Today's column on preventing impaired driving is a bit of a departure from crime. Some call crashes involving alcohol or drugs accidents. Dr. Thomas Scalea, the chief of the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, calls them preventable diseases.

They're also crimes.

Though, as the story mentions, the crimes don't always come with stiff penalties. A Shock Trauma nurse, Beverly Dearing-Stuck, lost her father-in-law to an impaired driver in 1995, but he served only three years of a 10 years sentence. He got out and has been arrested and convicted twice more of driving under the influence of alcohol.

I met with Scalea and Dearing-Stuck after state medical officials told me about a new program they were launching to prevent more deaths on the road. Cops and paramedics will be calling in to radio stations such as 98 Rock to talk about sobriety checkpoints and to describe accidents they've just handled. Police also are stepping up enforcement.

Shock Trauma runs a program to talk about drinking and driving, and other problems associated with car travel, such as texting while driving. Nurses and doctors go to schools and offer tours of Shock Trauma. Offenders see videos.

The hospital conducted a study of 5,600 high school students and found that 93 percent said they see peers in cars "singing, bouncing in their seat or 'acting wild.'" The study found that 92 percent see teen drivers speeding (no surprise); 89 percent talking on cell phones; 85 percent blaring loud music; 75 percent driving while tired; 48 percent driving after drinking; and 38 percent driving after smoking marijuana.

Here are some stats from police:

08mdfact

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

 Baltimore County police are asking for help finding a man charged with breaking into a home in the Milford Mill area on Nov. 11. Police said the home was ransacked and jewelry and appliances were taken.

The suspect is identified as Christopher Boone, 29, of the 2600 block of Denison St. in West Baltimore. He is described as standing 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighing about 200 pounds.

Boone Burglaries`Pct 2.Brg

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In the midst of a violence-filled two weeks, Mayor Sheila Dixon made an appearance last night at the Southwestern District's Police Community Relations Council. She noted that the city is posting crime numbers comparible to lows three decades ago, but also lamented a spate of killings -- 13 slayings in the past 10 days -- that has claimed the lives of two teen-agers and a pizza delivery man, who was shot in Southwest Baltimore. In the same district, four people were shot Monday night when a gunman burst into a home.

Earlier this year, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III ousted the commander of the Southwestern after a spike in crime. It is also where Dixon lives.

My colleague, police reporter Justin Fenton, was there.

"Baltimore is in the midst of its worst stretch of violence in a long time," Dixon told the residents. It disturbs me the same way it disturbs you. Some of the cases, even if we had a police officer on every corner, we still wouldn't be able to solve what happened."

Residents praised Dixon and Southwest District Maj. Anthony Brown, who said police have strong leads in the shooting death of the pizza delivery driver, 22-year-old Adama Diara. The city has recorded 207 homicides so far this year, down about 25 percent from the same period last year.
 
Dixon said she would push stronger gun laws during the next legislative session in Annapolis to  eliminate early prison release credits for criminals who commit gun offenses. State Del. Sandy Rosenberg, who is on the House judiciary committee, and Del. Nathaniel T. Oaks also attended the meeting. 

"It's just getting ridiculous out there," Dixon said. "People getting access to guns, weapons in the city. People can talk about their first and second amendment rights, but it's gotten crazy."

Later, a resident said he thought they shouldn't focus on gun laws but sticking it criminals, and Dixon clarified: "Their time gets reduced, and then they get back out, and it shows when they commit crimes over and over. So we're saying, hold it. [If] they get locked up for a crime with a weapon, let them pay their time. They should not get good behavior credit."

Dixon, as she has often, talked more about her son, who is in middle school. The mayor mentioned him last week after a student was charged with fatally stabbing another student at Lemmel Middle School in Northwest Baltimore. The suspect's attorney has said his client was repeatedly taunted by the victim.

"I just can't even conceive of being so angry with somebody and stabbing them," the mayor said. "That's intentional, taking somebody's life. Something internally is affecting that child, and to me, it's -- I have a son that age, in the 8th grade -- so it's like, we've gotta do a reversal."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

When a Baltimore police officer was dragged making a prostitution arrest on Friday, the name of the suspect turned out to be a familiar one to bloggers who post about the sex trade in Pigtown. The woman named Empriss has made recurring appearances on Baltimore John Watch.

This is a group of video vigilantees who take pictures of suspected prostitutes and johns on Washington Boulevard and surrounding streets and post them for all to see. They love close-ups of license plates and the men who circle the area. Today, they linked to an alternate site, a guide for johns seeking sexual services, which complained about police using undercover officers to curb the trade.

At one point, John Watch published a photo showing Empriss, identifiable by her tatoo.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Mayor Sheila Dixon is scheduled to meet with the Southwestern District's Police Community Relations Council this evening, an event that was on her public schedule earlier this week but is even more appropriate now after four people were shot in a house last night.

A gunman broke into the home in Irvington and shot four teens in a bedroom, one of them in the head. All are expected to survive, but it's the latest violence in what has been an unrelenting week. Since Sunday, Nov. 16, police say 11 people have been killed in Baltimore. That's 11 in the past 10 days. Slayings are still down in the city -- 206 this year compared with 265 at this time last year, but November is nothing to smile about, with 20 killings in 25 days, more than half of them in the last week and a half.

I was at a meeting in Park Heights last night where a group of dedicated residents is trying to organize a youth summit. Before they discussed ways of getting kids off the corners and into schools, group leader Ken Morrison asked for a "moment of silence for the young man who was killed last week at Lemmel."

Community leader Deborah Welford quickly added, "Not only for him, but for the young man who took his life. Too many of our children think that taking a life is the only way to solve their problems, and they end up spending the rest of their lives in jail."

The headlines have been horrific. A 14-year-old boy collapses at a fire station in Brooklyn and later dies; a 14-year-old charged with fatally stabbing a 15-year-old at William H. Lemmel Middle School, a man accused of fatally stabbing his wife outside the courthouse on North Avenue, and is shot by a police officer in the process; a pizza deliveryman shot in a robbery. Just two hours after the Ravens finished playing at M&T Bank Stadium, a  man killed in the Sharp-Leadenall neighborhood, which is between the stadium and Federal Hill and usually filled with fans walking to their cars.

Last night it was the four people shot in a house and this morning we learn another man was killed in Better Waverly, near a laundry on Greenmount Avenue.

And that doesn't even include the four people who were shot outside a bar in Odenton in Anne Arundel County, another man who was shot in Annapolis and a woman who had her throat slashed inside a Catonsville liquor store. The victim of that attack, Aysha Dawn Ring, had worked at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore and had planned a career in the Navy.

About the only good news this week was that the first detected gunshot by new sensors put up around Charles Village and Homewood wasn't a gunshot at all. The sensors, designed to pinpoint within 10 feet the location of a shot, alerted police to an address on East 29th Street, but officials now say the noise wasn't a gunshot but apparently was loud enough to register. The sensors noted it was probably a false alarm, but police went anyway and found nothing.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The Washington Post had a fascinating article in Sunday's editions about heroin sales and fatal overdoes at Westfield High School in western Fairfax County, Va. Reading throuugh the story you quickly learn that federal authorities allege the heroin these teens bought came from right here in Baltimore.

A DEA agent was quoted noting the purity of heroin in Baltimore, which of course makes it attractive. The story didn't spend a lot of time on Baltimore, and I pulled the court file from the U.S. District Courthouse for Eastern Virginia. It too only mentions Baltimore in passing, noting that starting in January, one suspect is alleged to have bought "between 2 and 8 grams of heroin multiple times per week from his Baltimore source of supply." The 8 grams of heroin cost $1,000, the court papers allege.

The documents don't say where in Baltimore the drugs were purchased. Suburbanites come into the city all the time. A decade ago, Baltimore Sun photographer Kim Hairston and I documented suburban drug users treating the city like a supermarket for heroin and cocaine.

One man had to change public transportation three times to reach a suspected drug house, which had been taken over by undercover cops. Then Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier noted how bad the problem was with this quote: "If you are on a corner and selling drugs, it means you shot someone for the right to stand there. If you live in the suburbs and come into the city to buy drugs, you have blood on your hands."

One police commander back then wanted to put up a billboard warning visitors not to buy drugs or risk going to jail. The story focused on Corrie Simpson, who had attended a Howard County high school but was coming to the city to buy her drugs. "For what I do, you have to go to Baltimore to get it." A cop noted that just like people know where to get the best wines or steaks, drug users know where to get the best heroin.

The story also got me thinking about Annie McCann, the 16-year-old girl from Fairfax, Va., who ran away from home earlier this month and was found dead in Baltimore in Perkins Homes, a drug neighborhood in Southeast Baltimore. So far, there doesn't appear to be a connection between her death and the suspected drug ring uncovered by federal authorities. The high schools are in different parts of the county and the group involved in the latest case apparently was tight. Also, the Maryland Medical Examiner has not ruled on how Annie died; she had a bruise on her head but police say it wasn't enough to kill her. We're still awaiting autopsy results to help shed light on this mystery.

Here is the story from 1998 -- the numbers are a bit old. Also, I was unable to find Corrie Simpson to see how she's doing today but I'd love to hear from her. The photo was taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Kim Hairston at an undercover police sting in Southwest Baltimore:

 Corrie Simpson wakes up every morning in a stone rancher outside Westminster and heads to Shipley Street and Fairmount Avenue, a drab pocket of sagging brick rowhouses and concrete front yards in Southwest Baltimore.

There, her boyfriend, Patrick Cook, 35, leans out of the 1984 Chevrolet and shouts to a stocky man wearing a red bandanna. "Any Ready?" he asks, using street-corner slang for crack cocaine. The seller nods. "Give me six." 

The drugs are for Simpson, a 19-year-old former Glenelg High School student from western Howard County. "For what I do, you have to go to Baltimore to get it," the teen with shoulder-length, dark-blond hair said. 

The drug scourge that has helped wreck city neighborhoods is fueled, police say, by people who live in the comfort of suburbia, immune from the daily violence that consumes inner-city streets and has claimed a generation of young men. 

Now, police say, even with an estimated 55,000 addicts in Baltimore, the supply of heroin and cocaine far exceeds the demand. Business at some of the city's drug corners wouldn't be as brisk without middle-class buyers from places such as Glen Burnie, Dundalk and Sykesville. 

"If you are on a corner and selling drugs, it means you shot someone for the right to stand there," said Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier. "If you live in the suburbs and come into the city to buy drugs, you have blood on your hands."

But police seem to be the only people doing something about it. The Sun accompanied officers on numerous stings over the past three months in which they posed as drug dealers and arrested nearly 100 people from Dundalk to Frederick and beyond. 

A review of court files suggests, however, that few, if any, will go to prison. They are charged with trying to buy drugs, a rarely used misdemeanor offense that makes the act of asking for an illegal substance a crime. 

City prosecutors -- who require a minimum seizure of 30 vials of crack to bring a felony drug charge -- often do not pursue the seemingly trivial charge. In December, an entire group of defendants arrested at an East Baltimore corner was sent home from court, their charges dismissed en masse without explanation. 

Even the administrative judge of the Circuit Court, Joseph H. H. Kaplan, said he doesn't believe that police "are accomplishing anything" by arresting addicts. 

Yet officers continue their initiatives, delighting residents who live on streets overwhelmed by vacant and boarded houses, who helplessly watch more prosperous outsiders visit their Baltimore neighborhoods to feed their hunger for cocaine and heroin. 

"These are viable taxpaying homeowners who have lived in their homes for years, and they are watching their neighborhood crash around them," said Maj. John L. Bergbower, commander of the Southwestern District. "They don't know what to do and they want us to do something about it." 

The back doors of a police van swing open, and suburbanites -- shackled with plastic handcuffs -- are paraded to the van past some of the neatly kept rowhouses of North Denison Street near Edmondson Avenue. 

Deborah Randall, a quarter-century resident of the once-thriving middle-class African-American neighborhood, offered a bemused smile as the stream of white faces marched past. 

She had just returned from a bridal shower in a predominantly white area of North Baltimore, where, she said, "people watched every move we made. We were not wanted in that neighborhood, but they come down here to buy their drugs." 

The blight from Edmondson Avenue -- drunks, addicts, dealers -- has spread to Denison Street, where vacant shells of houses are sandwiched between homes where children play, fathers mow small plots of grass and families hold cookouts. 

In five sweeps by police this year in predominantly black neighborhoods of Southwest Baltimore, police arrested 110 people, 68 of them white. Of those from outside the city, 25 lived in Baltimore County; 23 in Anne Arundel; 15 in Howard; three in Carroll; two each in Prince George's and Montgomery; one in Frederick; and five out of state. 

