My column in today's print editions is about murdered Baltimore youth, and the efforts of Rev. Jan Hamill to remember them in a traditional New Year's Day vigil. It's a sad ceremony in which a candle is lit for each victim and then blown out on the altar at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation on North Charles Street.

I plan to attend the vigil and provide you with updates. I met with Hamill yesterday and found her frustrated. She knows that her vigil won't stop the killings, but she's angry over the lack of outrage. "People should be marching through the streets," she told me. The people who come to her vigil are mostly the regulars. Few families attend -- most probably don't even know about it -- but she told me that no pastors or clergy from other churches come either.

There are others like Hamill trying to make a difference in their own small ways. I met with Mille Brown yesterday. You might remember her from last year when my colleague Dan Rodricks wrote about her efforts to sell T-shirts designed by her son. "Save our children. Stop the killing," they said. Proceeds went to a program to help children. This year, Brown is back with a calendar called "Save Our Children." She works as an operating room assistant at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which gives her a sad perspective on violence. Each month it shows children -- happy children, hugging and playing. "Who said you could take our lives?" it says in August. "Stop. We want to live." Brown can be reached at saveourchildren@me.com.

City police and other leaders point to Baltimore's lowest homicide count in 20 years and say it vindicates their strategies, pouring cops into three violent areas and concentrating on repeat violent offenders. It's a far cry from the social policing we had during the Schmoke years and the lock-them-all-up and throw-away-the-key policing we had just a few years ago. It's probably a good middle ground -- but I'm always struck that when the crime numbers go down, police hail their strategies as successful, and when the numbers tank it suddenly becomes a problem that police can't solve.

I think everyone is right. Former Commissioner Edward T. Norris was right when he told cops they could do something about crime. A motivated police force can work wonders on the street. But Norris was frustrated by the lack of help -- his office was at war with prosecutors and there was no coordinated strategy with other agencies, such as parole and probation. With the number of repeat offenders out there, keeping track of proven criminals can't be over emphasized. But Thomas C. Frazier, when he ran the department, also had it right, taking over recreation centers. It was widely viewed as soft policing, but Frazier recognized that the city was failing its youth and a military-style coup was needed to take after-school programs away from the drug dealers and city agencies who did little to help.

The numbers in today's story by Justin Fenton are good news. Homicides down from 282 last year to 234 with just hours to go in 2008. The homicide number is faulty -- as I reported several weeks ago -- including victims from years past and not including cases investigated by agencies other than city police (such as killings in state prisons located in Baltimore). But the number, for better or worse, remains a way of measuring whether the city is safe -- scaring some, for others solidifying its role as a national symbol for what's wrong with American cities, a sign for still others that the city is making a comeback.

As the Police Department's statistics show year after year, your chances of being killed in Baltimore are slim unless you are engaged in some sort of questionable activity -- buying or dealing drugs, the prime example. Countless people go in and out of the inner city every day and don't get killed -- nurses making home visits or going to work at Johns Hopkins, home health aides, people delivering food, mail carriers. The people we really cry about are the so-called "innocent victims" who have no choice but to live where they live and get caught in someone else's deadly game, such as the child who was hit by a bullet as he delivered grapefruit to an elderly neighbor.

So let's be happy that fewer people were killed in 2008 compared to bloodier years in the previous two decades. But let's also remember that crime is still a problem, and good numbers on the homicide front shouldn't mask that fact.

Police statistics from Dec. 13 show larceny from autos up 10 percent this year -- 6,589 cars broken into through mid-December of this year. Stealing actual cars is down slightly, but still stands at 5,114. Residential burglaries are up 6 percent, to 5,124. At the same time, arrests for burglaries remain the same as last year, 1,370, and arrests for larcenies are down nearly 19 percent, from 962 in 2007 to 773 this year.

And while homicides with guns are down from 222 to 181 (through Dec. 13), robberies with guns are up 8 percent, to 2,216.

That's a lot of people. And a lot of work before we start celebrating a safer Baltimore.

Patrick R. Lynch of BP Lubricants USA, Inc. on Pulaski Highway sent me this e-mail this morning. He gave me permission to publish it:

The youth's murder that stands out to me is the one of the "good neighbor" teenager who was delivering grapefruit to an elderly neighbor. I have played out that incident in my mind's eye numerous times.

Imagine this young man's mother, waiting patiently for her son to return home after doing his benevolent deed. Waiting, waiting for what? News of her son's murder. I feel for this poor woman, the hurt she will have to endure the remainder of her life. How does a parent surmount the tremendous grief at the loss of a son or daughter (more specifically to an inexplicable murder)? To me it's unimaginable.

When was the blueprint created that outlines that murders are simply acknowledged as being an accepted and tolerated piece of the puzzle known as survival/existence in a large American metropolis? As a society that has grown inured to murder, how can we begin to deconstruct that heinous blueprint and begin the arduous task of putting another in place? And how soon?

Have a safe New Year...

Here's what the back page of the calendar looks like:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

I'm still checking with Baltimore police to see if they have any new plans to combat the Baltimore tradition of celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve. Police in years past have tried various methods -- from ignoring it and hiding under underpasses to confronting it head-on.

This latter tactic was tried in 2000 under then-Mayor Martin O'Malley. Police ended up shooting one gunmen and arresting many others. From a Jan. 4, 2000 article:

This year, city police decided to confront the unofficial holiday revelers. Officers swarmed over the city and in 12 hours, they seized 122 firearms and arrested more than 100 people."These are some of the instruments of death in this city," said Police Commissioner Ronald L. Daniel, as he stood in front of a table covered with guns, including .357-caliber Magnum revolvers and 9 mm assault rifles.

Mayor Martin O'Malley said officers used to ignore the gunfire. But the city's new mayor is trying to reverse an image that Baltimore is a dangerous city, and he said his new police commissioner will not tolerate such inaction.

 "They [officers] didn't hide beneath overpasses or take cover," O'Malley said at a news conference yesterday. "They used to simply shrug their shoulders as if it's just something that goes on. It doesn't go on anymore."

In 2004, city police tried again, putting 1,000 officers on the streets looking for people shooting into the air: "Leave the guns inside," Acting Deputy Commissioner J. Charles Gutberlet III said at the time. "If you want to make some noise, come out with the pots and pans."

In Los Angeles this year, police are warning that gunfire is illegal. According to the Los Angeles Times, county sheriff Lee Baca and city Chief William J. Bratton urged residents to hold their gunfire. They put out fliers in English and Spanish reading, "Love Them, Don't Shoot Them."

"What goes up must come down, and what comes down does so with unpleasant circumstances," Baca said at a news conference, according to the Times.

More from the 2000 Baltimore Sun article:

    Police said the amount of gunfire that welcomed in 2000 was intense. At 12: 01 a.m., an officer jokingly radioed his dispatcher: "Be advised, in addition to all the gunfire, we have fireworks."

    Officers in the Eastern District said they were showered with the remnants of shotgun shells as they stood in their parking lot. Police said they recovered 300 spent shell casings from five weapons at a single West Baltimore corner. Police said someone shot out an electric box on The Alameda with a machine gun, knocking out power to 51 homes.

    As midnight hit, Housing Authority Officer Steven Henson confronted three gunmen shooting into the air in the 200 block of N. Bond St., in the Douglass Homes public housing complex west of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

    He got out of his cruiser, only to have the gunmen aim at him. In an exchange of gunfire, a bullet grazed his sweater and nicked his bulletproof vest. A three-hour standoff followed, after which three people were arrested, including a 15-year-old boy.

