So many people filled the courtroom to watch a jury find Brandon Grimes guilty of first-degree murder for killing a city police officer that deputies had to block the doors to prevent an overflow crowd.

Those who waited outside got to see Grimes being led out into the hallway and toward a prison van. He stared straight ahead, dressed in blue jeans and an untucked dress shirt, yellow with black stripes, and shackled. 

Around him, observers and police officers, deputies and prosecutors, friends and relatives of Detective Troy Lamont Chesley, hugged and shook hands. Chesley's mother and grandmother sat on a bench and cried. An officer gripped a prosecutor and said simply, "Congratulations."

Kimberly Beasley once dated Chesley and had a son with him. The 13-year-old is still too shook up to come to court. Beasley said she left him at home during the proceedings, and she said she knew in her heart a guilty verdict would come.

"No doubt at all," she said. "No doubt."

Grimes is now convicted of shooting Chesley as the officer, who had just gotten off work, was trying to unlock the front door of his Forest Park apartment in January 2007. Defense attorneys tried to raise doubt by noting some of the DNA evidence was contaminated. But two witnesses put Grimes at the scene and a bullet fired from the officer's gun was found in Grimes' leg. Grimes took the stand in his own defense and was practically laughed at by jurors.

They returned a verdict after deliberating just 90 minutes yesterday and less than two hours today. Grimes still has a gun case pending. And like many other defendants, he has a long criminal history.

As an adult, before Chesley was killed, Grimes was arrested 17 times, mostly in Baltimore. Court records show charges over a 3 1/2 year period included drug possession, stolen auto, destruction of property, burglary, theft, traffic violations, false statement to police, assault and reckless endangerment.

Click here to see 17 mugshots of Brandon Grimes.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

This morning, while awaiting a city police officer to plead not guilty to manslaughter before Circuit Judge W. Michel Pierson, a mini-soap opera played out.

The officer, Thomas Sanders III, a large man dressed in a gray suit, sat quietly next to his attorney, Henry L. Belsky. They chatted and sometimes laughed at private jokes. Around them, defense attorneys and prosecutors swarmed, calling out names of defendants or family members, consulting lists to see if suspects had been brought in from the city jail, even working out plea deals that couldn't help but be overheard by the 14 people in the public gallery.

"Is Mr. Moses here," a defense attorney shouted, with no response.

A small child cried and a sheriff deputy angrily pointed at her mother and said, "Take him out." The deputy then warned people to turn off their cell phones and told another man, "You can't read the paper in the courtroom."

A clerk shouted: "Everybody ready to get started?"

No one paid attention.

A defense attorney told a mother that her son would not be coming to court from his cell at the city detention center, but she would enter a not guilty plea for him. Then she turned to the mother and said, "You have a nice boy. He's cute. You need to keep him out of trouble."

"I'm trying," the mother said.

On the other side of a desk, another lawyer chatted loudly with a prosecutor. "My client will take five years," he said.

Finally, Jude Pierson, wearing a blue bow-tie and black robe, took his place at the bench. The courtroom quieted. And he gaveled the proceeding into session.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The scene this morning from Baltimore Circuit Court Room 329 East, 9:35 a.m.:

Baltimore Police Officer Thomas Sanders III sat next to his attorney, Henry L. Belsky, on a wooden bench waiting to plead not guilty to fatally shooting a man he was trying to arrest.

The scene this morning from Baltimore Circuit Court Room 226M, 9:40 a.m.:

A jury resumes deliberating the fate of Brandon Grimes, charged with killing Baltimore Police Detective Troy Lamon Chesley during an apparent robbery outside his home.

Two courtrooms on opposite sides of North Calvert Street. Two prosecutors trying very different cases. One is trying to put a city officer in prison, another is trying to put an alleged cop-killer in prison.

The irony wasn't lost on Belsky, a seasoned attorney who has long represented police officers and their union, the Fraternal Order of Police. He is know for his impassioned defense of cops, and he didn't shirk this morning as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his client after the perfunctory hearing that lasted barely five minutes and included a longer discussion on an available trial date than on the case itself.

Belsky noted that on the very day his client was indicted on a manslaughter charge, an Anne Arundel County police officer was shot in the chest after chasing a man into the city. The officer's vest saved him from serious injury.

Two cops, Belsky said, making two different choices. His client shot Edward Lamont Hunt in a Northeast Baltimore parking lot. The man was unarmed, and witnesses said he was shot in the back after being frisked by Sanders and while he was walking away. This morning, Sanders snickered when that scenario was repeated, but he refused to comment further.