Bergbower wants a billboard on Washington Boulevard: "Welcome to Baltimore. If you are coming here to buy drugs, you might be buying from a police officer." 

Some suburbanites say they come because the drugs are better. Others say they're cheaper. Sonya Price, a 27-year-old recovering heroin addict who lives in Southwest Baltimore's Shipley Hill, offers a simpler explanation. "They come to where the drugs are." 

"It's the same way we know where to get the best steak or find the best bottle of wine," said Officer Kenneth Parks. "The addicts know where to get the best heroin or the best cocaine." 

That often means a dangerous trek into unfamiliar neighborhoods. Three Carroll County residents were killed last year in botched drug deals on city streets. There are 41 identified open-air drug markets within the Southwestern Police District. In Shipley Hill, there have been five homicides from January to May, most of them drug-related. 

Suburban residents "know that the distribution of drugs is a dangerous business," Bergbower said. "Yet they are willing to come here, get out of their cars and walk to a vacant rowhouse in the middle of the block in the inner city. 

"It astounds me. The average citizen thinks this is an inner-city problem. It's not," the major said. "My drug dealers are making a living off middle-class citizens who come here to buy drugs and then retreat to their homes in relative safety." 

Even with heroin use becoming a frightening reality on suburban cul-de-sacs, inner-city corners remain the supermarkets of the drug culture, drawing in thousands from outside the city limits attracted by cut-rate deals and a better high. 

Arresting people doesn't translate into prison. The only jail most suburbanites who are arrested ever see is a temporary holding cell at the downtown Central Booking and Intake Center, where they are held for a bail hearing. 

Punishment comes in other ways. Prisoners are often held more than 20 hours before they get bail. If they drove into the city, their cars will be waiting at the impound lot on Pulaski Highway and can be retrieved for $120. 

Add a lawyer and court fees, and the price tag on a single arrest jumps to nearly $1,000. Out-of-pocket expenses, missed work and embarrassment are often the severest punishments. 

Police are hoping that publicity will deter customers such as John Kaiser of Dundalk, one of 56 people caught in a sting in East Baltimore last year. 

Kaiser, 45, who said he has been addicted to heroin for eight years, admits he was buying drugs on North Bradford Street that day in October. But he doesn't think the police had probable cause to arrest him. 

"I pulled up and was asked by the undercover officer, 'What's up,' " Kaiser said. "I said, 'I'm here to get one.' " He was arrested at gunpoint when he turned up in an alley to meet a supposed seller. 

"I was up there doing no good, but even the bail commissioner said she didn't think they had probable cause to arrest me," Kaiser said. 

In a courtroom two months later, the judge had everyone charged with attempted possession stand up. "She said, 'Your cases are [dropped] and you are free to go.' " 

Prosecutors say they don't routinely drop cases. "We will prosecute all crimes," said Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy. "We review every one of these cases on an individual basis." 

Kaplan said police should spend their time on other crimes, as they do in Boston. Officers there "spend their time arresting violent offenders," the judge said. Three years ago, the Baltimore police commissioner said he wanted his officers to concentrate on violent dealers and ignore addicts, arguing that grabbing users did nothing more than pad arrest statistics. 

But police say that these stings target suburban residents to scare them off and to give temporary relief to neighborhoods. 

"When we lock them up, it's almost like a joke," said Officer Parks. "But [judges] will have to answer when we have elections." 

Kaplan said the problem can be solved only through treatment. "There are 55,000 addicts in Baltimore," he said. "That's 8 percent of the population. You can't arrest 8 percent of the population. I don't know why we haven't figured this out." 

Mary Ellen T. Rinehardt, the administrative judge of the Baltimore District Court, agreed that arresting people like Kaiser "probably doesn't work." 

"But I just feel so sorry for people who own houses in these neighborhoods," she said. "They feel they are hostages in their ,, homes." 

To help neighborhoods, police turn the tables on the drug trade by running dealers out and taking their places. On June 5, North Shipley Street and West Fairmount Avenue belonged to the Baltimore Police Department. 

Three officers displaying the cool swagger of drug dealers and wearing baggy pants, oversize T-shirts and flashy sneakers leaned against a Formstone wall and waited. Within three hours, 28 people -- more than half from the suburbs -- tried to buy drugs from them.

Corrie Simpson came clutching six $10 bills, along with a small vial of crack, a spoon, a syringe and a container of marijuana. Angry at being arrested, she unleashed a string of profanities. 

Parks said Simpson exhibited what he called the typical "cocky white attitude: 'Why are you locking me up for this?' "

Later, after having spent 20 hours in custody awaiting a bail hearing, Simpson had a different attitude. "It really opened my eyes," she said. "I've been doing this for too long. A jail cell isn't where I need to be." 

Those arrested in similar stings throughout the city this year have included parole officers, city school teachers -- three in one afternoon at the same west-side corner -- waiters, machinists, nurses, counselors and department store clerks. 

One man took the Light Rail from Severn and changed buses three times to get to a vacant house in Southwest Baltimore. 

They arrive knowing the street slang. "Give me some raw" for heroin, or, "Give me a dime of Ready," for crack cocaine. 

Sitting on an old blue couch in the un-air-conditioned corner house in the 500 block of N. Denison Street, one of the arrestees shouted to an officer who complained of the stifling 100-degree heat. "Why do you do this?" 

"Because the people in this neighborhood have got to live here," Sgt. Tim Devine shot back. "Nobody really cares too much about your personal comfort." 

It was the third time in a month Devine and his officers had used the house to stage arrests. There was no shortage of suspects. 

William Nowak, 58, a construction worker from Catonsville, said he saw someone get arrested at the house on the news a week earlier and thought it would be a good place. Scott Jones, 19, also from Catonsville, said, "I just thought I'd try this." Charges against both men are pending. \

White suburban drug users once stuck to the city's perimeter, afraid to venture too far into the inner city. Now, Randall said, North Denison Street is often lined with pricey cars from the suburbs, full of neatly dressed people holding out folded 10- and 20-dollar bills, waiting to be served drugs as if the vacant house next door to hers were a restaurant's drive-up window. 

"This is a new thing, them coming this far into the inner city," said Devine. "Three or four years ago, you might get one or two white guys up here. Now, they're the majority. It's the depth of their addiction, I guess." 

Even suburbanites arrested say they can't understand why Baltimore remains a drug center. 

"I really think they could clean it up," Simpson said a week after her arrest while charges were still pending. 

"They have to go after the dealers who are bringing it in. It's greed; that's why it never changes.    "They lock us up and make everyone think they are doing something about it," she said. "People in the city are the problem. If they got rid of all the dealers, then we wouldn't have any place left to buy. They aren't doing anything by arresting the addicts."

Kaiser's mother, Ruth Cook, 68, accompanied her son to tTC Bradford Street twice to see where he went. "I will not do that anymore," she said. "It was like a jungle. There were cops and people standing on corners selling drugs and all kinds of dope." 

Cook said it's the city that contributes to her son's addiction. "From what I saw, there were very few innocent people. It's like all of them were doing the drug thing. It's not all the users' fault." 

Her son, a jobless Vietnam veteran, said he has bought drugs in East Baltimore for eight years, paying for them by driving others to city corners and keeping a cut of what they buy. 

"Baltimore has a big problem," he said. "I definitely think I'm part of the problem. If it wasn't for people like me, the dealers wouldn't be in business." 

He recalled news stories about one family who reportedly helped police arrest some local dealers -- part of the same sweep in which he was arrested -- whose house was shot up the next day. 

"That's a shame," Kaiser said. "Here they are trying to do something to help their neighbors, and they paid the consequences. The drugs are everywhere out there. It's amazing that the police haven't found a way to shut it down." 

Kaiser said he lives in a quiet Dundalk community. "I wouldn't want someone coming into my neighborhood to buy drugs," he said. Asked how many times he's driven to Bradford Street since he was arrested there eight months ago, he paused, then quietly whispered: "More than I can count."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Last week, Johns Hopkins University installed a system of senors around its campus that enables police to pinpoint the location of shootings. The SECURES Gunshot Detection System was unveiled on Thursday with sensors put up around Homewood and Charles Village.

Not the best place for gunshot monitors, I argued last week, given that the neighborhoods are among the safest in the city, but the company is donating the system to Hopkins to show it off, so the university gets to choose where it goes.

Today, about 1:38 p.m. (going by newsroom clocks) a police dispatcher notified an officer that the system had detected a gunshot coming from 349 E. 37th St. Our police reporter, Justin Fenton, who sits next to a police scanner, heard a male voice answer at 1:49 p.m., that he needed car to respond to the location. He noted that the discharge would've come from within 10 feet of that area.

A short time later, about 1:51 p.m., an officer said he was there and the building was vacant and that someone sitting on a nearby front step said they hadn't heard anything. They said they would investigate further.

Turns out it wasn't a gunshot at all. Here's a response from Hopkins:

The new gunshot detection system DID NOT detect a gunshot this afternoon. According to Ed Skrodzki, the sound picked up by the system did not meet the threshold for a gunshot, but did register loud enough for campus security to notify the Baltimore City Police Department’s Northern District, which responded to the location and found nothing. This is the first time that the gunshot detection system has gone off since the system became operational last Thursday.

Skrodzki reiterated that when acoustic parameters for a gunshot are met, the system flashes a red starburst on the TV monitors at the Remington building. When the sound is below these parameters, but still suspicious (could be a muffled shot inside a car or building or some other loud noise), the system puts out a lower level alert. In this case, one of these lower-level alerts (no starburst) came in at 1:37 p.m. today at 349 E. 27th St. Johns Hopkins security immediately notified Baltimore City police. Again, police went out and found no problems or reports of gunshots heard or anything else suspicious at that location.

Skrodzki said police are interested in checking out any sound  picked up by the gunshot detection system, in part, because they want to determine how the system is operating in these early days and because police want to rule out gunfire.

Tracey A. Reeves

Director, Office of News and Information

  
 
 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Baltimore County police are searching for people who might have been in Charing Cross Liquors in Catonsville when a woman was killed Sunday afternoon. Authorities released a picture of a possible suspect from a surveillance video and issued a statement:

23

Ring Murder`Charing Cross Liquors.mdr

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A District Court judge this morning denied bail to the youth charged with killing a classmate behind William H. Lemmel Middle School on Friday.

Timothy Oxendine, 14, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Markel Williams, 15.

Here is the police charging document:

Hermann.oxendine24

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Peter , I used to be police in the City and my wife is the licensee at Iguana Cantina, Could you tell me who is providing the information that a kid was beaten into a Coma at Iguana. I have the videotape from the incident & provided to the Police Department and you cannot see a fight or even a punch thrown. I was informed that he had a closed head wound and that he had some point been pushed or fell and hit his head on our concrete floor. I will tell you want thing for sure you DO NOT see a altercation of any kind on the Videotape. I am sick and tired of the MISINFORMATION concerning this very unfortunate incident.

"What we see is that we have officers that are working throughout the city at places that are selling, distributing, people consuming alcohol that frankly have become very violent. These locations have become enormously violent and a threat to public safety, some of them. What the refrain I hear from some of the club owners is, well, Bealefeld, your cops are working security. So if the patrons aren't safe, who's responsible? Well, that's a yes and no question. Those cops working secondary - they are city police, in our general orders, it says if you're a cop in the city, you're always a cop in the city. 24 hours, 7 days a week, even if you're off, you're a cop in the city. And so to divorce ourselves from being a cop while we're collecting money from someone else on the payroll of someone else, doesn't work. It's an enomorus conflict of interest.

"At the minimum it's an enormous conflict of interest. At the higher end, it opens the way, paves the way for an enourmous amount of corruptability, from something as simple as letting an 18 year old lady go in a club who shouldn't be there, to turning a blind eye and not taking aggressive action on criminal activity. You know, when people wind up in a coma in a club that I have cops working secondary at, and no one knows anything or cops are throwing unruly drunken disorderly combative violent patrons out on the street, only for them to shoot and stab and kill each other is unaccepatable. I have a simple answer: my cops won't work at businesses that sell alcohol.

"The Baltimore City Police Department is responsible for the safety of this city. So we're going to do what we're supppsed to do outside of those clubs and to make city streets safe. But bar owners, club owners, whoever, don't get a pass. The fact that they feed and feed and feed and feed people alcohol and they come outside and start urinating on the neighbors porches, and I know all of you hear those complaints, 'cuz you send me the letters about them, the fact that they're banging into cars and scratching up cars and doing all kinds of things on the low end - That's on the simple, innocuous end. But on the end that their patrons are shooting and stabbing and killing each other, we, all of us, are trying to do something about that."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Veronica Williams, the wife of an East Baltimore community association president, has died from injuries that police say were inflicted by her husband earlier this week. The Greater Greenmount Community Association issued a statement a few minutes ago, and city police spokesman Donny Moses confirmed the death.