    Baltimore police dispatchers were swamped with calls. From 10 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Saturday, 516 people dialed 911 to report gunfire. Seventy such calls were made between 11: 55 p.m. and 12: 05 a.m.

    One of those callers was Martha Calenzo, of Fort Bragg, N.C., who was visiting relatives on North Glover Street in East Baltimore. Moments after midnight, she said a bullet crashed through the second-floor skylight.

    "We were having snacks and drinks, and we heard what we first thought was my nephew coming through the door," Calenzo said. "But then we saw the skylight glass broken and a 9 mm bullet on the floor."

    Calenzo said the family immediately called police, but complained that it took officers more than five hours to respond.

    "I was very surprised. In North Carolina, it's a serious crime to shoot into someone's home," Calenzo said. "Here, the policeman acted like it was a regular occurrence. He just took the bullet and said, `Yeah, this happens a lot,' then he left."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Todays special Christmas poem in the Baltimore Sun is another installment in a haphazard tradition of exchanging holiday greetings with the city police department. It began many, many years ago, back when David Simon was writing cop briefs instead of screenplays, with an "Ode to Homicide."

I found a copy of that original poem, which you'll find below, even though some parts of the headline and the authors' names were some how obliterated. It was written by Simon, Rafael Alvarez, Ann Lolordo, Rogert Twigg and David Ettlin. Only Ann is still with us, working as Opinion Editor with her name on the masthead.

That poem, which probably dates to the late 1980s or early 1990s, refers to longtime departed police spokesman Dennis Hill and actually got a response from homicide Detective Dennis Steinhice, though his name also got lost on the copy I had. Steinhice titled his simply, "The Reply," and it's also below.

In the late 1990s, police spokeswoman Ragina Averella renewed the tradition with a nice card, "Twas the night before Christmas." I responded with a poem of my own, noting the commissioner at the time, Thomas C. Frazier, and other issues. Today's column updates that effort with more timely information.

Enjoy and happy holidays

Hermann.coppoem

Hermann.cardfront

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

On Monday, I spent time with cops in Baltimore's Eastern District as they handed out boxes filled with food and toys to those less fortunate. Yesterday, it was the firefighter's turn. I went out with a group from Engine Co. 29 and Medic 17 to a home on Oswego Avenue in Park Heights. At the far lest is Firefighter Michael Hineline. Next to him is Lt. Tom Tosh. Battalion Chief Mark Ruff is in the back with the white hat. Lachuna Sheppard is in the foreground on the right.

It was there three weeks ago that some of these same firefighters responded to frantic call for help from Lachuna Sheppard. Her 22-month-old son, Jashon Stephens, had stopped breathing. The firefighters revived him and got him to Sinai, and then later to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he remains in intensive care. Joshon was born with a heart defect, has one lung -- which collapsed -- and his stomach is tied. He has spent more time at Hopkins than at home.

His first year was the hardest, his mother told me, with seven surgeries. But then, Jashon made it at home for six months without needing emergency care. It took his mother, her sister, her brother and their parents, in addition to a nurse working 19 hours a day, to give Jashon proper care. All was going well until that one night three weeks ago. Sheppard told me that Jashon had been playing on the floor, suddenly grew tired and toppled over. His face was blue.

The firefighters and paramedics rushed to help Jashon, get him oxygen and get him to the hospital. Lt. Tom Tosh decided later to adopt the family; he told me he liked the way Sheppard cared for her son, that she knew the medical procedures and made it easy for his paramedics to administer proper care.

Today's column in the print edition gives more details. Here are some more photos:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Police officers get their names in the paper for a variety of reasons. Even when they’re mentioned positively, it’s usually at the expense of someone else. A good arrest for a cop is a bad day for the person in handcuffs, and yet another reminder of city crime and violence.

So it was nice to spend some time with the cops in the Eastern District on Monday. My thanks to Sgt. Angelina O'Grady and officers Porfirio Negron, William Johnson and Adrien Amos who donated their time and day  off to collect and distribute more than 150 holiday baskets to needy families. People lined up at the station house on Edison Highway to collect boxes filled with turkeys and canned food, and officers went to the homes of the elderly and infirm.

One of the key organizers was Michelle Ha, who runs a corner grocery and is active in the community. She was there giving orders throughout the day. Most of the officers work in the district's community service division, but all have have been on the streets making arrests.

Negron got his name in the papers two years ago when he chased a man into a vacant rowhouse on East Preston Street, arrested him and found a stash of heroin worth more than $5,000. Today, he and others get a little attention for helping the people they’re paid to protect.

I write a lot about the failure of our city to combat violent crime, about policies that get in the way of good work, about citizens feeling hopeless and angry and about cops feeling abandoned by their bosses and politicians.

On Monday, in one small corner of a violent and desperate city, when most of us are scrambling to find that last gift or perfect appetizer for the dinner table, a group of cops and other volunteers devoted a day to help those who otherwise wouldn’t have gifts for the tree or a meal for the table.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

By 2001, I had worked the Baltimore cop beat for more than six years, and I was tired. I was about to take a new posting in the Middle East, and had hoped the city would quiet down a bit as I slowly moved away from the beat that had made me want to be a journalist in the first place.

But Baltimore crime doesn't take a vacation (neither did the Middle East, I found out). In April 2001, Carlos Woods would become the last significant victim I'd cover -- my final front page shooting on the beat. Carlos was shot in the head on Chapel Street in East Baltimore while reaching for a juice cup in his doorway. A man with a gun riding in car was shooting at another man running up the street. The man dove into the open doorway where Carlos was sitting, and bullet hit him in the head.

A nearby cop rushed after the gunman and another took care of Carlos. A crowd of angry neighbors gathered in the narrow alley street, and paramedics had to push Carlos through the crowd to a waiting ambulance. Carlos' great uncle told me, "You never know when a bullet is going to fly." A neighbor said, "That boy was right where he was supposed to be -- at his house. You can't get no safer than that."

One would think.

The police commissioner at the time, Edward T. Norris, called it "a horrible tragedy" and noting the victim's age, said, "It doesn't get any worse than that."

Police quickly arrested a man and the next day his public defender asked a judge to set bail. An incredulous District Judge Timothy J. Doory, shot back sarcastically that he would happily consider bail, but that the bail "would be so large and the conditions so onerous that I cannot imagine that the defendant could survive under the circumstances."

The suspect later pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted murder, was sentenced to 11 years in prison (by a different judge) and was released this past August. He had served his mandatory sentence -- defenants usually serve about two-thirds of the time they receive, and he is now on probation through 2011.

I had mentioned Carlos' name in a previous column listing children hit by gunfire, after another child was shot and killed in West Baltimore after having delivered grapefruit to an elderly neighbor. People who read the column mistakenly thought Carlos had died and flooded his great-aunt and caregiver, Nicole Coombs, with calls. She called me and invited me to visit.

I showed up a few days shy of Carlos' 10th birthday.

He can't talk, but he can smile. He's in a wheelchair and attends a special school. He has no memory of what happened to him; his great-aunt took him after his mother, who was 14 when she gave birth, couldn't handle the care and a foster home over-medicated him. He now lives a block from where he was shot (and a block from where the shooter lives).

