A woman and her unleashed pit bull are checking out the mess at the corner of Monroe and West Baltimore streets when two city investigators come along to do more than gawk.

Donning blue rubber gloves, they dig into the mound of clothes, sheets, a sleeping bag, wood scraps, carpets and papers, looking for something that would identify the person who dumped 40 pounds of castoffs on the sidewalk.

“Looks like an eviction or a clean-out from an eviction,” says Thomas Waugh, chief of Code Enforcement, a division of Baltimore Housing that investigates illegal dumping, a major “quality of life” issue.

Called in to 311 by a concerned (exasperated? furious? fed-up?) citizen, this is the investigators’ first “SR” of the day to use enforcement lingo for Service Request.

Waugh and Jason Hessler, assistant commissioner for litigation, took a reporter on a ride-along last week as they tackled the trash that at times seems to engulf the city. Last year, more than 3,500 illegal dumping calls came into their office.

For the trash cops, the provenance of dumped items is key. Hessler photographs the letters and envelopes with names and addresses while Waugh knocks on neighbors’ doors to see if anyone witnessed the dumping.

On the rare occasion when the inspectors confront the dumpers in person, the culprits’ reaction varies, says Hessler, an attorney.

“Sometimes they yell at us. Other times they say, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do with it?’” He pauses, “There is definitely an educational component to our work.”

Up to 40 Calls a Day

Code Enforcement’s special investigations unit has 20 inspectors, whose dumping duties include monitoring the city’s 50 illegal dumping “hot spots” and handling between 20 and 40 dumping calls a day.

Hessler makes a distinction between illegal dumping and sanitation violations.

Basically it comes down to where the trash or dumped items originated, he says. If your neighbor dumps his trash in his back alley or throws his mattress in the alley, that is a sanitation violation.

In that case, if the owner of the trash can be identified, he or she should receive a citation from the city’s Environmental Control Board.

On the other hand, if a non-resident dumps his mattresses, construction debris, broken cement, etc. in your alley, on your property or on public lands – that’s illegal dumping.

The city’s 311 operators are trained to know the difference between sanitation and dumping, says Waugh, who notes that the unit investigates every service request called in as dumping – whether it technically is or not.

Bandit Signs

After that first “SR,” the team is on its way to check a video camera at one of the city’s dumping hot spots, when Hessler asks Waugh to pull over.

The two see a few illegally posted “bandit signs” hung on light poles on Ramsay Street.

That’s another one of Code Enforcement’s jobs – confiscating the illegally posted signs and fining the posters a steep $500 for each one.

“We Buy Old Houses” and “Cash for Diabetic Test Strips” are some classic Baltimore bandit signs.

This one says “Handyman Special 7,500 Cash” and could cost the violator (with another sign down the street) $1,000.

Surveillance Cameras and Hot Spots

Then it’s on to a longtime hot spot for dumpers, a dead-end service road near Westport.

It’s easy to miss, which makes it attractive to dumpers and other clandestine visitors. And it looks like the dumpers have made a recent deposit.

Forty tires are stacked in two heaps, another ten are scattered in the grass. A few more are floating in a small body of water, which looks like part of the Middle Branch, but just as easily could be a large pool of stagnant water. It’s hard to tell.

A red fuel container floats on top of the muck.

Waugh, whose staff visits this site at least once a week, says that despite how bad it looks now, it used to be much worse. (The tires were there last week, he says, and are awaiting pickup.)

“When we first came out to this spot [in 2009], it was so full of stuff we couldn’t drive down the road,” he said. “We needed 10 roll-off dumpsters to clean it all up.”

The spot is popular for more than dumping, Waugh, a retired city police officer, explains as he downloads the surveillance video to his laptop.

“A lot of illegal activity goes on here,” he says, as evidenced by the video of “john” cars and homeless loiterers he has to scroll through to find video of an actual dumping.

But he does – and it includes a tag number.

Who Dumps?

The stereotypical Baltimore city dumper is a small hauler – or someone in construction who needs to get rid of leftovers, Waugh says.

“The small hauler gets paid maybe $100, but by the time they go to Quarantine [Road landfill] and pay the tipping fees, there’s no profit for them, so they dump,” he says.

Based on Code Enforcement’s video surveillance, Waugh says, they’ve figured out that most dumping in Baltimore occurs in the early morning or right after work – not at night.

“That surprised us, too,” says Hessler.

Haulers aren’t Baltimore’s only illegal dumpers, he notes. Sometimes otherwise law-abiding people get desperate.

“A few years ago, we came upon this dump of household appliances. We tracked down the owner. It turns out, he was getting a divorce. His lawyer told him he was supposed to clear out the house by a certain time,” Hessler says.

He ran out of time, panicked and dumped the appliances. No breaks for Mr. Desperate. “We charged him criminally,” Hessler says.

Ditching Boats in Alleys

Not all illegal dumping is household or construction related, either. Code Enforcement gets calls for dumped boats pretty regularly.

This is how it happens.

“Someone will be giving away a boat on Craigslist,” Waugh says. “People answer the ad and take the boat, but they really only want the trailer for scrap metal, so they ditch the boat in an alley somewhere.”

Hessler and Waugh say their department receives more complaints every year, but they speculate that it’s not necessarily because there is more dumping in Baltimore, but because more people know how to report it. The 311 app makes it especially easy to report and include a photo.

On the Rebound

They also say Baltimore’s dumping problems have improved in certain areas, with some entire neighborhoods on the rebound.

“Oliver, for instance, has changed drastically in the last six or seven years, due in part to Vacants to Value,” Hessler declares, taking an opportunity to tout a signature Rawlings-Blake administration program.

The East Side community has a number of rebuilding projects along Broadway, Biddle and other streets. “Once property gets into the hands of re-habbers, the trash clears up,” Hessler says.