Moses said the 29-year-old woman died at Johns Hopkins Hospital at 9 last night.

Williams was stabbed repeatedly Monday afternoon on East North Avenue near the Eastside District Courthouse. A Baltimore police officer who was driving by saw the assault, and authorities said he first tried to use a Taser on the man, and then shot him.

Cleaven Williams, 33, remains at Johns Hopkins Hospital recovering from bullet wounds. Moses said charges could now included murder. Mr. Williams headed the Greater Greenmount Community Association and led several neighborhood walks with police officials, including the major who commands the Eastern District.

The following is a statement from the Greater Greenmount Community Association:

Today Veronica Williams died of the injuries she sustained in the altercation stemming from a domestic dispute with her husband, CJ, on Monday at the corner of North Ave and Harford Rd. Our heart is heavy with this news and our thoughts and prayers go out to Veronica and CJ's three children and other family members. This is a personal tragedy and a tragedy for our community.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)
        

You may have seen today's story on the sentencing of a man in the death of Christopher Clarke. Jerome Whitaker was ordered to prison for 25 years for fatally shooting Clarke, a bystander caught in the crossfire of a dispute over drug turf in Northeast Baltimore's Belair-Edison neighborhood.

Clarke was 18 and captain of the Patterson High lacrosse team. He also was a football player and a saxophonist in the school's jazz band. He wanted to be a police officer. His family was too distraught to show up to yesterday's sentencing in Baltimore Circuit Court. ColumnistDan Rodricks and other reporters wrote about Clarke and other violence as part of the Confronting Crime series.

Here is a statment from the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office:

Jerome Whitaker Brandon Green DISPO 11202008

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

With the onset of cold weather, Baltimore County police are warning motorists against leaving your car unattended as you warm it up. Not only is the common practice an invitation for thieves, it's also illegal.

The advice is from the county, but is good for everyone. They titled the advisory: "Unattended cars Can Leave You Out in the Cold":

Baltimore County Police are recommending that citizens adopt an early New Year’s resolution – never leave your car alone with the motor running, even if you have a spare key and the other keys are “safely” locked inside.

With cold weather edging in and the threat of weeks of ice and snow, the temptation is to run outside in the morning to warm up the car and then dash back into that warm house while the frost melts. But before you’ve even poured your second cup of coffee, someone can break in and steal your vehicle.

Car thieves wait and watch for people to walk away and then strike. Locking the keys in the car will not dissuade these criminals. They can pick a lock in less than 30 seconds, faster than you can open it with your key. According to police auto theft detectives, one study shows that approximately 50 percent of the vehicle thefts in the area were due to keys being left in the ignition.

The same caution applies to those quick stops at convenience stores or the ATM. These locations are prime targets for thieves. Consider the minute you might save by leaving your locked car with the motor running versus the hours of stressful delay if you walk out and find your vehicle is stolen.

Avoid A Ticket

There are other consequences to leaving a car unattended: insurance that probably will not pay for your mistake, car payments which must be made on a vehicle no longer available, and perhaps the expenses in renting or buying another car. Also, leaving a vehicle alone with the engine running is a traffic violation, so police could give you a ticket with a $70 fine and one point against your driving record if they see your unattended car. Lastly, it poses a safety hazard. If the vehicle slips out of gear and causes an accident, you could be issued a ticket with a $110 fine and three points against your driving record.

Get an early and safe start on the New Year.  Anytime you leave your car, take the keys wiith you!!

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Today's story by Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton on a 17-year-old charged with second-degree murder in the death of her grandmother raises some interesting legal questions, which will no doubt be raised as this case goes to trial.

Police say Jabreria Handy was arguing with her grandmother, 69-year-old Eunice Taylor, over photos hanging on her wall when the girl allegedly held her down on the bed by her wrists. Taylor died of a heart attack after being freed, and the state Medical Examiner's Office ruled her death a homicide.

Police and prosecutors then charged the girl as an adult with second-degree murder. Medical Examiners rule a "death at the hands of another" as a homicide. It's up to police and prosecutors to do decide whether the homicide was committed legally (such as self-defense), accidentally or with some element of intent, hence murder.

In 1994, an 86-year-old, who was the mother of Mercy Medical Center's chief doctor, died after being mugged in the hospital's garage. Police at the time said she suffered head and neck injuries when the purse was snatched from her arm, though she didn't fall down. The terminally-ill cancer patient died a day later, and her death was ruled a homicide. A hospital spokeswoman said at the time that Mary Goodman was in such frail health that "even a sneeze" could have had an adverse effect.

I checked today and Baltimore police have not made an arrest in the case.

The case involving Handy and Taylor raise even more questions. Can a heart attack, even if you can prove it was induced by an assault, be considered murder? The FBI, which sets strict rules on how local police agencies categorize crime, seems to disagree. According to the U.S. Justice Department:

"A Criminal Homicide is defined as "the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another." The policy governing the classification of criminal Homicide is contained on page 6 of the UCR Handbook. The applicable provision reads as follows: "Situations where a victim dies of a heart attack as the result of a robbery or witnessing a crime do not meet the criteria for inclusion in the Criminal Homicide classification. A heart attack cannot, in fact, be caused at will by an offender. Even in instances where an individual is known to have a weak heart, there is no assurance whatever that an offender can cause sufficient emotional or physical stress to guarantee the victim will suffer a fatal heart attack."

I talked with Baltimore defense attorney Margaret Mead, who is not handling this latest case, and she said prosecutors are wrong to call this one a murder.

"Defense lawyers have an excellent argument here," she said. "This started as an argument between a granddaughter and a grandmother, which isn't terribly surprising. It happens in every family. While what happened is very tragic, I don't think it warrants compounding this tragedy with charging this young girl with second-degree murder."

Mead said the standard is whether a person's actions are "likely to result in death. Here we have a typical physical altercation. This young woman did not plan for her grandmother to die. It doesn't satisfy the criteria for second-degree murder. I don't think it satisfies the criteria for manslaughter."

She offered this example: "You and I have an argument on the sidewalk. I push you, you fall down and hit your head on the curb. You get up, cuss me out, go home, go to bed and die. Is it murder?"

Prosecutors would not comment on the specific case but did note that second degree murder requires them to prove the defendant knew the risk to the victim and acted with "extreme disregard." They argue that the girl knew or should have reasonably known that her grandmother had heart problems and therefore any altercation, no matter how minor, could have caused serious harm. The girl is now charged with an adult. But if the charges are eventually reduced to manslaughter, the law allows her to be convicted as an adult but sentenced as a juvenile.

Assistant State's Attorney Julie Drake, who is not prosecuting this cases, described the law on what is called "depraved heart" murder:

"That form that prosecutors often rely on is sometimes known as 'depraved heart' second degree murder. An intent to kill is not an element of depraved heart second-degree murder. It's the killing of another person while acting with an extreme disregard for human life. It's sometimes described as a killing that occurs in the course of actions that demonstrate 'wanton and willfull disregard of human life.'  The jury instructions include three elements: that the conduct of the defendant caused the death of the victim, secondly, that the defendant's conduct created a high degree of risk to the victim, and thirdly, that the defendant, conscious of such risk, acted with extreme disregard.Even though it's not premeditated, the behavior was so outrageous and risky to the victim."
 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

A reader posted this comment on an earlier blog entry regarding the rapes in and around the Mount Vernon area:

"I live on the 500 block of Cathedral. Within the past three weeks I've seen an increase in car patrol at night.  But I haven't seen much in the past week.  PLEASE keep us updated on this story."

I'm getting a lot of notes and comments like these, some of which are addressed in today's column in the print edition. It's been a frustrating case to write about. Police initially didn't want to release any information, but were forced to once a detective posted sketches of potential suspects around the neighborhood.

The Mount Vernon-Belvedere Community Association and the University of Baltimore police sent out e-mail alert, but they contained contradictory and, in the end, wrong information. Then, at Tuesday night's community meeting at the Belvedere, police blamed the media for the lack of information. We get the reports, the officers told residents, and we choose what to report. They reminded residents that incident reports are public information and available.

Usually, that's true. But in this case, not only did the media NOT get any reports, the police have steadfastly refused to even make public the general addresses of where the rapes occurred. They would only tell us Mount Vernon. Turns out three rapes were in Mount Vernon, two in neighboring Mid-Town Belvedere and two others, well, we don't know yet. They won't tell us. Police said only two of the rapes, on St. Paul Street, appear to be related.

On this morning's Ed Norris show, the former city police commissioner once again complained on the radio about the lack of information. He noted the absurdity of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police sending out a news release about stepped up enforcement of suspected drug traffickers on I-95 ("if they're listening, they might as well stay home over the next few days," he said) while the city police still refuse to tell people about a serial rapist.

On a previous show, Norris said the cops should be making a public show of enforcement in Mount Vernon both to assure the public and to scare up suspects. At the very least, the commander of the Central District, Maj. John Bailey, did tell residents that he has six plainclothes officers questioning people every night and building a database of suspected criminals wandering around. 

"We have a sense of urgency," Bailey said.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Here's some safety tips from the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office for the Thanksgiving holiday:

News Release Thanksgiving Kitchen Safety 2008

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

The last time I wrote about guns on the U.S. 40 highway that goes from the Social Security Building to West Baltimore, it involved a commerical for a gun company. Benelli USA was filming an ad promoting its hunting products with a chase scene out of a James Bond movie.

This morning, it's about a real gun. Police arrested an armed man around 7:30 a.m. at the West Baltimore MARC train lot. That's right where U.S. 40 ends and turns back into a residential street leading out of the city. I had complained that the commercial was inappropriate given that the company sells guns for hunting and has no reason to promote its products using already violent city streets as a backdrop. This sort of proves my point.

We've had a violent few days in the city. Four killings since Tuesday night, the latest a 14-year-old shot in Brooklyn. On Monday afternoon, a city police officer shot and critically wounded a man who he said was stabbing his wife in the neck on North Avenue. And police are still investigating the death of a 23-month-old girl who had traces of Methadone in her system.

The violence has pushed the homicide count to 199 this year, compared to 262 at the same in 2007.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Cleaven Williams, the 33-year-old East Baltimore community activist who was shot by a city police officer while allegedly stabbing his wide on North Avenue Monday afternoon, remains in critical and stable condition this morning at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. His estranged wife, Veronica, 29, also is in critical condition at the same hospital.

I had mentioned in an earlier posting that I had met Williams on a police neighborhood walk on Nov. 4. He headed the East Baltimore Midway Community Association and the Greater Greenmount Community Association. The latter sent me this e-mail last night:

The following is a statement from the Greater Greenmount Community Association regarding the stabbing and shooting incident at Harford Rd and North Ave on November 17, 2008. 

Yesterday at North Ave and Harford Rd Cleaven Williams, who we know as CJ, was involved in a domestic dispute with his wife, Veronica, which left them both hospitalized. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Veronica, CJ, their children and other family members. We are heartbbroken by his actions and had hoped that this marital conflict could have been settled peacefully.

We are grateful to CJ for what he has done in our community and the leadership that he, as president, has provided to the Greater Greenmount Community Association. CJ believes that residents, working with city agencies, the Police Department and other organizations can revitalize our community. It may be some time before CJ returns to us. We will continue the work that together we have begun. The Greater Greenmount Community Association appreciates you respecting our privacy at this time.

 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The police neighborhood walk was Nov. 4, the night of the presidential election, through Baltimore's Midway community. The polls were still open at Cecil Elementary School when we gathered on the rainy evening.

Maj. Melvin Russell, the commander of the Eastern District, said the timing of the walk was the idea of the community leader, Cleaven Williams, who wanted police and neighbors to fight crime and encourage people to vote at the time.

He had split from his wife, Veronica Williams, 29, and was due in court for a custody hearing at 2 p.m. yesterday. The hearing was postponed, and outside an off-duty Western District officer in uniform saw a man stabbing a woman in the neck near a drug store. The officer got out of his car, used a Taser on the man and then shot him.

Police said today that Cleaven Williams is in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. His estranged wife has been upgraded from critical and unstable to critical and stable condition. No charges have been filed as of yet.

According to court records, a District Judge had ordered Mr. Williams to stay away from Mrs. Williams. The order says he "shall not abuse; shall not contact; shall not enter residence; shall stay away from her employment."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Baltimore Police Department is asking for help in finding the following missing person:

Missing HigginsBennie

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Johns Hopkins University is installing sensors this week that could help police pinpoint the source of gunfire. It's part of a pilot program from SECURES Gunshot Detection System, based in Reston, Va., and donated by the company to help attract publicity.