I'm glad Carlos survived, but also sad -- he's a living reminder to the violence on the streets, almost forgotten amid the long list of the dead and the new victims that pile up every day. His family is strong, and while they feel the sentence the shooter got was unjust, they have moved on. Caring for Carlos is more important than justice.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

For today's column, I visited the Johns Hopkins University security office in Remington (nicely situated across from Dizzy Izzy's and Charm City Cakes) to get an update on the SECURES gunshot detection system they've installed.

In short, sensors positioned around Charles Village and other neighborhoods register gunshots and can almost immediately pinpoint their location (to within 10 feet), allowing police to respond quickly. Police in Washington use a similar program and have expressed delight. City cops are still looking at the system and aren't sure yet. Hopkins is a good test, though I've expressed concern the sensors are in low-crime neighborhoods (the university got it for free, so it's hard to criticize them for putting up on their own turf).

But while in the security office, I was far more intrigued by another system Hopkins uses -- image recognition software. It was fascinating to watch this in action.

A dispatcher sits in front of six computer screens, many divided with up to six different camera locations, and a large screen on the wall that shows even more live locations. With 155 cameras spread over the campus and adjacent neighborhoods, it's impossible for the two dispatchers to both keep an eye on everything much less notice when something goes wrong.

That's where the image recognition software comes in. The head of Hopkins security, Edmund G. Skrodzki, a retired Secret Service agent, showed me an alley in which a student had recently been mugged. A camera is now positioned to record who goes in and out. It would be tedious for one person to keep watching the alley 24 hours a day, much less unproductive, so they've programmed the computer to send an alert whenever a person enters. On a screen next to the dispatcher, that image then flashes on and the person watching knows to pay close attention. This is set up at bike racks and parking garage entrances as well. A yellow box even surrounds the image on the screen, and the dispatcher can decide -- in the case I saw, it was obviously a student -- whether to send a patrol car out.

Nearly 100 bikes were stolen last year, before the software was installed. This year, only three have been reported missing.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a divison of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, has issued its final report on the February 2007 death of fire cadet Racheal M. Wilson.

Wilson died in a training blaze set at a rowhouse in Southwest Baltimore that was riddled with dozens of safety lapses. Three fire officers were fired, though one won his job back, and several others were disciplined. The fire chief at the time resigned a few months later, citing personal reasons.

The Baltimore Fire Department and state authorities have already issued several critical reports on the fire and the city has made numerous reforms at its academy, to training standards and banned the practice of live-fire exercises at buildings in the city.

Problems cited in the reports included setting multiple fires when the national standard for training calls for only one, using a building that was so badly damaged that it helped the fire spread out of control, failing to instruct the trainees as to the nature of the exercise, giving them equipment that includes coats with holes, not having a backup firefighter with a charged hose line, and using supervisors who had no experience training recruits.

The city's report concluded, according to a Baltimore Sun article, that "Wilson had been sent into a burning building with an inexperienced instructor who didn't have a radio, wearing old protective pants with holes that frayed in the heat. She was ordered to climb above fires before putting them out, ultimately becoming trapped at a third-floor window when the flames below raged out of control."

The new federal report draws many of the same conclusions, but does recommend that the Fire Department "create a training atmosphere that is free from intimidation and conducive to learning."

The report doesn't expand on this, but the Baltimore Fire Department responded by announcing a new fitness program and said it has no plans to resume live-fire exercises.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The demise, at least for the winter, of the Baltimore Police Marine Unit has raised several questions. Among them is why it was so important three years ago that the city cited national security reasons to help secure federal grant money and now it's OK to abandon the unit when it's cold.

The official answer is that during tough budget times, the 14 officers who patrol the harbor are needed for more pressing duties -- like foot patrols in the Inner Harbor and guarding City Hall. The other answer is that when money is flowing, say from the feds, hype the need to get your hands on the loot.

Baltimore got enough money to buy three police boats, each costing $143,000, with all the bells and whistles -- such as radar, sonar and satellite navigation. Now the boats sit at dock near Canton. The department says in an emergency, officers can get to the boats and deploy; the officers say the boats need constant maintenance, take a while to start and warm up and that they've been told to stay away. One officer said he suggested docking at least one boat at the Inner Harbor where it would be readily available to the foot patrol officers, but was denied.

I'm still seeking the actual grant proposal, but today I found the next best thing -- the person who wrote it. Three years ago, Kristen Mahoney was in charge of grants for the city police. She now works for Gov. Martin O'Malley as director of the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention.

She didn't remember too many specifics about the grant, but she did note it was written when money was pouring in to local jurisdictions from both the state and the federal government. She wasn't sure when the strings run out, or if the city had to notify the feds that it was no longer using the boats as spelled out in the grant. "Good luck trying to get somebody from the federal goverment to give you a date when the strings detach," she told me, adding that even when she worked for the feds in grant writing, she couldn't get a straight answer.

She said that even if the city was under the federal thumb on the boat grant -- which it probably isn't anymore -- the city could claim financial distress, saying for example, "OK, we'll staff these boats but then we have let the Southern District go unmanned."

Obviously, that's not going to happen. But Mahoney said she feels sorry for the marine unit officers, who like the horse mounted and the motorcycle unit, consider themselves specialists. "They make their lives that way," Mahoney told me. "It's hard to give up that tallent."

But Mahoney would not criticize Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "It's not the wrong thing to do," she said. "I was there when times were good. Federal grants. State grants. We had a lot to choose from. Now federal grants are low. State grants are low. In the bad times, you have to make adjustments. I don't envy what the city has to sacrifice."

One thing Mahoney promised to do: call the chief of the Department of Natural Resources and make sure that the Inner Harbor is covered. Last week, a city police spokesman told me there was an agreement in place, while the commander of the DNR station responsible for the city said "we haven't had any formal discussions."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

For all you last minute Christmas shoppers, how about a Rolex Cellini Limited Edition Watch?

I know where you can get one for $1,720. Act now! Act fast! That price may already be  history as the bidding continues until 7:24 p.m. tonight (Thursday).

So far, 115 people have bid on the watch on propertyroom.com, a Website that hawks stuff police have confiscated from around the country. Who knows, this watch may very well have been worn by a drug dealer when he shot someone or was arrested.

This is just one of thousands of items auctioned off by the company, which as contracted with hundreds of law enforcement agencies to supplant the traditional auctions of seized goods. There are diamond rings for $2,500, digital cameras in the low hundreds, bicycles, cars, ties, an "electric square wave tig 175 welder" and a Whirlpool refrigerator. You can search for cars, jewelry and even fine art.

It's eBay for cops.

The site, however, leaves out some pertinent information. The details on the Rolex watch, for example, don't give me enough information to get an accurate retail price. I search around and found similar watches selling from as low as a $3,000 and has high as $10,000. The description on the Website contains several photos and says the watch has a "genuine crocodile bracelet" a silver dial and an 18K yellow gold case. Oh, and the price includes a professional cleaning by a Rolex dealer, and it "is in working condition."

The site does sometimes give a retail value, though without an expert it would be difficult to know if the price is real. For example, there is a Zu Ming original painting on rice paper for sale -- the current bid is $600 and the Website lists the retail price at $7,000. The site gives a biography of the painter, mentions it's signed and warns: "DON'T WAIT! BID TO OWN THIS BREATHTAKING ORIGINAL PAINTING BY THE GIFTED ZU MIN HO! Words fall short and pictures cannot do justice to the exquisite technique."

