Montgomery County police responded to a report of an armed robbery at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda early Saturday evening, April 25, 2026. The robbery was reported in a mall parking garage at 6:08 PM Saturday. According to police, a suspect wielding a knife robbed two victims of property in the garage.
Police have not released a description of the suspect. They did not indicate how the suspect managed to evade appearing on surveillance cameras in the garage.
This is the fourth armed robbery at the mall this year. All have taken place in parking areas on the property. Three were reported in garages, and one in a surface lot. This is also another of the rapidly piling up examples of a disturbing new crime trend in Montgomery County: violent crimes being perpetrated during daylight hours.
18 comments:
1. Shocker said by no one. 2. Situational awareness. 3. Carry a non-lethal Bryna.
Sure would be nice if MCPD felt the public could be allowed to hear radio calls, so we could better protect ourselves in the moment, since it seems the police are getting farther and farther removed from taking on that responsibility themselves.
To clarify, I mean taking on the responsibility of protecting us, the citizenry They seem to be doing a *fine* job of keeping themselves from harm's way, which is the excuse they gave for encrypting radio traffic to begin with: "officer safety is paramount." I'd argue citizen safety really should rank up there alongside, rather than as an also-ran, which it sure seems like it's becoming of late.
"officer privacy is paramount" how else they would they make their lunch dates.
@11:35 AM Citizens (serfs) are expendable.
When police can’t do their jobs and criminals are not prosecuted and illegal immigrants have more rights than citizens this is what happens. Period.
Be serious, dude. Even before the radio traffic was encrypted, unless you continually had one ear glued to your scanner (or were getting updates from someone who did), how exactly would you "protect yourself in the moment"?
You have a very shall, myopic view of society. , a rapidly increasing number of US police agencies are adopting encryption, with the trend shifting from encrypting only tactical channels to full-time encryption of routine dispatch channels. Now, most major cities, even NYC, and agencies are moving toward, or have already implemented, full-time encryption, creating a patchy landscape where the ability to monitor police traffic depends heavily on location. Protecting sensitive victim/officer information, public safety, and preventing criminals from monitoring police movements are the justifications for implementing this practice. Sucks 2BU.
Waahmp waa!
@9:16, thanks for not addressing the issue I raised, but instead reiterating what I've already said and tossing in a word salad of IACP talking points and superfluous verbiage. Victim [and witness] information is a canard; it was already not being broadcast. If it was a sensitive situation or a violent crime, the information was transmitted either via MDT, the mobile data terminals in each police vehicle which the public has no means or right to access, or by using county-issued cell phones, which are also legally protected from monitoring. What officer information do you think is so sensitive it must be protected by encryption? Are these not public servants who are required by law identify themselves with nametags on their uniforms, and have their salaries available for public review, a matter of public record? PD on radios use unit designations, like "Two Delta One, add me to the call," not names, "This is Frank Hawkins, I'm at the stabbing," to identify themselves over the air. It is not information in need of keeping from the public.
That "a rapidly increasing number of US police agencies" are adopting encryption is not evidence of either the need for or the merit in doing so, any more than a rapidly increasing number of people driving with their attention focused primarily on their cellphones is proof such behavior is beneficial to anyone nearby. Surely, you learned as a child that “everyone’s doing it” is not a legitimate excuse for embracing bad behavior. Keeping the public from accessing a full account of what's happening in their community allows yet another barrier to holding our public servants to account for their actions.
Being able to monitor the police is an important tool for assuring accountability and transparency of law enforcement. I very much want to trust the police to always do right, to always be trustworthy. However, being able to hear them at their work helps assure they are. As Ed Meese so famously put it, "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." That applies to the police, too. If they have nothing to fear from their actions and activities, they have nothing to worry about in allowing the public to listen in the radio calls. Those who wish to monitor the Baltimore City police can do so, but with a 15 minute delay built into the transmissions before they’re released. This allows BPD to do their thing --arrive on scene, get the drop on any bad guys, "be safe" tactically-- but it also allows the public to know what's going on in their community without having to rely on the police choosing to tell them. "We feel you're entitled to know about these crimes that took place." MCPD releases a daily synopsis of crimes in the county, which by no means gives a clear or comprehensive view of either the range of misdeeds or the particulars of any of it. Everything else that happens in the MCPD’s interactions with the public vanishes, save for mounting an onerous, ponderous, costly ($10 for each incident report) public records request.
If the Bethesda cops have a parking garage in the Woodmont Triangle surrounded, https://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2025/09/police-seal-off-public-parking-garage.html I, as a local resident or business owner, have a right to know a lot sooner, and a lot more specifically, what's going on in my community, rather than waiting two days for the PIO to release an anodyne summary of the incident. There is no plausible, legitimate excuse MCPD can make to forbid making available a 15-minute delayed feed to the public, allowing the community monitor radio broadcasts, the information from which offers accountability and transparency of our public servants, provides legitimate news value, and keeps the community safer by letting them know more quickly and thoroughly what's going on at scenes.
As for your closing, above, may I offer it must suck for you to carry water for secretive, anti-democratic behavior of the state.
Sounds like a blueprint from the people's council at council rock.
12:11, first you say that the sensitive/violence information wasn't transmitted in a publicly-accessible way even before recent developments (and you don't seem to have a problem with that), but then you claim that the public deserves access to non-sensitive/violence transmissions in the name of "accountability and transparency." Which is it?
There certainly is at least one reason why the police wouldn't want to release information even on a delayed feed (including in the parking garage situation)--because concerned citizens like some of those posting here might take it upon themselves to start prowling the area in search of any individuals involved who might have escaped police attention.