SECURES is one of at least five companies that are dabbling with this new technology that uses strategically placed microphones to pick up the sound of gunshots and then locate the source to within 10 feet. Detectors have been installed throughout the Charles Village and Homewood communities.

More than 30 cities around the country, including Washington, are using this technology. Scanning various Internet sites, I've found some interesting conclusions. Many departments, such as Minneapolis, have discovered that many gunshots do not get reported to 911. As a result, they ended up with a spike in gunshot-related statistics when ShotSpotter was installed. But over time, the department reported a drop in shootings, in part due to the quicker police response time.

The Minneapolis Police Department publishes a weekly map showing all the locations picked up by the sensors. I've harped on this countless times here and in my column -- that providing such information to the public is vital to keeping people informed. I recently wrote about a case in which a car was shot up, but residents standing at the crime scene were told the next day by police that nothing had happened because no report was written. Take notice Baltimore -- your colleagues in Minneapolis provide MAPS TO THE PUBLIC of every gunshot picked up by the computers.

In Washington, police reported that their ShotSpotter network, deployed in one of the most violent districts, has already helped solve several homicides, and enabled officers to respond to one quickly enough to catch the shooters in the act, according to the Washington Post.

The National Institute of Justice studied this technology and here are its key findings:

Gunshot detection systems are likely to reveal rather high citizen under-reporting rates of random gunfire problems (23 percent of incidents are reported). The technology is likely to increase the workloads of police officers, particularly if departments dispatch a patrol unit to every gunfire incident detected by a technological system.

Gunshot detection systems are not likely to lead to more arrests of people firing weapons in urban settings because it is highly unlikely that offenders will stay at a gunshot location long enough for the police to arrive.

Gunshot detection systems seem to offer the most potential as a problem-solving tool and would fit nicely within the emerging problem-oriented policing paradigm. The technology can help police identify random gunfire hot spots and develop strategies to address the problem. 

The SpotShotter web site is filled with links to news articles about its product. In Baltimore, city authorities say the technology is not quite proven yet to consider for broader deployment. It's not cheap. It costs $2 million install in just one police district in Washington.

The SECURES system could be a good test, though I wonder about its placement. Yes, Hopkins is getting it for free, and I suppose they'd get criticized for not using the gift for the benefit of their students. But Charles Village and Homewood are far from the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city; only two people were shot and there were 22 reports of gunfire in the coverage area this year, according to Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton. Maybe Hopkins could have deployed in East Baltimore, where its hospital is building a new biotech park and wiping out acres of old rowhouses in what is still a violent neighbhorhood.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Pilot Gunshot Detection System

The new SECURES detection system is being tested today in the area of 29th and Charles streets, where 90 detector boxes have been installed on streetlights and elsewhere. The system, developed by a Reston, Va. firm, works by tracking gunshots via senor technology, and audibly alerting the university's communications center, enabling campus security and Baltimore police to immediately respond. The system is designed to add another layer of protection to the Homewood and Charles Village communities. It is possible you may hear the testing. Police specialists will be firing rounds into sand-filled dump trucks at 11 locations in the detection system area. There will be no danger.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

With Baltimore police searching for a serial rapist in Mount Vernon -- as many as six attacks in the past few months -- and complaints that city officials didn't warn people fast enough, word of more attacks can spread quickly.

I got this e-mail on Sunday (it demonstrates how one small comment can travel fast, and worry many):

I spoke with a police officer today around noon (he had come to take a report on my car break-in and others in the 600 block of N. Calvert) who said that he and his partner had just come from the scene of another rape that occurred last night.  He didn't say a block specifically but it was a few blocks north of where we were - sounds like the same area where the others have clustered.

My colleague Richard Irwin talked with Baltimore police spokesman Troy Harris last night and got this account: A woman apparently had passed out in a bedroom of a Mount Vernon apartment during a party. A man went upstairs and saw another man in the woman's room, putting on his pants. The woman was still passed out. Police were called but Harris said the woman didn't remember anything and the man wasn't talking. The investigating is continuing, but it's not yet known whether a crime occurred.

In either case, this does not appear to be connected to the other attacks.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The two men charged with killing former City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. are having bail hearings this morning. Charles Y. McGaney, 19, and Gary Collins, 20, are each charged with first-degree murder and numerous other crimes in connection with the case.

Harris was shot and killed during a robbery at a Northeast Baltimore jazz club on Sept. 20. I'm posting below the charging documents filed in the case against Collins. They are nearly identical to the ones filed against McGaney:

Hermann.charging16

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Newspaper reporters tend to write stories and quickly move on to the next feature and the next tragedy. But every once in a while we get to spend real time with people, and produce meaningful stories that resonate with readers and stick with us.

Angela Jackson was one of those people. My colleague Jon Bor wrote about her last year as part of series on how HIV and AIDS has wrecked havoc on this city. We write about murders; too often we don't write about the other ills that claim lives and cause destruction.

Angela had done it all. She was a prostitute, was homeless, shot up $2,000-a-day worth of heroin and cocaine, had three children, two while still using drugs. But she got better. Given one year to live a decade ago, she's still going strong, working as a counselor and trying to get others out of the lifestyle she had lived.

Her youngest daughter, Takira Leray Johnson-Bey, seemed to have escaped the hardships that had befallen her mother. Despite growing up with a drug-addicted mother who slept with up to 30 men a day, she danced, graduated from Edmondson High School and wanted to go to college. She worked as a data process manager at a downtown Baltimore bank and wanted to work with the deaf and as a child care provider.

But she slipped. She noticed her friends stripping at house parties got more money than she did at the bank. She started to do that as well, and eventually ended up dancing at the Block, and ended up dead earlier this month, stabbed during a fight that started inside Norma Jeans on Custom House Avenue.

I went back to see Jackson this week -- a hard assignment but necessary to continue her uplifting narrative from being addicted to being productive, only to see her promising daughter follow her fateful footsteps.

Jackson told me how hard it is to escape the lifestyle she chose. What it shows once again is that there is a story behind every death in this city. Takira was a stripper, and she died a hard death linked to a hard life. She had choices. She almost made the right one.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

His name is Charles Y. McGaney, and just as City Hall officials thought, he lives one block behind the Northwood Shopping Center. He's local. From the neighborhood. And now he's been arrested in the Sept. 20 fatal shooting of former Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr.

Police last night charged McGaney in an arrest warrant with first and second-degree murder, armed robbery and other related charges. He's 20, and his last known address was in the 1600 block of Lochwood Road, behind the nightspot where Harris was killed in what police say was a robbery gone bad. Police announced the warrant at a news conference this morning and said they knew the name of a second suspect.

Police raided five houses in Northeast Baltimore looking for McGaney, but came up empty. They got him later this morning, shortly after the news conference. Within hours, they'd picked up the second suspect, too. Authorities said that McGaney's name surfaced early in the investigation, and that detectives had talked to him repeatedly. But only recently, Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told reporters, did his name reach the top of their long list of possible suspects.

It is not known whether police believe this suspect is the shooter. Bealefeld did confirm he is one of the three people captured in a grainy photo taken by a surveilance camera. Bealefeld has said in the past they had forensic DNA evidence -- they recovered a mask and other evidence from the scene -- but had no suspsect to link it to. This morning, Bealefeld wouldn't elaborate, saying he had to be careful not to jeopardize a case that consumed countless hours from many detectives and prosecutors.

We still don't know much about the case or McGaney -- he has a list of prior arrests in Baltimore County and the city, Bealefeld said, and the ones in the city are on streets all around the shopping center. Today's announcement probably won't end the countless rumors and accusations about the case -- Bealefeld was called to a City Council hearing earlier this month to answer questions about why there no arrest yet and to update the investigation. Some community members, including Harris' mother, have complained that police have been silent on who the woman was in the car with Harris when he was killed and have implied that Harris was targeted in something other than a robbery.

Bealefeld again wouldn't answer questions about the woman (she is a witness) but reiterated that detectives believe Harris was shot as part of a robbery gone bad. He praised detectives who have spent weeks tracking down leads but cautioned that, "This announcement begins the justice process." There are still arrests to made, other suspects to be identified and caught, and convictions to be obtained.

"We had to ensure that we dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't' so that justice is served," Bealefeld said. "We would not be hurried or rushed into making premature judgements or doing anything that would jeopardize this case. ... This is only the beginning. There is much, much more work yet to be done."

These words seemed aimed at family and community leaders who pressured the police for a quick arrest. The department has come under criticism for low clearance rates with murders, and the City Hall hearing only inflamed passions not only about the Harris case, but about other unsolved killings in the city.

Bealefeld complained early in the investigation that only two people living around the Northwood Shopping Center called detectives with tips. More calls came as police pushed hard for information. City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake insisted for weeks that the suspects lived near the shopping center that people in the neighborhood had information that could help solve the case.

She was right.

Mayor Sheila Dixon seized on that this morning, telling reporters, "The individual lived in the community. It is so important that we have community insight. This is a senseless crime. We have to send a message, particularly to our young people, that this is unacceptable and (the suspects) will have to pay."

Dixon said officials and others have been "too soft" in talking about murder in Baltimore and that she too anxiously awaited police to name a suspect in the Harris case. She was standing next to Annette Harris, the slain councilman's wife.

"I felt the frustrations that Annette about having information," Dixon said. "I knew Ken Harris for years and I knew how he loved this city. Life is precious. We have to value it and we have to send that message out.

Annette then spoke, telling reporters that her husband was "a true champion of justice" and she urged, "I pray that justice prevails."

Bealefeld didn't release much information about his detectives pulled together this case. In the days, weeks and months to come, we will learn much more about McGaney, his friends, his family and the neighborhood in which he lived. Eventually, we will also get a clearer idea of the motive, and hopefully put to rest the rumors that have split the Harris family and have only caused more grief and left us with unanswered questions.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

The Baltimore Police Department has come under criticism from community leaders and a radio-talk show host (Ed Norris, a former city police commissioner) for not notifying the Mount Vernon community of a series of rapes.

Information continues to dribble out. The attacks occurred in the community along St. Paul, Calvert and Cathedral streets. In many attacks, a man entered second-floor windows, gaining access from a fire escape.

This afternoon, police for the first time released the dates of the attacks (they wouldn't give out the locations, even just by block number):

7/19/08; 9/16/08; 9/29/08; 10/29/08; 11/6/08; 11/9/08

The attack on Sept. 16 occurred outside on Cathedral Street, and may not be linked to the other five, according to police. Authorities have released two sketches which can be found here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Ed Norris, Baltimore's former top cop turned radio DJ, went after the city's police department this morning for failing to notify the public about a series of rapes, sexual assaults and break-ins in and around Mount Vernon.

He targeted the department's chief spokesman, Sterling Clifford, for a comment he made in today's Baltimore Sun, when confronted with criticism from the community: "I hope people won't be dependent on one specific police alert to lock up before they go to bed at night."

Norris called the comment offensive, juvenile and "snarky" -- unprofessional for the agency's top spokesman.

I find the whole episode troubling. It's okay to be condescending to a reporter, but not to the public. Yes, people whould always be vigilent, but that does not excuse police from doing their job -- and preventing and solving crime and informing the public.

One police rationale for not going public was their inability to establish a pattern. On his show, Norris asked where the cutoff should be. "Ten, twelve rapes, tell me." He said the idea that going public could undermine the investigation also falls flat. A woman who sees someone walking through the alley might not call police if she doesn't even know the rapes are occurring. An official alert puts everyone on a heightened state of awareness, and tips can flow in.

Not to mention that police continually complain that the public doesn't help them. "They can't help if you the police hide the information," Norris said. On releasing details of the attacks, Norris said, "If not now, when?"

Click here to see the sketches of two possible suspects.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

I've been invited onto the Ed Norris show tomorrow morning (7:35 a.m.) to talk about the attacks in Mount Vernon and how they were reported (or not reported) to the public. Norris used his show today to complain about the issue, and I've received some posts from concerned residents wondering why information wasn't more quickly distributed.

One explation offered be me was that some of the information was incomplete and contradictory, and it took the Baltimore Sun a while to sort it out. One reader sent me this to my blog:

My gripe is more with the BPD than the media. I understand the relationship between the crimes wasn't clear, but the fact remains that multiple rapes and other incidents were occurring at a much-higher-than-normal rate in the neighborhood -- and the BPD did not bother to alert the residents of this area. This is not your typical Baltimore car break-in or mugging, which most of us are cautious about. In-home rapes -- very scary, especially when you're a woman living alone smack in the middle of them, totally unaware of what is happening around you because it is being swept under the rug, as usual.