I did find several Zu Ming paintings selling for as much as $33,000, so $600 might indeed be the bargain of a lifetime. Of course, it would take an art expert to really determine how much it's worth. 

What the Website doesn't do is identify the law enforcement agency that supplied the watch. There is no way to tell where any of the items came from, nor can you search by police agency. The Maryland State Police starting using the company six months ago.

MSP spokesman Gregory M. Shipley said the company takes a cut from items sold, but the state saves money by not having to organize auctions. He said the state has taken in about $20,000 and has sold nearly everything put up for auction from two shipments. The only item that remains unsold, he said, is a chair.

Shipley provided me with a list of 48 items the state police put up for bid (another shipment is going over soon). He said his agency still considers this a pilot program and that it's subject to further review. But so far it appears to be a success, though most of the items on the list are rather boring. State police uses another auction company for seized cars, so no vehicles from Maryland will be on the Internet list.

And again, there's no way to "Buy Maryland" if you use the site (though police do have a way to track their goods). "I don't know if they provide gift cards," Shipley said, "but if you get a gift for Christmas and you don't know where it came from, it might have come from propertyroom.com."

Among the items on the Maryland list: foreign coins, baseball cards, a blue bike, a folding ladder, a chainsaw, a leaf blower, two snow boards and several computers.

A partial list of police agencies using propertyroom.com and a list of items Maryland State Police recently sold:

1 1 Box #1 (Tools)
2 1 Box#2 (Tools)
3 1 Box #3 (Cell Phones/Cameras)
4 1 Box #4 (Small Appliances)
5 1 Box #5 (Electronics/Tools)
6 1 Box #6 (Auto Access/Tools)
7 1 Box #7 (Motorized Car)
8 1 Box #8 (CD's/DVD's)
9 1 Box #9 (Scopes & Holsters)
10 1 Box #10 (Knives/CD's)
11 1 Foreign Coins/Tokens (Box #11) 
12 1 Rolex Watch/Jewelry (Box #11) 
13 3  Baseball Cards (Box #11) 
14 1 Miscellaneous Jewelry (Box #11)
15 1 Truck Tool Box Misc Tools/Air Hose
16 1 Bike - Blue
17 1 Bike - Pacific - Black
18 1 Bike - Rallay - Blue
19 1 Folding Ladder
20 1 Folding Chair
21 1 Chainsaw
22 1 Blower
23 1 Cross Bow
24 1 Compound Bow
25 1 Dehumdifier
26 1 Husky Tool Bag
27 1 Tool Box
28 1 Tool Box
29 1 Drill
30 1 Bow in Case
31 2 Snow Boards
32 1 Guitar & Case
33 1 Compac Computer Tower
34 1 Circular Saw
35 1 Circular Saw
36 1 Gateway Note Book Computer
37 1 Dell Note Book Computer
38 1 Dell Note Book Computer
39 1 Gateway Note Book Computer
40 1 Toshiba Notebook Computer
41 1 Chainsaw
42 1 Guncase
43 1 Guncase
44 1 Guncase
45 1 Guncase
46 1 Speaker Box
47 1 Speaker Box
48 1 Speaker Box

Police agencies:

New York City Police Department
Seattle Police Department
King County (WA) Police Department
City of Los Angeles Police Department
Pinellas County (FL) Police Department
City of San Diego Police Department
Cincinnati Police Department
Sacramento County Sheriff
Indianapolis Police Department
Broward County Sheriff (Fort Lauderdale)
Tulsa (OK) Police Department
Albuquerque Police Department
Lexington, KY PD

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Straight answers are hard to come by, which often is more of a problem than the the problem itself.

Bryan Dunn who lives in Seton Hill discovered that last week when he tried to get an answer to a simple question: what happened to the portable floodlight that police had put up at Orchard Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to curtail drug dealing? There is no street lighting in the area, and the community rallied to get the light, help cops and discourage the bad guys.

Drug dealers or vandals repeatedly broke the light. Finally, the light just disappeared, and Dunn wanted to know why. He sent an e-mail to the police and got an answer that shocked him: the light had broken so much the city wouldn't fix it anymore.

To Dunn, it was a surrender. The drug dealers had won, showed up the city and could go right back to business. In trying to find out who is supposed to fix the light and who actually made the determination to give up on the light, I got caught up in tangle of city agencies. The cops own the light but someone else has to fix it. That could either be the Department of Public Works or the Department of Transportation.

Where police got the idea the light would never be fixed remains a puzzle, and City Councilman William H Cole IV told me that whoever made that pronouncement was wrong and that he, the councilman, would get a light in the community that can't be vandalized and would stay until permanent lighting is installed.

Let me recap the absurdity. The police give a community a spotlight that the drug dealers keep vandalizing. Police say public works refuses to fix it so the light is being taken away. Public Works says it has nothing to do with lights and shifts the blame to transportation. Transportation then tells me that when a police spotlight breaks, police call transportation to haul it away and public works is responsible for fixing it. Public Works tells me they always fix the lights when broken and transportation tells me that the police told them they didn't want the light on Orchard Street anyway. (In case you want to know, transportation puts in the repair order and public works then bills transportation). That counters all the e-mails from a police major and sergeant, who put the blame on public works, and City Councilman Cole who told me the Central District major, John Bailey, was furious over the whole situation.

I finally heard back from the transportation department: the light has been fixed and will be replaced on Ochard Street. I had to call public works back to see if the light was repaired in a way that it couldn't be broken again, and Kurt Kocher, the spokesman, wasn't too reassuring. He said portable spotlights are repeatedly broken and repaired and broken again.

Here is the e-mail exchange over the past few days:

>>> bryanbdunn ...  12/09/08 1:35 PM >>>

Can I please have an update on when the crimelight will be reinstalled
at the foot of orchard and Pennsylvania ave?

Bryan Dunn

=========

Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Police Sgt. Charles Hess wrote:

Mr. Dunn,
Hello,
The Light Towers and their placement is controlled by Balto. City`s Street Lighting Division of Public Works. Our contact person at Street Lighting advised me that the Light Tower that was at Pennsy. and Orchard is not scheduled to be replaced because of the damage done to the two previous light towers at that location.
Sgt. Charlie Hess

=============

Dunn then wrote to me:

That is the most ridiculous policy I have ever heard. 

Can someone please let me know if thats is actually the policy?  Let me get this straight, A light which is to prevent crime gets vandalized and the answer is to remove the light???  Read that out loud!!! It's really offensive that this is the response I get after waiting over a month for this, not to mention being told that they were working on a solution for the light!  This only encourages bad behavior.

Seton Hill Association

=================

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Police Major John Bailey wrote:

Bryan, we are at the mercy of off street lighting as they are the ones who repair the lights and they refuse. Don't you think I would like to have a light on every corner. It was not until recently that after begging for the lights to be returned that we received this answer. That is were it stands now however I have been working with councilman Cole in a resolution.

===========

Dunn responded to Bailey:

Thank you for your response. It is much appreciated. All I care about is having the light reinstalled, and eventually having the drug nuisance removed from our neighborhood. I understand your frustration and hope you can understand mine. Sgt. Hess's response basically told me, sorry the crime is too bad; We can't have a light there. 

On another note, you should not be at the mercy of light maintenance people when it comes to community safety.  That is a serious flaw to everyone's efforts, which I know is not your fault.  Do you have the contact information of the person in charge of scheduling the lights?