That might turn into an even worse situation (whether the police-band-listeners suspicions turn out to be correct, or not).
Let the professionals do their job, which can be hard and dangerous as it is.
@5:22, “sensitive information” equates to things like a witness’s or a victim’s name. It does not mean details of what is transpiring at a scene. I appreciate your stab at trying to make it a Perry Mason “gotcha” moment first you say one thing, then another. Which is it?— but you’ve missed the mark. The excuse given by MCPD to encrypt is to protect the identities of crime victims and witnesses. Such is a canard since that sort of information has never been been transmitted openly. What is being denied the public with encryption is access to what is going on at a scene and monitoring the professionalism of police.
Example: when a year or so ago police swarmed Section 4 while a PGPD helicopter hovered overhead, homeowners were told to shelter inside as officers went from yard to yard, guns drawn and K9s at their side. Listening to the radio informed it was a carful of auto thieves who’d bailed out and taken to the neighborhood on foot in an attempt to escape. (They didn’t.) The public had a right to know what was happening in their community *then*, as it was going on, not a day or two later, when, if they were lucky, police would deign to make a press release available narrating events. Why the commotion, why long guns and whirlybirds and slavering Belgian Malinois tracking through homeowners’ hedges and driveways? Being quiet, obedient, and incurious, hoping your government will tell you what they’re up to is antithetical to democracy. The community has a right to know what its paid public servants are doing. Being able to monitor them via radio traffic I’d the best way to accomplish this.
Another example: decades ago, in the early ‘80s, “radio hygiene” was considerably more lax, and police would occasionally joke over the air in ways distasteful and unprofessional, including offering a joke about a fatal car accident —“What do you get when you cross a pickup truck with a sports car? A 5300” [the radio code for a fatal personal injury accident]
A third: an officer, following a minor dust-up with a number of combatants in the central business district ca. 1981, referred to the nightstick he’d employed to quell the fight as a “[racial epithet] knocker”
Those sorts of casual, tasteless incidents (examples two and three,) were heard by the public, reported, and among the reasons explaining why radio transmissions became vastly more professional in the years and decades that followed. That’s accountability and oversight, and it vanishes with the introduction of encryption. Special operations, SWAT/ESU operations have been encrypted for decades, with legitimate reason. Making silent the day-to-day goings-on of the pd has not been scrambled because there is no life-or-death reason for it to, nor is there any danger of victim/witness personal information being broadcast. But the meat-&-potatoes activity of your public servants warrants scrutiny, and without the ability to listen, such scrutiny is profoundly, if not terminally, diminished.
@5:30, I shall confide being witness in the last several months to at least two scenes where I saw suspects police were apparently searching for, but since I had no idea they were on the hunt, didn’t call 911 to report it. Both events involved the Garrett Park train station and people who’d fled over the tracks, from Schuykill Road. I only became aware something was up when cops began rolling through the area, which is unusual. Sure enough, they were looking for the people I’d seen —two separate incidents, two separate days. If the radios were in the clear and not delayed, police would have been tipped off instantly. Instead, they bumbled around, their quarry long gone. Your tax dollars at work.
I’ll share something else. In my youth, in the days before cell phones, I took photos of crime and mayhem for the papers, back when such things still appeared and there were papers to print them. I was so reliable in my coverage of the down county that the plainclothes police Special Assignment Team installed a CB —laugh, but as I say, there were no [affordable] cell phones in the 1980s— in one of their vehicles, specifically to be in contact with me, whom they had found to be a reliable extra set of eyes. I didn’t insert myself in situations as you suggest, but I did keep watch as I went about my rounds. For my efforts, I found them two stolen cars, a dine-&-dash, countless DUIs. It isn’t a bad thing for concerned citizens to report useful information. Your laissez-faire faire approach —mind your business and don’t get involved— isn’t terribly community minded. I grant it is in keeping with the Bethesda of today, where one’s concern for others extends only to making sure they appreciate how important one is. I would argue a better definition/tradition is a community where people are aware of their surroundings, knowledgeable about what is going on, and willing to get involved to the degree of, when they see something, say something, if you’re kept in the dark, (no radio access,) how are you supposed to know what it is you’re seeing? That doesn’t help things at all.
Seriously, @7:44, people who listen to scanners tend to keep them on continuously —i.e. without interruption— rather than continually, which means repeatedly but with breaks and interruptions between, dude.
I appreciate the pedantry, 11:08, but as a matter of actual practice no one listens to any kind of radio (or police scanner) continuously--that is, without any break or interruption (although the radio might actually be on continuously). You can stand down now, dude.
@10:54 - Seek professional help with your scanner addiction. You are seriously troubled by the sheer fact that you are being denied a continual fix of scan calls or BOLO-itis. The block is a protective necessity. You ask; "What officer information do you think is so sensitive it must be protected by encryption? " Like in Real Estate its location, location, location. The perps, along with canine-type crime chasers, will be all over these broadcast, and then the scene. Troubling? It should be for you. This is just one of the primary reasons for encryption NATIONWIDE dude. So if you're still craving that type info, perhaps take to your Barca lounger and tune in A&E, or FOX Business (COPS reruns galore) and O.D. If that doesn't cure you, perhaps have your spouse or offspring throw a siren around the yard, and you fetch it.
Bone Jour.
Hmmm...not buying it, @8:44. Scanners were just as available to bad guys all these years and decades as have been to me. It's always been a crime to be in possession of a scanner if you are committing or attempting to commit a crime.
Glad to know you are among those who support allowing armed agents of the state to work in total secrecy, the public being told only what information the state decides to share.
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