The reader is absolutely correct. Baltimore Sun reporters first heard there were attacks on Friday, first from colleagues who live in Mount Vernon and Charles Village, and later from a bulletin sent out by the University of Baltimore. It didn't mention rapes, however.

Over the weekend, we received another e-mail from the Mount Vernon Community Association, but their timeline was off, talking about six rapes in a month. We could not get to the bottom of the discrepencies until Monday.

On Monday, we called the Baltimore Police Department's Public Information Office and were told they knew nothing about the attacks. A reporter then brought back a flier being distributed by the police in the neighborhood, and we called the number the lead detective had written on the sheet. He seemed willing to speak but wanted permission first. We then got a call from the PIO office and were warned not to call detectives, that information would come from their office. But they still had no details.

The chief public affairs official, Sterling Clifford, then called and gave us permission to talk with the lieutenant in charge. The sketches were emailed to the newspaper at 5:45 p.m. A story was published by Justin Fenton on Tuesday.

It shouldn't be this difficult to get basic information about a series of on-going assaults and rapes scaring a neighbhorhood. I undertstand that police don't want to ruin their investigation, but when they decide to put up fliers and send  out alerts to community groups, they should also update the larger community as well. The fact that different groups were spreading different versions of what was happening only shows that wrong, confusing information only inflames the public and makes things worse.

I'm looking forward to talking with Ed Norris tomorrow morning.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Baltimore's police commissioner is about to end the practice of officers moonlighting as security guards at bars and other establishments that sell alcohol. The top cop argues that the city is liable for the officer's action regardless of whether he's been paid by the city or the bar, and that too many conflicts arise. He doesn't like officers throwing drunks onto the street only so they can committ crirmes and become problems for other officers who happen to be on duty.

My fellow-crime blogger, former Baltimore Police Capt. Jerry "Buz" Busnuk, offers his take on the new rules in his blog this morning:

"I know many of my wonderful former colleagues in the department who work these details cannot see it, but there is an inherent conflict of interest in having officers work in licensed beverage outlets such as bars, nightclubs, and strip joints. The police department has the first level of legal oversight of these places, and the economic interests of the owners sometimes conflicts with legal mandates."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Debbie Dorsey directs the Baltimore Film Office, and when the shotgun manufacturer Benelli USA asked about shooting a commericial in the city, the answer was quick and easy.

"It's all about economic dividends," Dorsey told me. "We're trying to keep the businesses here. It wasn't so much that it's a gun commericial. It's business. It's employing people and spending money in the city."

That's $850 million to Maryland in the past 10 years. Baltimore get's the bulk of the money, because most of the filming is right here in the city.

Do you ever question the content of the films?

"Never for anyone," she answered.

It's actually not a bad answer. If the city -- in this case Baltimore's Office for the Promotion of the Arts -- excluded filming based on artistic content, I'd be the first to raise questions about censorship. Who is this office to say who gets to film here or not film here, and why? "We can't ask David Simon or Clint Eastwood or anyone who comes into town, 'Why would you do it this way?'" Dorsey said. "We can't judge what they're doing."

Of course, Dorsey worked as a location manager for John Waters on such movies as Serial Mom and Pecker, two films that, well, were respectively about a suburban serial killer who becomes a hero and a boy photographer who finds the seedy underbelly side of Hampden.  

David Simon brought this city a lot of money with his HBO series The Wire, only to face criticism from City Hall about depicting the city as drug-ridden, violent and corrupt. It was disingenuous -- I think our fearless leaders worried that Simon's fiction got a little too close to the core truth.

I do think a commericial is different. Benelli is selling guns in a city riddled with violence. But my biggest issue is not whether Benelli should be allowed to shoot here, it's with Benelli itself. They sell shotguns and rifles to hunters and sportsmen. I fail to see how a chase scene involving speeding motorcycles and gunfire on an urban street will get hunters to buy guns.

Baltimore's Film Office should be commended for making this city an attractive venue for filmmakers. The web site lists more than 80 such ventures, many of them non-violent films, such as HBO's Washintonienne, about three women who live on Capital Hill, which was being filmed in our Bolton Hill at the same time Benelli was shooting it up in West Baltimore on Sunday.

"We really try to show Baltimore as a location," Dorsey said. "It can be any city. It can be Paris. It can be New York. Lots of times it's Washington." She noted that Benelli's commercial, which is to air on ESPN and the Outdoor Channel, won't say Baltimore. They wanted a generic city. "They never say where they are," she said.

Dorsey noted that the new series Washingtonienne might raise some eyebrows with how our neighbors down south are depicted. "Some people in Capital Hill are finding issues with the subject matter," she said. "It's not about guns. It's about sex."

Dorsey noted that Live Free or Die Hard filmed some of its shooting and car chase scenes on U.S. 40, the submerged highway that starts west of downtown but abruptly ends in the city, the result of complaints from homeowners who didn't want the highway slicing through their neighborhood. That makes the road attractive to filmmakers. "We have the highway to nowhere that can be shut down and it looks like a highway," Dorsey said.

In 1996, a downtown Burger King handed out receipts with ads on the back for discounts on guns and ammunition from a local gunshop, prompting protests from the police union and a quick reversal from the chain's headquarters who were smart enough to know that linking Whoppers with Glocks probably wasn't the best marketing move.

I haven't seen Benelli's commericial yet, and a company spokesman wouldn't tell me what product is being advertised in the Baltimore shoot, but I wish they'd have been a little more senstive to the city and found a way to sell their guns more in keeping with their own mission.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Mugged, hit with a metal pole and bleeding onto his coat, Holton F. Brown decided to go to work instead of going to the hospital.

That might have endeared him to his bosses and provided a good tale to share with his colleagues, but it apparently did nothing to help send his attacker to jail. A jury acquitted the man police arrested in the beating, and both prosecutors and the suspect's attorney said a central question was how badly Brown could've been hurt if he could still go to the office.

Brown retired a few months ago as a long-time editorial assistant at the Baltimore Sun. Affectionately known as Brownie, he was a faithful servent to this newspaper, full of life and stories, and willing to share them with anybody and everybody.

He loved his job, and so it was no surprise that he showed up on Jan. 29, his worn coat splashed with blood, sorting the mail and distributing papers to offices a few short hours after being attacked at a bus stop in Northeast Baltimore shortly before 5 that morning.

In March, police arrested a suspect, identified as Ronald Calhoun, 26, and charged him not only in connection with the attack on Brownie, but also of a woman on Feb. 6 who was robbed at an automated teller machine on the same block of The Alameda.

In September, a jury acquitted Calhoun of four charges in the attack on Brownie, including armed robbery and assault. Prosecutors dismissed the case from Feb 6 because, according to Calhoun's attorney Warren A. Brown, the victim couldn't identify him. Brown, who is not related to the victim, said his client also was charged in a third attack in the area, which also got dismissed because Calhoun proved he was at work at the time.

The case, as all do in the city, had problems. There was no weapon, so no physical evidence to link the attack to the suspect. Brown's stolen credit cards were used, but prosecutors said there was no evidence that Calhoun was the one who had used them. And Brownie's description differed from what he told the officer the morning of the attack and when he picked Calhoun's photo out of a photo-lineup.

"There was enough there for a jury to say not guilty," the attorney Brown said. "The description he gave at the time of his attack was as generic as could be. The case came down solely to the victim picking a photo out of the photo array and saying, 'That's him.' The pole that was allegedly used wasn't found. There were no fingerprints, no blood and no pole."

And, the defense attorney said, Brownie, instead of "going to the hospital, went on to work. It was almost like the jury could have easily said, 'He's a tough old fogie, he's ok.'"

It's well known that it's tough to get convictions in Baltimore Circuit Court. Cases that rely on witness identifications can easily be torn apart, and without physical evidence, they're even more difficult.

According to Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the city State's Attorney's Office, Brownie "made an excellent witness" but was the only one. "It wasn't enough for a jury," she said in an e-mail, after a conversation with the prosecutor, Dana Middleton. "Some jurors told her they didn't understand why there wasn't 'more' such as DNA or fingerprints. Brown was bleeding, Dana said, but he refused medical attention and went to work instead and she said that didn't help the case."

Brownie, in an e-mail, said, "I positively IDed him from a photo array but the jury swallows the ... shows like CSI. The prosecutor said the jury BELIEVED ME but they wanted forensics to positively confirm. They think that the police department has a bottomless pit of personel to put out sweeping the border between the Northern and the Northeastern district at 5 in the morning to look for a piece of  tubing that one perp used to beat up an old man!!"
 

Brown, the defense attorney, said his client was on probation for a marijuana conviction at the time of the attack, and that he had been charged with rape a few years ago. That charge, too, was dismissed.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Baltimore police are seeking help in finding men responsible for a series of rapes and burglaries in the Mount Vernon area. They have released sketches of two possible suspects. One may be linked to the rapes; the other to the burglaries, though not necessarily exclusively.

In many of the attacks, Lt. Dorsey McVicker Jr. told the Baltimore Sun, "This predator is coming in and finding women sleeping." Anyone with information is urged to call 410-396-2411.

To see another photo, click below:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

State officials announced today awards to seven area police officers for doing good work in their communites, including ones in Baltimore County and City:

Community Crime Officer Awards

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In Sunday's column on Barack Obama bringing a renewed hope to inner-city Baltimore coping with murder and crime, I introduced Annette March Grier, an grief counselor for the March Funeral Home.

She talked about helping children deal with the violence they endure, of losing loved ones and friends, of carrying obituaries in thier elementary school notebooks. She raising money to build Roberta's House, named after her mother who helped found the funeral home in East Baltimore, which will give children a place to go to get help. She has $300,000 from the state, is seeking another $300,000 from the federal government and hopes to complete the $3 million project by 2010.

Here is her vision:

crimeblog.roberta10

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore's police commissioner, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, is about to stop cops from moonlighting at clubs and bars that sell alcohol. This is bound to be controversial, angering both officers for whom these gigs have proved lucrative and business owners who want the extra peace of mind.

I think it's a necessary and prudent move. Bealefeld argued in a story that ran Saturday by police reporter Justin Fenton and nightlife correspondent Sam Sessa that businesses were dumping their own security problems on the city. The city already has paid out $50,000 to an Edgewater man who accused six officers of beating him outside Power Plant Live and a 21-year-old Towson University student was beaten into a coma at the Iguana Cantina that employs as many as many as six off-duty cops for security.

"When people wind up in a coma in a club that I have cops working security at and no one knows anything, or cops are throwing unruly, drunken, disorderly, combative, violent patrons ouut on the street only for them to shoot and stabe and kill each other, is unacceptable," Bealefeld said.

The city has been trying to get clubs and other business to hire their own security guards and shoulder more of the responsibility. I've walked through Federal Hill a lot on a Friday and Saturday night and seen dozens of uniformed officers outside bars. It's a reassuring sight, but it also makes it confusing to know who is on duty and who is working for the club.

It's important because the cops who are on-duty answer to their sergeant and lieutenants. Who do the cops working for the bar answer to? The owner? And if so, doesn't that create a conflict of interest? What does a police officer do when he sees illegal activity going on inside the bar? Turn away because his "employer" condones it or start making arrests because that's his responsibility to the city? Does the officer worry about being fired if he arrests a regular customer, and does the officer testify at a Liquor Board hearing?

I admit it's a hard decision when your're getting paid by competing interests. And of course these types of conflicts can occur in any off-duty job a police officer takes. But it seems to me that mixing alcohol and cops with guns can lead to more conflicts and more problems than in just about any other job.

I'd love to hear from the police, retired and on the force, and bar owners on this one.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Baltimore County police are asking for help in locating this missing girl:

Smith Goi`Missing Endangered.msg

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

There's still no word on how Annie McCann died or why the 16-year-old Arlington, Va., teen came to Baltimore. She apparently ran away from home, leaving a note, and was found dead on Sunday in a courtyard off East Pratt Street in the Perkins Homes public housing complex.

Her death still remains a mystery. I got this nice e-mail from Sheila Olaguer, the wife of one of the paramedics who responded to the scene. She gave me permission to share it with you:

Dear Peter,
Thank you for the article in Thursday's paper on Annie McCain. My husband was one of the firefighters/paramedics who responded to the call. After 34 years in the fire department, calls of this nature still have a profound impact on him, as well as all the men and women who respond. Thoughts of her were with him all day on Sunday. He wondered who she was, how she died, what her life was like. He prayed for her in church. Thanks to your article, now he knows a little more. It helps to bring closure to which he is grateful. Sadly, its just another day in the life of the men and women who serve and protect the city of Baltimore. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Today's column on whether the tiny subdivision of Oakview in Owings Mills New Town has sparked another debate about crime. Does the community need to hire security patrols, shouldn't the county be providing the protection, and is the existing citizen's patrol run by New Town enough?