==========

Dunn finally wrote to Mayor Sheila Dixon:

Dear Mayor,
Hello, I am Bryan Dunn, a board member of the Seton Hill Association.  I have taken one of the leading roles on our crime committee and have fought vigorously over the last four years with other board members, people in the community and Baltimore City Government.  We have a section 8 based community called Orchard Mews, which runs along the edge of Historic Seton Hill, where there is rampant drug traffic and violence on many occasions.  I organized meetings with the Baltimore City Police, States Attorney's Office, Councilman Cole, Council President Rawlings Blake's office, Property Based Crime Solutions, Hud and the management of Orchard Mews over the last four years to help put pressure on the owners of this facility to fulfill their obligation to offer a safe place to live for their residents and the surrounding community ( In the last four years there have been two Homicide shootings and a non- fatal shooting last year, not to mention several search and seizures and domestic violence in Orchard Mews). Orchard Mews had finally agreed to having a security team patrol Orchard street but when the city discontinued allowing off-duty police, Orchard Mews went back to the drawing board and no security is present. So, in the meantime we were promised a crime light at the location of much of the illegal activity, which gets us up to speed of where we are today. 

The crime light was placed at this location and was continuously vandalized.  The light might have been on for a day or two before being shut off by vandals.  It was repaired two or three times, then the light disappeared.  I was informed that a solution was being worked out so the wires could not be accessed as easily.  I waited a month, still with no light.  I finally e-mailed Sgt. Charles Hess and he informed me the the Lighting Division of Public Works took the location off the schedule because it had been vandalized too many times.

I was shocked to find out that this was the policy, letting vandals feel that they won the battle.  Major Bailey informed me he was at the mercy of the Lighting Division.  Is there anyway to give the police more control in determining where public safety lights should be positioned?  I truly look forward to your response and hope we can find a constructive way to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of truly needed crime deterrent technology.  Thank you for taking the time to hear our community. 

Bryan Dunn
Seton Hill Association

============

Sgt. Hess wrote Dunn on Wednesday, at 4:27 p.m.:

Bryan, I was advised they are placing another light on Orchard St. 

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

Two months ago, a newborn was found dead in a trash bin in an alley behind a church in Charles Village. Some group -- I've never learned who -- decorated the bin with posters and written comments, sort of a memorial to the dead little boy.

We learn today that police have charged the mother, Melanie Beth Blevins, 22, with first-degree murder. It's sad case all around. The mother was living in the basement of St. John's United Methodist Church as part of religious group when she apparently gave birth in the bathroom.

According to police charging documents, she told detectives that she thought the child had been stillborn, so she put the body in a white plastic bag and put that in the trash bin. The Medical Examiner ruled that the child had been alive when born and asphyxiated. Police charged first-degree murder. It will be interesting to see how this case turns out in court; if the mother really didn't understand the baby was alive and why she didn't call authorities to check. The baby now has a name: police are calling him Baby Boy Blevins.

Here are the police charging documents:

Charges

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Today's story on Linda Dennis, who has been fighting drug dealers on Queensberry Avenue for years in Northwest Baltimore has generated a lot of responses. Many people have offered to help her -- she seems to have disappeared from her house -- and still more are expressing anger at how hopeless this situation is.

Dennis had her windows on two cars shattered Monday night or early Tuesday and drug dealers complained that she refused to sell them one of her two cars. I found Dennis while at the scene of a shooting death around the corner near Pimlico Race Course. She was screaming into a phone at her insurance agent, complaining about the drugs and her plight.

It is difficult. She's not really a witness to a crime and can't get into witness protection, yet she is hostage to crime and drugs that have her street and her neighborhood a scary place. What I think this shows is that the minor crimes -- vandalizing a car, for example -- shouldn't be dismissed as part of city living. Authorities need to pay attention -- they matter. This wasn't kids doing pranks. If what Dennis says is true, she's being targeted, and all too often stories of people like her who end up dead have a long history of attacks just like these.

One of the first e-mails I got was from Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, who as the state's top federal prosecutor has worked on more than his share of witness intimidation cases. He mentions a few below -- Edna McAbier whose house was firebombed and testified against each and every one of the suspects; the Dawson family who were killed when their house was firebombed after they complained to police; John P. Dowery, a key witness in a federal murder trial who left his safe hotel room so he could spend Thanksgiving with his family and was killed on a bar stool; and Carl Lackl, who witnessed a murder and was later shot and killed outside his Baltimore County house in a murder-for-hire scheme in which the gunmen tricked him into showing off a car he was about to sell.

Here is what Mr. Rosenstein had to say:

We have a superb program for protecting victims and witnesses in federal cases, but the volume of customers we can handle is relatively small and the cost is relatively high.  Plus, our program often involves relocating people, as in the McAbier case.  The challenge you describe is how to keep people safe in their own neighborhoods by removing the criminals.  We step in with federal prosecutions in extreme cases – McAbier, Dawson, Dowery and Lackl, for example – but responsibility for combating street-level drug dealers falls primarily on local police and community groups.  Your story is a reminder that the small cases often matter most to local residents – the recidivist drug dealers who spend little time in jail when they are arrested and return to the neighborhood more angry and less afraid of the criminal justice system if they find that its bite does not live up to its bark. 

Dennis is worried she will become another Dawson. Or Lackl. Or Dowrey. I'm worried something might happen to her before she even gets a chance to tell her story in a courtroom. One reader asked why we published her name. It was discussed and it is a legtimate question. When I first met her, I asked her if she minded being identified in the newspaper. She not only said she didn't, she wanted her story told. I asked again before I left and she told me it was her only hope of getting attention. Years of complaints had got her nothing but the windows smashed on her car, her house set on fire and burglarized.

As a reporter, telling her story with her name in details is the only way to make an impact. With no face and identity, the story withers away in aninimity. As a citizen, it's sad that she has to feel this is her only choice.

Here's a sampling of the responses and a map:

Map

It’s shameful to our nation that you had to write an article on the plight of an American communities in particular Queensberry Avenue falling prey to drugs and gang violence.  I often wonder how is it that we can be the police for the world, but not for our own nation – our own people – Americans. 

My family and I lived in Millersville, MD some 15 years ago and my two sons were born at Inner Harbour Hospital so I have a connection to Baltimore and often find myself reading the Baltimore Sun online.

That’s how I came across your article on Golden Memory is Supplanted by Blood and Fear.  My heart aches for Ms. Dennis and others in her predicament. We surely have the same issues down here in Georgia and I help those oppressed here through my non-profit organization. 

In the article you portrayed Ms. Dennis as a truly courageous women in every sense of the word; she has not backed down from telling all who will listen about the what’s happening in her own front yard. Most who read this article probably also understand that her outspokenness has come at a high price. A price that is still being tabulate and end up with it costing her life.

I now live in Fayette County, GA ( 20 miles south of Atlanta, GA) on a small 5 acre farm. I live a simple and peaceful life when I’m at home as I truly wish it was the case for all people. The peace I enjoy at home provides me the strength necessary to pursue my calling. While I’m pretty sure Ms. Dennis would not like to relocate down here away from friends, I’m wondering if she is willing to relocate to a much safer area from where she currently lives. I know this move could be costly, but I would be willing to take care of her deposits on that new place. The funds for the deposit would need to be paid directly to that new housing source. Yes, I understand that she owns her current home, but my understanding from your article is that her very life and home are in imminent  danger. I want to assist her, but I will not provide any funding that will be used for her to stay at the same dwelling or in the same dangerous community.