Belsky, likewise, wasn't giving up his defense just yet. But he hinted there is more to this story. Officers must make split-second decisions on using lethal force, and Belsky noted that Hunt had a prior record for resisting arrest. That Sanders didn't know he didn't have a gun. That Hunt was wearing an unusually large coat that make a thorough frisk difficult.

Sanders, his lawyer said, had a job to protect the citizens and go home at night in one piece. Hunt, Belsky said, also had a job, "to commit crimes and resist arrest."

The trial is set for November, where hopefully the full story will come out. Sanders is charged with both voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. For voluntary, prosecutors must prove he believed he needed to take a life but that any other reasonable person would not have done the same. For involuntary, prosecutors have to prove that the officer acted in a "grossly negligent" manner.

At nearly the same time Sanders pleaded not guilty, the jury deciding Grimes' fate across the street returned with a question for the judge. They wanted to know legal definitions for first-degree murder, second-degree murder and premeditation.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I love reading police blotters. The Baltimore Sun's Richard Irwin has turned it into an art form and one of the most popular items in the newspaper, online or in print.

Paging through the most recent Baltimore Guide that landed on my doorstep yesterday, I found three items in the "Crime Scene" column I just couldn't pass up. They're listed one after the other (if by design, genious, if not, then dumb luck). Either way, they made me smile:

1200 block W. Pratt St., Tuesday, Aug. 19, 6:20 p.m.: A man was arrested and charged with shoplifting fabric softener and air freshener.

2700 block Port Covington Dr., Wednesday, Aug. 20, 11:20 a.m.: A woman was arrested for shoplifting clothes.

800 block E. Fort Ave., Thursday, Aug. 21, 4:50 p.m.: A man was arrested and charged with stealing 33 ties from a store.

These came at the end of a long list of aggravated assaults, burlaries and robberies compiled by Jacqueline Watts. But the headline writer at the Guide got it right: "Man charged with shoplifting 33 ties."

Got my attention.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The story this week about Charlie Neeper, the homeless man who was killed in Veterans Park in Dundalk in 1986 and the arrest of a suspect 22 years later, is still bringing in e-mail. Here is one from Brett Schaffer, an attorney at Cohen, Snyder, Eisenberg & Katzenberg on North Charles Street. He was just starting out in the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office when Neeper made his frequent trips through the judicial system. He gave me permission to post this:

    I really enjoyed your piece today on the late Charles (Charlie) Neeper.  I would hazard a guess that not a single Assistant State's Attorney for Baltimore County who toiled in the District Court in the early 80s until his murder has forgotten Charlie.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Last week I went to a community crime meeting in South Baltimore. Last night, I ventured up to the northwest part of the city. The trip up Reisterstown Road from the Mondawmin Mall was how I remembered it from heading that way over the years -- corners taken over by drug dealers, curbs filled with trash, vacant rowhouses.

It is a sign that despite the statistics showing crime is down, there is still a long way to go.

As with the meeting of the Southern District Police Community Relations Council, the 17 residents who came to the Northwestern District Police Station were just as adament about getting a handle on their problems:

Get children off the streets and into structured programs. Work closely with police to end the mistrust on both sides. Build more recreation centers.

Patricia Rideout-Howard has led this group for three years yet last night's meeting had the feel of starting over. The group had taken the summer off and returned to form committees. She conceded after that she was frustrated. Too much talk. Too little action.

But the debate was lively. One person wanted to start a petition drive to build a rec center. Another plans to meet with 30 youths to plan a day-long program for children and teens. An aide to City Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton talked about an apprenticeship program that pays teens from Northwest Baltimore to work and develop skills.

That aide, Stafford Sutton, said he recently met a young homeless man. He wasn't looking for money. "He told me, 'All I'm looking for is a job.'"

Sutton said Middleton is working on a bill to ban the sale of tobacco products from drug stores. The Baltimore City Health Department is considering a rule to ban the sale of small, individual cigars -- known as 'blunts' -- in the city.

And several people at the meeting complained that stores, including package liquor stores, break open packs of cigarettes and sell them one-by-one, even to children.

A police sergeant sat off to the side and took notes. Two hours later, the meeting adjourned with a prayer.  

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The simplest of complaints can turn out to be the most complicated to unravel.

Here is one such tale:

Sunceray Gladney, 50, of East Baltimore, called to say that her son had been beaten last month and lay in a hospital bed, unidentified, even after she had filed a missing persons report with Baltimore police. She found her son by calling first the morgue, then area hospitals, and found Kareem Johnson unconscious at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

She wanted to know why police didn't find her son.