Linda Waxter, who opposes paying for more security in Oakview, wondered in an e-mail today why she should pay for services the county already provides. "I am completely baffled," she wrote. "Isn't it the responsibility of government law enforcement agencies to handle this kind of problem?"

Well, yes, of course it is. But cops can't be everywhere, and communities across the nation pay to get more. Places from Crofton, which has its own armed police force that costs a half million dollars a year, to the Charles Village Benefits District in Baltimore, pay heavily for extra protection. It's not always an indictment on government services; it's just that some people want more than what the government can provide. They also want control. Back in the 1990s, Orioles owner Peter Angelos used his own money to pay city cops overtime to patrol Charles Street, outside one of his office towers. He argued that workers simply drove home at the end of the day, he wanted them to feel safe going out for a beer or dinner and walking around downtown.

It's a never-ending debate. There will never be enough police to satisfy everyone. Waxter sent me an e-mail she got from Matt Lewis, the president of the Oakside Association in Owings Mills New Town. He said they hired security to push out drug dealers who were using a home on Sherwood Farm Road.

"To thwart their attempts and to rid our neighborhood of this undesirable presence, the Oakside Board made a decision to hire Night Patrol and immediately put into action a Sting Operation," Lewis wrote." This Sting Operation lasted approximately three months and was very successful!  Unfortunetly, the cost of hiring the Night Patrol was not budgeted for, thereby causing us to go into a deficit."

The administrator of the Owings Mills New Town Citizen's On Patrol, Daniel Bralove, sent me a lengthy e-mail and he encouraged me to post it. It again gets into how much crime data is available. I argue that police agencies should post on-line as much up-to-date information as possible. A big part of the argument in Oakview is how much crime actually occurrs there. Good data could end that argument and move the debate forward:

I am writing to you in regards to the following article: Tiny suburb considers private policing.

Quite frankly I was shocked to read this article, as I am the Administrator for the Owings Mills New Town Citizens on Patrol, a volunteer organization that helps maintain the quality of life for the 3000 homes that make up Owings Mills New Town. The community mentioned in your article, Oakside, is within our patrol zone – and receives a regular amount of patrol from a group of concerned neighbors. We run on schedule that is only known to me at this time (to prevent patterns to emerge that potential criminals may pick up on), and we patrol in our personal vehicles which are clearly marked with yellow beacon lights mounted on the roof and magnetic signs that read “Owings Mills Newtown Citizens on Patrol”.

Our organization formed approximately one year ago in response to a number of acts of vandalism inside our community. I take great pride in celebrating the fact that this type of property crime has all but disappeared from Newtown in the past year, and I credit our dedicated volunteers for this.

Just last night, the Owings Mills Newtown Community Association Inc. held it’s annual meeting (open to all residents of Newtown), and security was our primary point of discussion. We are constantly recruiting for volunteers in the community, whom we train and provide the necessary equipment to safely patrol our neighborhoods.

In you article you note that Mr. Marcota has been checking the Internet recently and noting crime trends. The Baltimore County Police Department recently released crime information on www.crimereports.com which allows citizens to search for criminal activity in their neighborhoods. The data available on the Internet currently goes back to July of 2008, and upon a quick glance at the data, it may appear that crime is rising in and around the Oakside community.  I however have taken the time to analyze the data in depth and have tracked the location of the activity, the type of activity and the time when it is occurring. I have even gone so far as to publish my analysis on a spreadsheet located on our website www.omntcop.org. Mr. Marcota and other residents in the Newtown community must keep in mind that they are viewing a very small amount of data, and if they had access to the data over a greater period of time – perhaps one year, they would see that the activity has dramatically decreased.

In reference to the idea of privatized security patrols in the community, I must say that I am a bit confused. For the past year, Owings Mills Newtown has supplemented our COP program with the addition of a private security company that has vehicles patrolling our community on a routine basis. The patrol publishes nightly shift reports and submits it to the Owings Mills Community Assoc Inc Master Board for review at our monthly meetings (held the first Monday of every month at Libertories Bistro).  We welcome all residents to these meetings, and I will gladly review the reports and crime data with anyone with concerns.

On a final note, I would like to note that on Halloween night of 2007, the Newtown community had its share of vandalism and juvenile acts that caused an eyesore to the community. I am proud to say that on Halloween of 2008, not one single act of destruction, vandalism, or similar behavior was observed. I can confidently say that none of this behavior was observed as we had a coordinated response consisting of 7 marked COP patrols, our private security, and the cooperation and assistance of the Baltimore County Police Department. We were monitoring the events of the night starting from the first trick or treater, well into the early hours of the following morning (including random patrols at both 1am and 4am).

I encourage anyone with questions, concerns, and suggestions to contact me directly at admin@omntcop.org and to visit our website at www.omntcop.org. Residents of Newtown can also request to be added to an email list where they will receive updates about any crime trends, prevention tools, and updates on meetings and our activities. I encourage all residents to keep an eye out for the upcoming Community Newsletter that will contain a cover story on COP, and ways in which residents can participate.

Daniel Bralove

Administrator, OMNT COP

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

I don't usually spend much time in such high NON-crime areas as the village of Oakside in Owings Mills. This tiny copy of Columbia is just 149 town homes with all the trappings of suburbia. There's already more leaves on the ground than grass, the lawns are mowed, the mail boxes shared.

Looking around, as I did for today's column in the print edition, there is no crime. Can't be.

But of course there is. The neighborhood association hired security to force a suspected drug dealer to move. Now, the association wants to hire security full time, for night patrols, which would cost $39,000. An extra $20 to $25 a year in fees.

The association treasurer, Richard N. Maracotta, told me he's searched the Internet and sees crime encroaching and wants to stop it before it starts. Resident Linda Waxter says she's neither seen nor heard of crime in her neighborhood and sees the extra expense as wasteful.

The trouble is that neither side really knows the facts. Waxter called me not to complain about the community fight over security but to find out exactly what kind of crime is happening where she lives. I confess, I wasn't able to find out.

A day or two isn't enough time for police to pull stats on streets or neighborhoods. Baltimore County Police spokesman Bill Toohey did the best he could. He checked with commanders in the precinct that covers the area and reported back, "We know of no significant crime trends in that community."

The police web site doesn't help much either. Instead of giving actual crime, it gives averages for geographic areas. It shows no crime in Oakview. Toohey has told me the department is working on a more detailed map that will show actual incidents. The Baltimore Sun is working with departments to post detaled crime maps online. Anne Arundel County police was the first department to share data, and their map on our site is updated weekly.

More and more communities such as Oakside are debating spending money to hire extra security. But without timely and accurate information, they can't possibly be expected to make informed decisions. The residents of Oakside are scheduled to vote Nov. 19 and it could come down to whether there is a crime problem. And no one will really know.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Maryland State Police just released crime statistics for the state for the first six months of this year. The agency broke out carjackings, noting a 5 percent increase this year compared with last.

Prince George's County leads the way in this category, with 194 reported this year, up from 189 in the first half of last year. In Baltimore, there were 135 carjacking reported from January through June, up one from 2007. Baltimore County had 33, compared with 27 last year; Anne Arundel went from 19 to 20 and Howard stayed even with five in each year. Harford County went from two to one this year and Carroll County reported no carjacking this year or last.

Homicides in the state are down 15 percent comparing the first half of this year with the first half of last year (285 to 243), rapes are down 3 percent and robberies are down 1 percent. Car thefts are down 10 percent across the state, from 14,203 reported in the first half of 2007 to 12,770 reported through June of this year.

Homicides doubled on the Eastern Shore, from 10 to 20 this year, but went down from six to five in Western Maryland. The biggest drop in murder came from Baltimore City and the surrounding counties -- 189 reported through June of last year compared with 134 in the first half of this year.

Baltimore City police also released some new crime data this week (homicides are now at 186), down about 27 percent from last year. Shootings are also down 11 percent and robberies are down in the city 9 percent.

Baltimore police added a new category to its list: gun crimes. Through Nov. 1 of this year, 207 people have been killed by a gun, 569 people have been shot and wounded and 1,764 people have been robbed at gunpoint. Despite the drop in homicides and shootings, gun there have been 2,540 gun-related crimes in the city this year, compared with 2,542 in the first 11 months of last year.

Not much of a drop there.

Here are the stats released by the Maryland State Police:

UCRjanjune08

Car Jack Jan June 08

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

In September of last year, Anne Arundel County police busted four women and accused them of using Craigslist, the popular free classified advertising site on the Internet, to seek prostitution services. Arundel police have been particularly vigilant about this since many of the women selling services are in hotel rooms near at BWI Airport in Linthicum.

Today, Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced that Maryland and 42 other states have reached an agreement with the owners of Craigslist that could significantly reduce or even stop postings for illegal sexual services on the site.

Craigslist will require posters of erotic service ads to provide a phone number and pay a fee with a credit card. Craigslist also will "provide the resulting information in response to law enforcement subpoenas," according to a statement from Gansler's office, and money from the ads will be donated to charity.

Craigslist 11.6.08

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Back in September, I wrote a column on the Case of the Stolen Bicycle. If you recall, the owner of a high-end bicycle store in Arlington, Va., tracked a stolen $8,000 carbon-fram Specialized SL2 racing bike to a rowhouse on Cross Street in Federal Hill.

Police from Baltimore and Arlington posed as bicycle enthusiasts on the Internet, befriended the suspect and then arrested Barry Pugh, 26, and charged him with larceny in connection with the case in Arlington and another stolen bicycle case from Baltimore. He was accused of stealing a $3,500 bike from Light Street Cycles.

Today, the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office said Pugh pleaded guilty to theft in Baltimore Circuit Court and received a five-year suspended prison sentence and five years probation. He still has a theft case pending in Baltimore County Circuit Court and a larceny case pending in Arlington County, Va., General District Court.

The Virginia case stems from the stolen SL2. According to the court's Internet site, the case was postponed yesterday and has been rescheduled for Dec. 17. His attorney in Virginia, Mina J. Ketchie, declined to comment when reached this afternoon.

I got back in touch with the owner of Conte's Bicycle and Fitness store in Arlington and she had just heard the news from Baltimore. "It made me very excited," said Jody L. Bennett.

Bennett said she went to court in Arlington and was happy the case was postponed until next month. "Yesterday, the man didn't have a record and probably would've gotten off pretty easy," she said. "Now, when he goes to court he'll have a record for bike theft."

So what happened to the expensive bike?

That's a sad story. Bennett had displayed the returned bike in her store but put a sign on it explaining its underground journey to Baltimore. She had reduced the price to $6,000, below her cost. A few weeks ago, Bennett said a customer agreed to buy only the frame. "He didn't want the bike because of all the problems," the owner said.

The final cost without any accessories: $2,400.

"We're asking the suspect for $6,100 in restitution," Bennett said. "We'll probably never see it."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The historic election of Barack Obama versus the sobering fact that African-American men keep getting killed on the streets of Baltimore. Those two thoughts were intertwined at last night's City Council hearing on murder in Baltimore. It was supposed to be about updating the public on the investigation into the shooting death of former City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., who was killed Sept. 20 at a Northeast Baltimore shopping center.

And Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III provide some new tidbits -- that detectives recovered key DNA evidence -- they found a mask and a glove at the scene -- but there are no matches in a national database. He pleaded for witnesses to come forward with a name; that person could be tested and matched and charged. "We have forensic evidence that can close this case tonight," he said.

But the evening turned into a debate about police, culture and warfare on city streets. Councilwoman Helen Holton wanted Bealefeld to address what she believes is lack of urgency by police to solve not just Harris' death, but other deaths as well. Speaker after speaker invoked Obama's name, saying his election proves that it is time for the community to "step up" and take the city back.

The Rev. P.M. Scott talked about a time when he grew up in Baltimore and knew the cop who walked the beat. He said the officer sat down with residents to catch the last inning of the Orioles game, back in the time when he didn't have a radio but had to call the station from a call box on the corner. "That meant that not only did we rely on him, he relied on us," Scott said. "That officer talked to us and he corrected us and if he had to he called our father's name. It made a difference."

Others talked about mistrust of police in the black community, how it's understandable that people are scared to come forward in age of witness intimidation, stop snitching and brazen gang violence. They urged police to work harder with community members, such as Operation Safe Streets in Southeast Baltimore, who have "street cred."

