were also charged with narcotics and prostitution offenses.

Clearly the most sensitive issue with the change to open gates is terrorism.

Navy officials don't want to talk much about what they're doing to thwart it.

But Ziemer made clear that he spends a lot of time thinking about it. ``I work closely, probably more closely now than I ever have,'' he said, ``assessing the intelligence reports, working with the other inter-agency guys, FBI, through our NCIS . . . That is the No. 1 obligation I have.''

And, he said, he's not alone in his watch. ``Sailors have called in more calls concerning unattended packages, people who look strange, who look like they shouldn't be here,'' Ziemer noted. The base regularly practices remanning its gates in case it needs to protect against such threats.

But having guards at the gates at all times doesn't guarantee safety, he and other Navy officials said.

``The threat is the same,'' Little Creek's Oakley said. ``A terrorist is not going to be deterred by a gate guard.''

In December, Little Creek was the site for a weeklong Navy exercise in which a mock terrorist bombing was staged. Navy officials came from as far away as Japan.

The key now, Oakley said, is learning to protect the bases from within.

``The truly sensitive areas, we've enclaved,'' he said, adding, ``The Army has been doing this for years.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

KEEPING BASES SECURE

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Schmitt scans surveillance cameras

before starting his bike patrol.

GRAPHIC

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

SOURCE: Norfolk Naval Base

JOHN CORBITT\The Virginian-Pilot KEYWORDS: CRIME STATISTICS