She said Kareem, who turned 29 yesterday, had left home on July 28 to pay an overdue bill and was beaten as he waited at a bus stop at Saratoga and Eutaw streets. Her husband, Ronald Gladney, called police on Aug. 7. An officer came to their home and filled out a report.

Relatives then started calling hospitals and found Kareem on Aug. 8. He is paralyzed on his right side, his mother said, and had severe injuries to his neck and head. He has since been released to a rehabilitation hospital, but Gladney said she hasn't heard from police since she filed the report.

"I have no confidence in the police," she said. "My son could've been dead."

Officer Nicole Monroe, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police Department, confirmed that Kareem Johnson was beaten on Eutaw Street on July 28.

He had been jumped shortly before 4 a.m. (so he apparently didn't return home right after paying his bill), the police report says, and was hit over the head with a bottle. He was rushed to Mercy Medical Center, but because his injuries were so severe, he was transfered to Shock Trauma, where he lapsed into a coma.

The missing persons report wasn't filed until Aug. 7 (Gladney said she thought her son had gone home to his Westside apartment and didn't worry until one of his girlfriends mentioned she hadn't heard from Kareem).

Gladney found her son on Aug. 8. She said her son had told paramedics his name, which eventually got to doctors at the truama center. That information never got to police.

Monroe reminded me of Zachary Sowers, who was beaten last year on a street in Canton and listed as a John Doe at Johns Hopkins. His wife flew home from Chicago and scoured Hopkins for unnamed patients before spotting her unconscious husband in a room.

I can see how Kareem Johnson's name could be listed with the hospital but not get to the officer or detectives handling the beating. Did Mercy or Shock Trauma call police to investigate the beating victim, or did officials there think paramedics took care of that? If paramedics had the name, did they tell the police?

And why did the victim's family wait nine days to report Kareem missing? Paperwork takes time, and perhaps quicker action by relatives could have led them to Kareem sooner. Monroe said she would forward the complaint up the chain of command to determine if procedures were followed.

An update:

Kareem's father called me a little while ago with some more information, which both helps understand this problem, and at the same time raises more questions.

Ronald Gladney said that police did take fingerprints from Kareem at Shock Trauma but compared them to a 2004 arrest when his son lived with his grandmother on Argyle Avenue in West Baltimore. The grandmother is now dead and block all but demolished, so naturally police found nothing.

Gladney said that had police pulled a more recent arrest report from 2005 in Towson, when Baltimore police arrested Kareem on a marijuana charge (he received probation) they would have found his address Durham Street in East Baltimore, where his grandparent's live. I found he was right with a quick check of computerized court records.

I'll keep stay on this one for you

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

What's the best way to arrest drunk drivers?

Set up a police checkpoint, advertise its location in advance and warn approaching motorists so that they have plenty of time to seek an alternate route? Or put a bunch of police cars on the street and hunt down the drivers who've had too much to drink?

Logic, I think, would tell you the latter (the strategies are a continuous topic of debate within law enforcement). But two recent sobriety checkpoints in Howard and Anne Arundel counties proved that logic wrong. In both cases, police made no more DUI arrests on patrol than they did at the checkpoints.

The police in Arundel had their checkpoint set up late Friday and early Saturday on Muddy Creek Road in Deale. Their counterparts in Howard set up a checkpoint Thursday night and early Friday on Route 175 in Columbia.

Howard made six DUI arrests at the checkpoint and two on patrol. Arundel played it down the middle, with two DUI arrests at the checkpoint and two on patrol.

That seems odd to me because the law requires police to notify the public about a checkpoint ahead of time -- Arundel publicizes the location, Howard does not -- and drivers must have advanced warning as they approach the roadblock so they can legally turn around or take another road to avoid having to stop. Cpl. C. R. Dalton of the Anne Arundel Police said drivers aren't even legally required to roll down their windows at a checkpoint.

Seems to defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. Yet many people allegedly impaired by alcohol still choose to drive through a phalanx of police. I'd love to hear from people arrested at a checkoint to find out why they didn't just turn around.

Police say the answer is simple. "People just don't realize the effect alcohol has on them," said Sgt.  Frederick von Briesen, head of the Howard County Police Traffic Enforcement Section.