That brought an impassioned response from Bealefeld, who noted officers work with a group of ex-felons who can go to the corners and talk with the youth in ways cops can't. Then he talked about the culture of murder in Baltimore: "The majority of these cases are not about dealing a kilo of heroin. These are not about the hierarchy of the Cosa Nostra. These are about minor slights and young men losing their lives over perceived disrespect. 

Bealefeld noted that his agency has 48 homicide detectives who each have far more than the three cases per year per detective that is the national average. But unlike other, smaller departments, the city has its own crime lab and he said police can send more resources to a homicide scene than nearly any other police agency in the country. He talked about the city's low clearance rate and turned the mantra -- "one death is too many" -- into "one open death case is too many" and how they have an obligation to clear cases for grieving family members. One man brought a picture of his dead son to complain about how police handled the investigation.

The commissioner said there is an ongoing "source of frustration in getting information about cases." He has repeatedly complained about getting only two calls from the community after Harris was killed, though he noted that more tips are coming in lately. "We are dealing with a phenominon in which some people not only don't trust the police, they don't trust to call 911." He said people who are afraid should go to their council person or clergy member and use them as a conduit.

On Harris, he said, a good tip could lead to a DNA hit on a suspect. "Tell us what rock to look under," Bealefeld pleaded, turning to Holten's complaint about a lack of urgency. "This is not CSI on television where we can solve cases in 30-minute episodes. I don't drive a Fiori and I don't have people that look like they do on the show."

The commissioner said there is some information that can't be shared with the public. He would not address many of the rumors and inuendo floating about the case; in fact, council members who fielded questions from the public didn't even ask Bealefeld to answer many of them. One was about the woman who as in Harris' car when he was shot. Many speakers, including Harris' mother Sylvia, demanded to know who she was and whether she is helping police. Bealefeld, rightly, said it that he can't talk about a witness -- especially after listening to a litany of complaints about how witnesses don't feel safe.

He noted that there are thousands of open homicide cases dating back decades but only one open warrant for a murder suspect -- a man overseas in a country with no extradiction treaty with the United States.

The commissioner talked at length about clearance rates but concluded that relatives of victims don't care about "meaningless stats" if the killers are still on the lose. "What really needs to happen is that if someone takes a life in this city, we have to hold them accountable and he has to go to jail and justice is done."

Bealefeld went through the steps of releasing information on the Harris case, from the grainy video of potentional suspects to telling the public about the mask and now the DNA evidence, timed he said, to keep the story alive. "Your frustration is our frustration," he said. "There are murders in this city that get this much in the paper (he mean't tiny) and others that get plastered all over the front pages and remain in the public conscious."

City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake jumped to Bealefeld's defense. She held up the photos fom the Harris scene and again urged people to help. "As grainy as it is, if you know the persons, you can tell if they are in here. ... we need to show that we value life over the culture of crime." And like others, she eluded to Obama and Tuesday's election:

"If we learned anything from last night it is that our lives are full of possibility," Rawlings-Blake said. "Our lives are not disposable. You don't have to trust Commissioner Bealefed. You don't have to like Commissioner Bealefeld. But you do have to care about human life."

Of the people who killed Harris, she said, "They aren't done. As long as they are on the street, everyone one of us is in danger."

There are still many unanswered questions about Harris' death. Speakers had broad conspiracy theories and demanded answers police could or would not give. Many left unsatisfied, complaining of a coverup that goes far beyond the killing of Harris, complaining that even the council members don't want the truth in the death of their own colleague.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Today's Baltimore Sun column on the mysterious death of Annie McCann -- the 16-year-old girl in the above picture who ran away from home in Alexandria, Va. and was found dead in the Perkins Homes public housing projects -- brought this response from retired Baltimore Police Sgt. Ed Mattson:

Mr. Hermann: I do not if you are Baltimore boy or come from elsewhere, but I am.  I was born near the Perkins projects and went to school with many who lived there.  At that time there was a large amount of Italians living there. I am talking about the 1938-55 period when I grew up. The neighborhood had it problems, but only the usual squabbles. The old Eastern District Police Station was around the corner on Bank Street near Broadway. In the late 1950's I became a Baltimore Police Officer and walked a beat near Perkins. The change started in the early to mid 1960's when integration of the public housing really began. I was working a patrol car by then, and I seen the crime escalate in that area. The murder, rapes, burglaries, assault and robberies increased at an alarming rate. ... It is no surprise to me that the homicide and crime persists to this day.  Perhaps it is time to demolish that place and maybe with new housing the people who live there will join the rest of our society and put these crimes behind them. We can always hope ...

Perkins Homes is located off East Pratt Street between the Inner Harbor and Harbor East and Fells Point. It has a sad history and now a new mystry to solve. Police and Annie's parents are trying to figure out why she left and why she drove to Baltimore. Her body was found Sunday near a trash can in the public housing unit; her car was found five blocks away.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Did Baltimore police use unnecessary force in breaking up a post-election bash on the streets of Charles Village early yesterday? Or did they answer the calls of angry neighbors and appropriately clear a street of unruley revelers?

Police are defending their actions while others called the arrests brutal. Previous postings on the crime blog and a story in today's Baltimore Sun by Gus G. Sentementes give the back and forth.

There's a series of videos on Youtube and more than 90 people have weighed in on Facebook, and not all agree that police acted badly. Here's a sample from the link:

Virginia Chen of Johns Hopkins University wrote:

As was already mentioned, we have noise laws here, and when you're outside in the middle of the night, being loud and rowdy like a jackass, then it’s no longer peaceful assembly, it’s breaking the law.

Perhaps you think you deserved to be treated better by the cops. What exactly were you expecting? Ten more warnings, some sugar-coated pleading, then bribes of cupcakes and bumper stickers until the last person decided they were tired and wanted to go to bed? Or maybe you believe that a rambunctious crowd of over 200 people should be spoken to with the patience and calmness used when addressing a classroom of schoolchildren? If anyone thinks that they and a handful of their friends (or whoever you think is properly qualified) can more effectively and pleasantly contain and disperse a crowd of that magnitude and state of agitation, I invite you to try. Until then, cut it out with the rhetoric.

People just love to find police brutality where there is none.

Sean Distefano wrote:

This all happened right outside my window. While it was endearing for the first hour or so, the last couple hours got out of hand.

The ambulances that hit their sirens were not joining in the celebration with the rest of the cars, they were trying to get to the freakin' hospital.

When Carrie was telling people to move out of the road, she was as usual trying to help them out, but they did NOT listen and the police took over. I feel bad for the person who got tased, but I think moving out of the way and being quiet after 2 am on a Wednesday was a no-brainer, even before the cops got there.

But Diana Wohler wrote:

Clearly we shouldn't have been in the street, but there was no warning that was made to the entire crowd to get off the street or there was going to be arrests. No megaphone, no anything. The first thing I saw was an arrest, and then I got the hell out.

There was no property damage or vandalism, no breaking and entering, nothing but a spontaneous party in the street.

The taser was completely unacceptable

And one more from Sam Biddle:

The tactics used by the cops last night were shameful. Not a single person walked into that crowd with anything but the best intentions—hugging, singing, laughing, cheering. It was definitely very loud, but I'm so disappointed in the police for not understanding that we were participating in perhaps the most profound political moment of our lives—and doing so peacefully. It should have been tolerated and contained, but not attacked. People being so moved by a sense of shared civic joy isn't something that should ever be suppressed by force.

Below are some photos taken by Zach Warner, who was not arrested but said police officers refused to identify themselves or provide their badge numbers:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

Early this morning, Baltimore police broke up a celebration of Barack Obama supporters in Charles Village. Authorities said 16 people, including a Johns Hopkins University professor, were arrested and then released without charges around 9 this morning.

Participants said the gathering of about 200 people was peaceful but loud. Police say they got complaints about loud noise and moved in to break up the gathering about 2 a.m., two hours after it had begun. They also said an intersection near Union Memorial Hospital was blocked by the crowd.

Many are emailing the Baltimore Sun with complaints of brutality, and a short 14-second video has been posted on Youtube. I've put the link below; judge for yourself, but it doesn't show much. A woman can be heard yelling, "Somebody take pictures" but I didn't see any brutal behavior. You do see officers wrestling somebody to the ground.

A Baltimore Police spokesman Sterling Clifford said, "As is sometimes the case, there were people who did not want to go home." In an interview with Baltimore Sun reporter Gus G. Sentementes, he added, "We made a reasonable effort to accommodate those people. You can't just let it go on indefinitely, partly out of concern for their safety, and partly out of concerns for the neighborhood."

Here are some samples of emails:

Last night I was celebrating in the streets with a bunch of my classmates when the police arrived and tried to break things up. After meeting no violence whatsoever and no more resistance than should be expected for such a large crowd, they proceeded to taze and arrest at least 10 students. I'm pretty sure they were kept overnight downtown. Coverage of this issue seems extremely important.

From Robert Dillon in Illinois:

Here are some samples of emails:

Last night I was celebrating in the streets with a bunch of my classmates when the police arrived and tried to break things up. After meeting no violence whatsoever and no more resistance than should be expected for such a large crowd, they proceeded to taze and arrest at least 10 students. I'm pretty sure they were kept overnight downtown. Coverage of this issue seems extremely important.

From Robert Dillon in Illinois:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

On a citizen patrol walk last night through East Baltimore Midway, police and residents noted how quiet streets like Greenmount and Homewood avenues were. Back in the 1990s, Greenmount between East North and East 25th streets was a notorious open-air drug market.

That was the first area of the city that former Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier hit with a large-scale police raid, then considered an innovative tactic in the fight against crime. It was so quiet last night that the new commander of the Eastern District, Maj. Melvin Russell, noted in a prayer at the end of the walk that, "Not a single gunshot was heard."

A few hours later and a few blocks away, that all changed. A 23-year-old man was shot about 2 a.m. in the 2300 block of Barclay St. The community walk was in the Midway neighborhood. This morning's shooting was a neighborhood over, in Barclay, five blocks to the west and across Greenmount Avenue.

Police don't have a motive yet and the victim is in critical condition at an area hospital. The Barclay neighborhood was the scene of a gang turf war last year involving the Young Gorilla Family and the Bloods (Barclay is Gorilla turf). Last month, a man described as a Young Gorilla leader in Barclay was sentenced to two years in prison for violating the terms of his probation. This is a new tactic being used by prosecutors to target suspected criminals who seem to slip through the justice system.

Lat year, four young men were shot and killed in Barclay in the span of three months. Let's hope this morning's shooting isn't a bad omen; the Eastern District leads the city in drops in slayings and shootings this year. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

This is what I call Get Out the Vote.

Six cops -- including a major, a deputy major and a sergeant -- and about eight residents of East Baltimore's Midway neighborhood were out tonight. The head of the community association, Cleaven Williams, 33, purposely chose this night to combine fighting crime with hitting the polls (for the record, the police were there to help keep the walkers safe -- it's their show).

Starting about 6 p.m. with a prayer in front of Cecil Elementary School, they walked side streets and main thoroughfares, such as Greenmount and Homewood avenues, chatted with people and left fliers advertising more community meetings in people's doors. Williams brought along his 7-year-old son Malik to help. "I don't shield him," he said, as Malik bounded stairs and onto porches to hand out the fliers.

This is part of Maj. Melvin Russell's plan as he commands the Eastern District, which has shown the sharpest drop in homicides and shootings in the city in the past six months. In fact, after the walk was over, Russell, an ordained minister, led a prayer and noted that in one hour, "We didn't hear a single gunshot."

They were just blocks from where six people got shot back in September. On this night, even streets such as Greenmount Avenue was clear of people. Russell talked with a man sipping water in front of a corner store. The man complained of vacant rowhouses, and Russell handed him a flier for the next community meeting. "You come and talk to me," he said.

At the end of the walk, sirens screamed as fire engines raced to a house fire on Oakhill Avenue, just off East North Avenue near Greenmount Cemetery. The second floor of a house was on fire; the occupant, a woman, wasn't inside, but several people on the walk knew her and said they had just spoken to her earlier that evening.

In his final prayer, Russell asked that she be taken care of and get back "double of what she had lost." The walk ended in the rain, outside Cecil Elementary, with about 45 minutes still left to vote.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

For a crime reporter, today is usually a vacation day. It's the one day of the year when crime doesn't matter, a day when the political reporters work overtime. But what does happen with crime on election day? Is there more or less? Is it safer than any other day? Or is the election itself really the crime?

Baltimore police will have more cops on the street today than on most days. Department spokesman Sterling Clifford tells me that this year, as in years past, all leave is is cancelled. Cops are assigned to each polling place; there are 298 of them scattered about the city. And officers typically escort the ballots from each polling place to election headquarters to be counted. Of course, nowadays we use computers for that, but cops still escort whoever takes the machines and whatever contraption is used to store the numbers.