Lisa Williams

==================================

I commend you for writing this piece. However, I think it is too late. I have been yelling about this kind of unjust for years but until the black community yells louder than I, nothing is going to change.

When Mom's and Dad's start loving their kids more than drugs, nothing will ever change. Sadly, it is the older generation left behind that suffer. Most have moved out long ago. The next move is out of state because there is no fighting city hall, state hall anymore. So sad. So very sad.

==================================

I am very concerned about Linda Dennis's life.Please give me a solution to her problem. I am very afraid that she will not get the help she is in need of.This is the time Baltimore needs to rally and protect this lady. I am a praying person,but we need more than prayers.

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

Nothing ever happens in the confines of an office. So with a full-plate of news and column ideas to follow up on, I reluctantly headed out to a morning shooting death near the Pimlico Race Course yesterday. I didn't expect much -- maybe a body but probably not, a taped-off crime scene and detectives unwilling to chat about their latest case.

I was standing near one of the Baltimore Sun photograpers when my colleague, Gus G. Sentementes, told me he saw a woman standing on Queensberry Avenue, two blocks away, complaining that drug dealers had vandalized her cars. I raced around the blocked off area and found her screaming into her telephone, telling her probably bewildered insurance agent all about the drug dealers on her street, how she's been threatened, how she's sure she'll end up killed.

You never know what you're going to find at the scene of the latest killing in Pimlico. This woman, Linda Dennis, had no idea someone had been fatally shot about the same time her cars were damaged, and how close it was. She was angry because it took police a long time to respond; they were busy up the street, and one of the officer's there said he knew her call was pending but had more pressing matters.

By the time Officer Antonio M. Williams pulled up and put on his flashing lights, Dennis was in full rage at her insurance agent, and when the officer gently tried to get her attention, she wondered why he just couldn't get her story by listening in to he conversation on the telephone. Finally, the officer simply got on his radio and got a dispatcher to run the license plates so he could at least start writing the report. How much he listened to her talk about drug dealers I'm not sure, but he did write down the names of a drug sergeant and a community services officer for her.

I'm sure Williams hears this a lot. I know I do as a reporter, and I certainly don't respond to every, or any, destruction of property case. This was different. It was around the corner from a homicide scene, and while I still don't know if the two are connected, Dennis' seemingly small problem contrasts against the murder, showing off a full range of ills from which this city suffers.

Only Dennis' issue is not minor. It might be written up as a simply property destruction, but the underlying issue is far more complex: that of witness intimidation, of good residents imprisoned in their homes by criminals, but a system that seems to only care when your name is listed on the homicide board, and sometimes not even then.

Dennis said she is sure she'll end up dead. The video here has her own words, and I can't do it justice by quoting her in this space. I do know that Dennis problem while seemingly mundane needs to be addressed, if not to save her life, to find a way in which citizens of this city can stand up and fight back without being shot, or having the windows of their cars busted out.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Anne Arundel County police are seeking help identifying a man who robbed a Crofton bank on Friday. Authorities released this poster and picture:

Flyer

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Today, the Pittsburgh Steelers will face off against the Ravens in a game that could have playoff implications for Baltimore. In the meantime, enemy quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is helping out the local police.

The Ben Roethlisberger Foundation announced today that it is giving $5,000 to the Baltimore County Police Department's K-9 unit. The quarterback makes a habit of donating to a local charity in each city he visits.

Ben Roethlisberger Foundation Press Release- Baltimore County Police

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

You could argue that the Baltimore Police Department's Marine Unit is a luxury for better times. It's one of those entities you don't realize exists until something goes horribly wrong -- like a water taxi overturning.

City police, as today's column notes, have moved 13 of 14 officers assigned to the unit to other duties, including guarding City Hall and walking the Inner Harbor, at least until the winter is over and people once again flock to the water for their amusement.

Like any cut, it's a calculated gamble. Of course, few people are on the water now, but there are still some, and you could argue falling into icy water is more dangerous than falling in when it's 90 degrees out. But the city is in the midst of a surge in killings and budget cuts -- not a great combination -- and moving personnel around to address breaking crime is not always a bad idea.

The Marine Unit has a storied tradition, dating back to 1860, and patrols 51 miles of waterfront in the city. Its jurisiction stretches to the Key Bridge. Retired Lt. Gabe Bittner, who commanded the marine unit for nine years until he retired a few years ago, said the boats "have never been completely shut down like they are now. Granted, you may not need as many persons in the winter as you do in the summer. On a real slow day, you know I would do? I'd tell the officers to take the boat to the Inner Harbor, dock it and walk foot to let the people know we're still working and helping them out."

Bittner noted that the boats, purchased with homeland security grant money, need "constant maintenance. You just can't leave them sitting in the water."

The department says that marine officers re-assigned to the Inner Harbor can easily get to the boats in an emergency. Bittner says the drive would take up to 15 minutes, and then even more time to warm up the boat. "It would take you 45 minutes to respond," he said. "Lives can be compromised."

No one, he said, is patrolling the Inner Harbor now (the city boats patroled an area from the Key Bridge west).

“The Marine unit and the Inner Harbor unit are the two most valuable units in the department," Bittner said. "Without tourism the city is dead. The Inner Harbor Marine Until provided a lot of protection for the tourists who came to visit the city."

Patrolling the Harbor and other city waterways, for the winter at least, now falls to the Department of Natural Resources, which is having its own money crunch. In 1990, DNR had 451 officers; now it has 233 with 16 vacancies, and only three officers and two boats responsible for not only Baltimore City but Howard and Montgomery counties and a sliver of Baltimore County. And most of those officers are not in boats, but providing security to state parks. In 2010, DNR's budget does not include a helicopter, which now costs $1 million a year, and DNR has been given the additional responsibility of patrolling the new Washington Harbor in Prince George's County.

DNR Lt. Gregory Bartles told me that his officers would do their best, but even the two stations that oversee the city -- at Martin State Airport and in Bear Creek -- are not staffed 24 hours a day and even when one of the officers is in one of the offices, response time to the Inner Harbor is between 20 and 30 minutes.

There's still the U.S. Coast Guard and the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, and the Baltimore Fire Department. The city wants other jurisdictions to help out. It's quite possible that nothing will happen in the next few months and the moves will be seen as prudent in tough fiscal times. It's also possible we won't know what we're missing until it's too late.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The video that shows customers laughing and stepping over a man who had been shot in a Northeast Baltimore carryout continues to attract outrage. Mayor Sheila Dixon renewed her criticism this evening after the video went up on the Internet.

Dixon had mentioned the video on Wednesday during a meeting of law enforcement officials, noting the disturbing scenes while pressing her case for changes in the criminal justice system.
“I was just floored,” the mayor told the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, which includes judges, the state’s attorney and the police commissioner. “People came in to get orders, it was business as usual. ... There’s clearly mentally disturbed individuals in this city.”

On Friday, Dixon issued a statement noting a reduction of violence but also acknowledging the city has a long way to go in addressing a crime problem that has cast a pall over Baltimore for nearly two decades.

“This video is an unfortunate reminder that we must treat some violent juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system,” Dixon’s statement says. “This clearly reflects a dire need for the community to renew our commitment to youth.”