Drew Cochran, a defense attorney whose firm has an Internet site to help people arrested on DUI charges, said few people understand their rights. He said officers at checkpoints hand people phamplets, enticing them to roll down their windows when they don't have to. "It takes a lot of courage to not roll your window down," he said.

He also noted something I observed in Arundel: when a car does turn around before reaching the checkpoint, officers follow it and pull the driver over when an infraction occurrs. Cochran called the checkpoints "a scam."

What do you think? And which strategy works better? The checkpoints or the patrols?

Meanwhile, here's the score card from the two agencies:

Anne Arundel County police DUI checkpoint and patrols Friday and Saturday on Muddy Creek Road:

Police said 303 vehicles went through the checkpoint and officers arrested two drivers suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol. Officers on patrol stopped 77 vehicles, wrote 31 citations, 53 warnings and 12 equipment repair orders. They also made two drug arrets.

Howard County police DUI checkpoint on Route 175 in Columbia Thursday and Friday:

Police said about 600 vehicles went through the checkpoint and officers arrested six drivers suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol. Patrol officers arrested two others on DUI charges.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Anne Arundel County Police Cpl. C. R. Dalton doesn't take suspected drunk drivers lightly. His friend, Cpl. Robert T. Krauss of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, died in 2006, nine months after his police motorcycle was hit by an impaired driver who crashed into a funeral procession in West Baltimore.

So this weekend, 33-year-old Dalton was among more than a dozen officers hunting for drivers under the influence of alcohol on the rural roads of Deale in southern Anne Arundel. "A lot of us have personal reasons for doing this," the officer said.

It was another initiative that is part of the Maryland State Highway Administration's "Checkpoint Strikeforce." Anne Arundel police set up a checkpoint along Muddy Creek Road, which last year authorities said accounted for 6.3 percent of the county's drunk driving arrests and a quarter of all alcohol-related crashes.

Dalton was part of a two-pronged attack -- the checkpoint and "saturation patrols" that had officers in cars criss-crossing winding, pitch-black country roads and closely watching bars. Later today when the statistics are compiled by police, I'll post the number of stops and arrests the Arundel officers made Friday night into Saturday morning and try to determine which tactic worked better -- the well-advertised checkpoint or hitting the streets with a squad car

It was a slow night, and Dalton and his colleagues spent hours hunting cars and turning up nothing more than a few broken tail-lights and drivers barely going 8 mph over the posted speed limits. Dalton handed out lots of warnings, often thinking of his buddy Krauss.

"If I can get you to slow down," he said, "it's worth a thousand dollars in tickets."

One driver stood out because he was going too slow.

Cpl. Dalton found the perfect place to hide. He parked his cruiser in a dirt cut-out off Deale Road, just down from the Calypso Bay Dock Bar and Restaurant in Tracy's Landing. He could watch patrons stumble out of the waterfront tavern to the parking lot across the street.

The gray Honda with Pennsylvania license plates quickly caught Dalton's attention. It was traveling well below the speed limit, a signal that it's driver might be impaired and being overly cautious. Dalton swung his cruiser around and followed the car.

Dalton watched as the car's tires cross the double-yellow line. The driver then slowed and put on his left-turn signal, but changed his mind and continued straight. Dalton flipped on his lights and the driver, instead of pulling to the side of the road,  stopped in the left-turn lane at an intersection with Md. Route 2. "That's a good clue," the officer said.

Dalton had the driver get out and ran some eye and coordination tests. "He said he had two beers," he said later after returning to his cruiser. "I'm not showing any clues that he is impaired right now. I didn't even smell anything as I approached."

The driver left with a warning and Dalton returned to the quiet streets of southern Anne Arundel County. Stay tuned for some video of the night out with the police at the the DUI checkpoint and drunk driving patrol.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Sunday's newspaper column mentioned a poem reader Jane Harrison had written about the body of a girl found in a vacant lot on Feb. 16. She had been shot, and went unidentified for 19 days, when her father saw a police sketch of the victim and came forward.

Harrison wrote "Lament" days before the girl's father identified her as Tyisha Brown. I quoted part of it on Sunday, in part to highlight a murder that didn't get much attention, and as a reminder that every killing matters.

It certainly mattered to Jane Harrison.

Wrap her close
in fabrics of unimaginable softness
and warmth -- royal colors
to enoble
a short and disposable life
that mostly hid in grays and grayer

Erase fixed sorrow from her features
captured with exactness
by the artist in the morgue

Summon music
befitting a lost princess
who lies in state
And since there are
no conceivable amends to make
for her severed young life
and all the bitter time she lies unknown
at least, at least
remember her

-- Janes Harrison, March 8, 2008

Five days later she had a name. Her killing remains unsolved.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I just got a call back from Terry Hickey, the University of Maryland law professor who is trying to get the Baltimore Police Department to restart a program in the Southern District to combat prostitution.