That said, I was unable to determine whether you're more likely to be mugged on election day then on any other day. True, schools are closed so kids are out. Crime typically goes up on those days, is Election Day any different than any other holiday? There are more cops out, but most are preoccupied at polling places and ensuring order of the electorate. It could all depend on the weather.

Pulling stats would be time consuming and would take too long. So I did what any good reporter would do, I hit the streets to do some shoe-leather reporting. No, actually, I did the next best thing (other than searching the web). I called an expert. I got Arnett W. Gaston, an adjunct professor of criminal justice at the University of Maryland College Park, which lists him as an expert in psychology of crime, psychological profiling of criminals, prison policy and management and gangs in prisons.

I figured the "psychology of crime" part would be of help to me. It wasn't. "Even it did go up," he said, referring to crime, "it would probably be environmently driven. Never in all my years have a I ran across any trend that associates election day with crime."

He suggested the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That's a research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, and keep track of things, like, well, "What's new in homicide trends," but a spokeswoman said there are no stats on violence on election day.

Even without data, Clifford, the police spokesman, assured: "Everything will be covered."

Baltimore, of course, has a long history of election-related violence, and I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you the Election Day Riots of 1856: 

bars are open

From Baltimore Sun columnist Jacques Kelly, who wrote this in 2006:

Until 1859, Baltimore had no paid, municipal fire department. We did have organizations such as the New Market Fire Company, a volunteer outfit that sat opposite Lexington Market and whose members maybe set more fires than they put out. The fire company - and the youths who "ran with it" - knew no law. They fought with other volunteer companies over who got the insurance money when a fire was successfully extinguished. Street fights were a common sight.

It grew so intolerable that "merchants claimed that their trading partners in other cities were so worried about the violence in Baltimore they were reluctant to visit."

A brawl outside Battle Monument Square (Calvert and Fayette streets) drew onlookers from Barnum's and Guy's Hotel: "The balconies of the two principal hotels in the city were filled with strangers, and the exhibition was not of a nature to impress them favorably with our manners and customs," the papers reported.

Municipal and national elections were hotly contested; the city murder rate climbed around the times of these elections, because the Plug Uglies did the dirty work for the politicians who belonged to the American Party. The city's gangs regularly got the vote out and controlled elections. They were not big on immigrants and once set a German-born man's beard afire.

In the election of 1856, when Thomas Swann (a former Baltimore & Ohio Railroad president) ran against Robert C. Wright (president of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad), a three-hour battle mixing the Plug Uglies, Rip Raps and New Market Boys broke out in and around Lexington Market. "The fighters ducked behind boxes and hid in stalls, fired shots from behind piers and then ran to the fire house for more ammunition." That fall, election rioting claimed the lives of 19 persons.

Here's how the New York Times described it:

"Individual combats and minor affrays occurred during the afternoon at a number of the polls: and at two, the Twelth and Eighteenth, serious riots, leading to loss of life and serious injuries, resulted from the high state of excitement originated between the aforesead contesting parties."

The dispatch continued, noting a fight between the New Market Fire Company and the "Rip Raps" and other political clubs. After the Democrats at been repulsed, The Times said, "the aggressors retreated to  the engine house, and armed themselves with muskets and revolvers: they then took their position in the market-house and began a heavy discharge of musketry directed towards the polls." The fight, the newspaper said, "continued for a long time without interruption."

A number of people were killed, the Times said, including an Irishman who was shot in the left breast at Paca and Lombard streets "whilst stooping to pick up a brick. ... A man named Charles Brown was also killed while peacefully walking along the street."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

No, not in Baltimore, unfortunately.

You want to be part of such a glowing stat, move to Miami. Yep, Miami, the city that once had a terrible reputation for losing tourists, recored ZERO murders for the month of October, according to the Miami Herald:

October passed without a homicide -- meaning for the first time since May 1966, an entire month went by in the city of Miami without someone succumbing violently.

''That's an amazing thing,'' said Miami Lt. John Buhrmaster, a longtime homicide investigator. ``It's a great record when people are not killing each other.''

The total actually stood at 35 days and counting. The last homicide: Sept. 26, the Overtown shooting death of Demetrius Sherman, 26.

The city has recorded 55 slayings this year; they had 87 in all of last year. That's for a city with a populatiion of 362,000. It doesn't include the suburbs, which have recorded 217 slayings thus far this year. Suburban Miami includes some of the roughest areas around. That's why it's dangerous to make such comparisons, and this one I agree is simplistic. Still, a month without a homicide, even a domestic, is something to note.

Of course, the numbers are meaningless. (see today's crime column on the murder count). The rate of murders in Miami this year is 15.1 per 100,000 residents, still higher than New York City but far less than Baltimore, which has a rate of about 32 per 100,000 residents (it was 43 last year).

The last time Miami went a month without a slaying was back in 1966. Has Baltimore ever done that? I don't have the detailed stats going back that far but back in 2000, the last time the city recorded 300 killings, I compiled a graphic that showed the number slayings per year in Baltimore going back to 1812. It was far from precise -- many records were compiled from a variety of sources; police didn't keep stats back then, but there were less than 50 slayings a year in the city up through the early 1900s.

Though there were spikes even back in the "good old days" particularly around election time. Anti-Federalist riots in the 1820 and the War of 1812 sparked a spike in killings, as did impoverished times in the 1840s, when published reports noted violence becoming "more routine as thugs roam dimly lit streets and prey upon alcoholics and the poor."

In the 1870s, Baltimore had a surge in handgun killings, sending slaying numbers consistently into the double-digits, mostly due to riots at polling places. Murders reached the triple digits for the first time in Baltimore in the 1960s, attributed to the growing drug trade, and reached into the 300s in the 1990s with the introduction of crack cocaine.

Here are a couple of charts:

Hermann.chart03

Hermann 018

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Activists are questioning the Baltimore police investigation into the killing six weeks ago of former Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., who was killed outside a Northeast Baltimore nightclub. His family also appears split on everything from how to characterize the progress of the probe to raising money for a memorial fund.

A story that appeared on Saturday by police reporter Justin Fenton described the turmoil and quoted an activist, Daren Muhammad, who has used his radio show on WOLB-AM to raise questions. Here is more of what he told Justin:

Muhammad, who derisively noted that he was described as a "rabble-rouser" by the City Paper, has raised several issues that he believes beg scrutiny.

In a boisterous speech Thursday night, he mentioned a gamut of past controversies, from slain federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna to the suicide of businessman Robert Clay to a pervasive rumor — debunked by police and the medical examiner’s office — that a serial killer was at work in Park Heights in 2006. He called the police department "racist" and accused the media of being complicit in cover-ups.

Among his questions are why Harris was taken for treatment to at Johns Hopkins Hospital and not a closer facility, such as Good Samaritan Hospital; he notes that early descriptions of the suspects don’t match the surveillance footage shown to the public. That footage, he said, is limited, low-quality, and took far longer to release than footage in lesser crimes.

He claims the police’s timelines don’t add up, and he said black homicide detectives have complained to him that the unit placed "two damn near rookies" in charge of the case.

"The citizens are willing to work with the officers, but we’re not gonna do the job of the police department," he said.

Harris' mother, Sylvia Harris, put a sign on the rear window of her car saying, "Who really murdered my child?" She told Justin: "I wasnt there, but i understand there were other people there. Why was my son the only one murdered? Why was my son the only one shot? I understand they said there as a woman, who is she? Where did she go? Why havent i seen her?"

Baltimore police spokesman Sterlin Clifford cautioned that the department’s detractors are stoking the flames of distrust that keep so many cases unsolved.

"There is a point where you run the risk of, sort of, providing cover for people who do have information to not come forward," Clifford said.

Police have complained that few, if any, witnesses have come forward to help. Some members of Baltimore's City Council have asked for an update from police. Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld is scheduled to address the council Wednesday evening.

Councilman Nick D'Adamo is looking to reintroduce a resolution he first tried 12 years ago that would increase the amount offered as a reward in city killings, saying the amount no longer is worth the while for witnesses.

"The city probably puts $20, $30, $40,000 into a lot of these investgiation and get no leads, and they end up going on a bookcase. If we put a $20,000 reward out there, i think more people would talk and it would be in a long run a savings to the taxpayers. Times have changed -- I can't see many people willing to talk for $2,000."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

In case you missed it, Sunday's Washington Post had an article on a new text-alert system set up by the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. People who sign up can now get e-mails and text-alerts to their cell phones about breaking crime in their area.

Maryland's Metro Crime Stoppers just started accepting tips by text and colleges and universities, as well as many community groups, sent out email alerts about crime. But what DC is doing takes it a step further -- real-time alerts that could help police solve crime shortly after it occurrs, and lets people know what is going on in their neighbhorhood.

I've written often here about how such timely information would help, and advocated getting crime information distributed beyond the confines of neighborhood boundaries. I'd like to know what people think of what DC is doing and whether it would be welcome here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Finding, distributing and analyzing crime statistics is one of the difficult and controversial elements of my job. It's one of the reason universities have criminal justice programs; the numbers can be used to get cities money to fight crime or label them as unsafe.

As we all know, crime stats can be juggled and changed, meanings twisted and used to suit countless agendas. I can always remember hearing that at least the muder numbers couldn't be changed. You can't hide the bodies, the saying went.

I bring this up because today's crime column in the Baltimore Sun is about how the city's police department keeps its list of homicides. We're all familiar with this -- every day the city tells us and we generally report to something like this: So far this year, 181 people have been killed this year, compared to 282 at this time last year.

Seems pretty definitive.

The list only includes unjustified homicides investigated by Baltimore Police. It does not include, for example, the death of a baby thrown off the Key Bridge or the two deaths in the state prisons located in the city. Those were investigated by different agencies, and show up on their stats. It does include the death of a man who died this year from a bullet wound he suffered back in 1995. Hardly a good measure of this year's violence.

What the column doesn't get into are accusations that surface from time to time that the city is hiding bodies. How? But convincing the state's chief medical examiner to keep them in the "pending" or "undetermined" category to either delay their entrance into the murder count or keep them off permanently.

I sat down with Maryland's chief medical examiner, Dr. David R. Fowler, on Friday (yes, on Halloween) to discuss the police list and why his list differs from theirs. First off, his office does all the autopsies for the entire state of Maryland, with about 6 million people, not just for Baltimore. It handles more than 9,000 cases a year, and his staff of 16 forensic pathologists perform more than 4,000 autopsies a year. Los Angeles has 22 pathologists for a population of 13 million.

Fowler said his office rules many cases "undetermined" -- there are about 700 currently in that category -- because his definition differs from that of medical examiner's in most other states. He rules nearly all drug-related deaths, and there are a lot not only in this city but in this state, as undetermined. Only Rhode Island and Massachusetts also do it this way. Other states rule such deaths accidental.

It might matter to people who look at the undetermind findings and wonder whether they're covering up homicides, but Fowler says his way, a standard that predates his arrival in the office in 1993, as "intellectually honest" because he cannot determine with reasonably certainty how the person really died. And keeping a case pending to keep it off this year's count: Nonsense, Fowler said. "That's like kicking can into next year," he added.

Our conversation got even more interesting from there. A body found in a vacant house has died from a drug overdose. It is a suicide? An accident? A homicide? Fowler said that many drug users have someone else shoot heroin into their veins because they can't find a suitable spot.

If the person dies, is this a homicide? The medical definition of a homicide is "a death at the hands of another." What about the drug dealer himself? "He's mixing substance X with mixing agent Y and stirring it up in a bowl," Fowler said. "You tell me that it's mixed evenly." His point: it could be determined that the man who mixed the drugs caused the death of the person who took them. He doesn't rule them homicides; he doesn't have enough information, but it's something to ponder.

Fowler gave a couple other good examples of deaths he rules homicides but that police typically don't think meet the requirements of an illegal act. A man holds up a bank, is chased in his car by police and hits and kills a pedestrian. Fowler says homicide; he argues the driver, by running from the cops, has forfeited his claim to be using the car for transport, and thus the killing is a death caused by his hands. "Most police departments rule this an accident," he said.

The other case involves a deer hunter who misses his target but hits a person instead. An accident, yes, by most legal definitions. But still, Fowler says, a homicide.

His numbers will always differ from police numbers, and that's not a bad thing, he says. He's looking at the medical cause; they're looking at legal intent. His is a broad definition and therefore will include a lot of cases. Police have a narrower definition -- what turns a homicide into a murder.

There's plenty of room for human judgment, and thus human error, even when trying to count what at first seems the most definitive of crimes.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)