The shooting occurred in August during an apparent robbery. Prosecutors charged Darren Brown, 17, and David Jefferson, 17, were each charged as adults with attempted first-degree murder and handgun violations. The video shows the aftermath with two young women leaning against a wall and laughing and others reaching over the wounded man to pick up orders off the counter.
Prosecutors showed the video at a hearing in Baltimore Circuit Court on Dec. 1 to determine whether the suspects should remain charged as adults. The judge ruled that their cases would remain in the adult system.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Baltimore police and the FBI raided a house on Southwest Baltimore this morning and arrested two men on drug and gun charges. That in itself isn't news. Cops do this all the time in Baltimore. But in the past, such raids rarely got noticed.

City police now have a new spokesman, Anthony J. Guglielmi, who wants to promote the department in ways that hasn't been done before. The cops rarely issued press releases or statements, and usually only responded when questioned by a reporter. That appears to be changing.

The release even came with a nice quote from Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld, who, when he does speak, can be very passionate about his job, the crime he faces in the city and the work his officers do every day.

The release is below:

Joint Baltimore Police and FBI Task Force Seize Guns and Drugs in Early Morning Raid

BPD Targeting Violent Offenders in Partnership with FBI

BALTIMORE. MD / December 12, 2008 – Agents with the Baltimore Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided a “crip” gang house this morning resulting in the arrest of two known felons and seizure of drugs and automatic weapons. Members of the FBI SWAT team conducted the initial entry at 225 S. Hilton St in Southwestern Baltimore. Dennis Cunningham, age 20 and Anthony Smith, age 34, were arrested and will face federal charges. Both individuals had prior felony convictions.

“There’s zero-tolerance in Baltimore for criminal gangs,” said Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. “If you’re associated with the criminal element in this city, best of luck sleeping because we’ll be knocking down on your door soon.”  As part of the Commissioner’s crime suppression strategy, the Baltimore Police Department will continue its focus on targeting violent offenders and illegal guns.

The BPD / FBI Joint Task Force is part of the Department of Justice’s Safe Streets Violent Crime Initiative, designed to address violent street gangs and drug-related violence through the establishment of long-term, proactive task forces focusing on violent gangs, crime of violence, and the apprehension of violent fugitives.

Items Recovered in the Raid Include:

One Keltec Sub 2000 9mm Luger fully auto machine pistol
Remington 12 gauge sawed off shotgun
Mossberg500a 12 gauge shotgun pistol
Smith & Wesson .32 cal revolver
Ammunition
12 bags crack cocaine 

Anthony J. Guglielmi

Director, Public Affairs Division

Baltimore Police Department

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In today's print column, I wrote about the mayor and others voting to boost their own pay while at the same time cutting millions from the Baltimore Police Department when homicides are spiking. (The mayor and some others have now vowed to donate their pay increases to charity.) I mentioned a Web site established by the police robbery unit that officers there are paying for out of their own pocket. Many readers have asked for the link. I blogged about the site last month.

Some readers objected to my comparison, noting that teachers and many other workers routinely dig into their own pockets to pay for work-related items. I mentioned that in the column. I just wanted to make a point that some cops care enough to pay for such things as their own web sites to help fight crime.

One reader wrote:

Greetings,
The police got a 3% raise starting this Friday. I don't understand their over-time issue.  Police make more money than most. If they chose to spend their money on their equipment at work...so be it. Teachers buy supplies all the time.
JDT in Woodlawn

Many jobs have lucrative overtime opportunities, cops included. It's hard to work a homicide on an 8-hour shift, and some of those detectives easily double their salaries working cases. Overtime opportunties also include jobs as varied as security for events, such as road races, and large private functions.

The reader notes that officers do make more than many other workers. A police officer in Baltimore now starts at $42,290 (that doesn't include a pending 3 percent raise). A sergeant earns $50,377 and a lieutenant gets $68,630 (both figures represent their first year in the rank). When I started covering department in 1994, officers started at roughly $28,000, then the lowest in the state.

I don't have all the figures at hand, but for comparison sake, officers in Baltimore County start at $45,783, sergeants at $55,315 and lieutenants at $59,822. All the numbers from the public affairs offices of the city and county police.

Another reader did appreciate the link between budget cuts and cops buying their own equipment:

Just wanted to take a second to thank you for your recent article. As a retired police officer from a much wealthier jurisidiction in MD, I routinely spent several hundred dollars a year on necessary supplies and gear that the agency did not provide. Items such as cold weather gear, decent footwear, pens that actually write, and the list goes on. I can only imagine how this impacts City officers who for some strange reason get paid much less than in other jurisdictions. Thanks again.

Another former officer wrote:

I retired from the Baltimore Police in 2005 as a Sergeant.  During my Career as a Police Officer I rarely found articles written by reporters that reflected positively about Police Officers.  I am currently working as a Police Officer in Crisfield Maryland and I just wanted to say thank you for what you wrote. It's good to know that someone realizes the sacrifices that most of the men and women in the Police Department make freely to do their jobs. I can remember a time when I first became a Police Officer, the Department did not issue gun belts, speed loaders, neck ties, uniform shoes, or flashlights. All these items were purchased by the individual officer and all items were required. We did this because we were proud to serve as Police Officers. We also didn't make the money that the officers are paid today. I believe we started at $16,000.00 a year. It would have been nice to have you on the job reporting back then, but it's nice to have you now for this generation. Thank you.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Werner Kloetzli Jr. sent me this nice e-mail about Tiffany Square, where 17 years ago 6-year-old Tiffany Smith was shot and killed while playing with a doll. The community named the area where she was shot -- Rosedale Street and Westwood Avenue in West Baltimore -- in her honor.

I visited the square earlier this week after another little boy was shot on Myrtle Avenue. Ronald Jackson, 14, was killed while delivering grapefruit to an elderly neighbor across the street. I had hoped we might have learned something from Tiffany's death, and the deaths of all the other children that followed. I found a square filled with drug dealers shouting out the name of their heroin product -- Kill Bill. I later talked to the woman who helped build the square; she gave up after two years and left the city.

Here is what Mr. Kloetzli wrote, and told me I could post for all of you to read:
 
When I was a 5th and 6th Grader (1938-1940), I was a crossing guard at the traffic light at Bloomingdale Rd. and Rosedale St., which, as you know, is at Tiffany Square.  At the time I was a student attending the adjacent Elementary School on the NE corner of Rosedale St. & Westwood Ave.  The school building is apparently still there, but not used as a school.  Those times were happier times.
 
I was at that traffic light every school day before school, at the beginning and ending of lunch hours, and after school, helping fellow students cross the street.  Twice a day I walked between the school to our home in the 3100 Block of Belmont Ave., where we lived till 1942. 
 
In 1938 we moved into that home from PA.  My father had just gone into the restaurant business in downtown Baltimore, not at Werner's, but at a restaurant on Light St. known as Hornick's (see the Sun ad on p.9 of Sat. morning May 8, 1937).  Hornick's was located on the NE corner of Light and Water Sts.  In 1950 my father closed Hornick's and bought the Redwood St. Fountain Restaurant  which he renamed as Werner's.
 
Getting back to Tiffany Square, I can personally testify that there are no geographic reasons for the Tiffany Square area to be other than a happy place.  The unhappiness there since the 1940s "from which the city has yet to recover" is due to other than geographic reasons. 
 