The idea is to have community residents write down license plate numbers of cars whose drivers are seen circling a city block or talking to prostitutes. The initiative was first tried in 1999 but didn't last long. Hickey said the officer who started it retired a short time later and nobody kept it going.

Back then, defense attorneys argued that "Operation Relentless" was problematic because police were keeping files of possible criminal suspects based on information gathered from community activists. They wondered why someone circling a city block on a public street could or should be flagged by police.

Hickey, who runs the nonprofit Community Law in Action group and last year failed to unseat City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger, said he has attorneys who would train residents and that the letter police would send out is being reviewed by the department's legal representative. It wouldn't accuse anyone of a crime, he said, but simply point out the fact that their car was seen in an area known for drug and prostitution activity. 

"The community loves this because they are trying to find ways to empower themselves," Hickey said.

He added, though, that the initiative would be a "great debate."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

What's old is new again.

At last night's meeting of the Southern District Police and Community Relations Council, Terry Hickey briefed residents on several interesting ideas to combat prostitution, a persistent problem in many city neighborhoods including Brooklyn and Curtis Bay.

Hickey, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, talked about a prostitution court, a school for Johns and bringing back an initiative called Operation Relentless.

Baltimore police in the Southern District tried Operation Relentless in 1999 but it never quite got off the ground. The idea was to have residents record license plate numbers of men driving suspiciously, such as circling the block or talking to prostitutes, and sending the information to police. They would then send letters on police stationary to the owners warning them that their vehicles had been seen driven by somebody suspected of "illegal drug or prostitution activity."

The residents loved it. Defense lawyers were concerned that names of innocent people could end up in police files as potential criminal suspects based on the untrained observations of city residents.

Don't people have the right to circle or stop on a public street without their names showing up in a police file, and then shared with others?

On the other hand, don't residents have the right to live in peace without having women solicit men in front of homes?

Residents at last night's meeting applauded when Hickey said Operation Relentless might be revived to combat a problem that law enforcement hasn't found a way to resolve. Most people liked the fact it targeted the men rather than women. Hickey said he is awaiting final approval from the Baltimore Police Department. I have a call into them to determine where this program stands.

I'll follow up and I'd love to hear from you on this.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Baltimore is a small town, and nothing reminds you of that more than a community meeting, where neighborhood business is aired. Talking about crime here doesn't mean reciting stats. It means complaining about the suspected drug house next door. "Troubled teens" are given names that are shouted out to police in the room.

Starting this crime blog, I thought it would be good to attend as many of these meetings as possible. Statistics show crime is down, and attendees at last night's Southern District Police and Community Relations Council applauded the numbers as Deputy Major Charles Carter read them out. Shootings down 28 percent. Assaults down 11 percent. Car thefts down 50 percent.

But the more than 50 people who packed the station's roll call room remained frustrated.

"The thugs. The hoodlums. The drug dealers. The prostitutes. I can feel safer going downtown in the middle of the night than in my own neighborhood," said Ken Ayers of Brooklyn. "You have to worry about getting shot from a drug deal gone bad or having your wife hit on by one of the Johns."

A group singled out a house on Pontiac Street, complaining that the teen who lives there sells drugs on the sidewalk and intimidates people who step outside their rowhouses. "It's bleeding the neighborhood," said resident Pat Wills.

Carter stood at the podium as a TV screen behind him flashed images of "The Top 10 persons of interest in Brooklyn/Curtis Bay" and jotted down notes. He promised to send a squad car to Fairhaven Avenue where people told him drivers run a stop sign. And he said detectives would check on construction trailers at an elementary school taken over by prostitutes.

"If you don't see things improve, please call and let me know and I'll get on the case," Carter said.

Prostitution was the hot topic. Several community leaders talked about some new initiatives, which I'll write about later. This is just the start of blogging about crime all over the city. Please let me know about your problems, your community meetings and your crime walks, and I'll try to come to and write about as many as I can.

The Southern District meeting wasn't all doom and gloom. Linda M. Schwartz, the branch manager of the Brooklyn branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, honored three Baltimore Police Department officers who took the time to go to the library and read to children. They are: Germen Santiago, a trainee from Puerto Rico, David Milburn and Dena T. Roney. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)