Organized crime and drugs have been allowed to generate.  And the peace loving people living there are no longer organized as a civilization ought to be organized.  So crime is winning in the area.  Today each home has to be a fortification unto itself, with little or no help from its neighbors.  This is unfortunate, especially  since the peace loving people of the area are certainly in the majority.  They need to organize to overcome the problem.
 
But how should they organize?  I have heard of little effort in that respect that has been successful.  There have been no responses to my suggestions as to how to solve the problem. So what should be done?  Nothing?  And continue the unfortunate situation that exists?
 
For one thing, one of those roundabouts that I suggested, with a police car in the center, could be located right on top of Tiffany Square.  And guarded gated neighborhoods could be planned adjacent thereto.  Do you have any better ideas? 
 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

At yesterday's monthly meeting with Baltimore criminal justice officials, Mayor Sheila Dixon had some disturbing news: she talked about a video that captured a 17-year-old being shot in a carryout, with two girls leaning against a wall and laughing. Other poeple were seen stepping over the victim to collect their food.

"I was just floored," Dixon said, according to Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton who attended the meeting. "People came in to get orders, it was business as usual. ... There's clearly mentally disturbed individuals in this city."

Prosecutors later refused to make a copy of the video available. It wasn't shown at the meeting of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and a spokeswoman for the city State's Attorney's Office said the tape is evidence and not yet part of the court file.

Dixon, who is passionate about juvenile crime, told the group it is "imperative to have as much information as possible as it relates to juveniles and treatment of the crimes they commit. ... Don't take it the wrong way, I get plenty of criticism -- if anybody is sensitive and caring and believe in giving another chance, it's me... [but] we've got to begin at all levels to make things tougher and harder" for people who commit violent crimes.

Dixon continued: "We have the laws to send a message that we won't tolerate" such behavior, yet there's all these cases where people are being released. "I know there's more to it, but as a layperson, you've got to show me" why this is happening.

Dixon called on the CJCC to examine court medical records and the use of reverse waivers (in which juveniles accused in adult court petition to have their cases returned to the juvenile system).  In the case with the video, Circuit Judge John P. Miller said the young man charged in the shooting remains in adult court.

State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy discussed the divide between adult and juvenile courts and suggested an idea of "blended sentences" that could include time served both in junvenile and adult system. That, she said, would give judges more choices. "Prosecutors know the kids who go back into the community may end up dead. We're hopeful we can save lives."

This is not the first time a city mayor has been angry at the conduct of residents at crime scenes:
 

Back in 1998, then Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke rode with city police and rolled up on a shooting scene From a story I wrote a decade ago:

On a ride-along with police, the city's chief executive sped to three shootings and at one point stood over a wounded young man lying face down on a street with four bullets in his back.

 "A friend of his comes along and looks down," Schmoke recalled yesterday. "And he doesn't say to the police or to me, 'How's he doing?' He says, 'What are you all going to do with that boy's cigarettes?' That is showing no regard for human life."

Schmoke, at a groundbreaking for the new deaf community off Frederick Avenue, noted a recent crime drop and new initiatives from Inner Harbor hotels to a revamped Howard Street business corridor. He praised the recent Whitbread Round the World Race that pit-stopped in Baltimore and put the city in the global spotlight.

"The image of a city that greeted the Whitbread was an image that greeted the world," the mayor said. "That was a positive image. But then you see what happened [Monday] night. That's another image. It really is a tale of two cities."

The story ended this way:

But Schmoke said the drama of what is considered routine gave him a new sense of appreciation for his police and what they and law-abiding citizens face every day. He said new overtime patrols could start Monday.

"We've got a beautiful city, but we are also home to half the state's poor," he said. "Although most poor people are struggling to do well, we've got a minority, particularly young men, who place no value on human life."

Schmoke said he was "very disappointed with the crowd" that gathered at Edmondson and Pulaski after the double shooting.

"There were not a lot of people showing outrage and disgust about the whole thing," he said. "That crowd does not represent all of our citizens, but among the young men around there, it was almost a sporting sense. These victims were in the game and they lost."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

I love irony.

Item 11 on the Board of Estimates agenda on the day before Thanksgiving, page 15 of 76: the hidden pay raises to the mayor, comptroller and city council president.

Item 13 on the same agenda: "Police Department: Abolish position." That job is defnined: "community service officer, Grade 080 ($27,383 - $32.211). Job No. 207-18759.

As Baltimore Sun reporter Annie Linskey reports today, the raises were listed as "salary adjustments" and hidden using bureaucratic codes. Instead of mayor, it listed "88E" -- I doubt that even most employees know how their jobs are classified, much less the public, who understandably missed their elected officials approving themselves pay bumps while at the same time cutting back on services.

Does anyone even think what it looks like to vote yourself more money while forcing the Police Department to cut overtime during a crime wave? Or while state employees are being forced to take unpaid leaves at Christmas? Maybe they did think about it, which is precisely why they couldn't stomach putting their names next to the agenda item.

Speaking bureaucratease works both ways. Obscure wording can be used to hide such things as pay raises, but it can also suggest something dire happened when it hasn't. That appears to the case with the abolished police position.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told me the community service position the Board of Estimates eliminated had been vacant for a long time, and had been a slot assigned to a civilian. So no police officer lost a job. The money saved has been shifted to help fund a police technician. That's a good explanation and probably a sound move. Too bad the agenda item appeared right below the raises, but that isn't the police department's fault. I give Guglielmi, who is new, credit for getting right back to me with a reasonable and sound explanation.

Guglielmi also said that rumors about the abolishment of the Police Department's community services position are unfounded. Col. Rick Hite still runs the program, based out of headquarters, and has three officers assigned to him. Each of the nine police districts also have neighborhood services officers responsible for keeping in touch with community groups and addressing their issues.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Another death of a young boy in Baltimore brought another grim photograph. The image captured by Baltimore Sun photographer Jed Kirschbaum doesn't show a body under a sheet, or even a single living or dead human being. Instead, Jed's photograph shows two grapefruits on the marble steps of a rowhouse and three splotches of blood on the pavement in the foreground. Ronald Jackson was trying to deliver these grapefruits to an elderly neighbor across the street when he was shot, his family believes in a case of mistaken identity. I thought the picture was powerful becaue it tells the sad story without graphic images. I thought of other pictures taken at crime scenes where young lives were lost, that defy the cliche, if it bleeds it leads, and prompts people to think.

At left, Precious Johnson is holding a cap worn by her brother, 10-year-old Tauris, who was shot and killed in 1993 on East Oliver Street while playing football when two rival drug dealers engaged in a shootout. The picture was taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Mark Bugnaski.

 Here, Baltimore homicide detective Homer Pennington looks over the crime scene after 13--year-old Shenea Counts was killed while getting a cup of ice during a hot day in 1999 in Southwest Baltimore. The photo was taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Kim Hairston.

Baltimore Sun photographer Lloyd Fox captured this image of a barber shop in 1997 in which 3-year-old James Smith III was killed while sitting in a barber chair getting his first haircut. Drug dealers sitting on either side of him started shooting.

A crime lab technician examines the scene where 2-year-old Carlos Woods was was shot and wounded while trying to retrieve a juice cup on his front steps in 2001. Police said he was struck by a stray bullet. The photo was taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Perry Thorsvik.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Tonight the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office is having an evening of "joy, peace, laughter, sharing and healing" at the downtown Circuit Courthouse. It's a party for families mourning the deaths of loved ones killed in city violence.

The annual event is sponsored by Survivor's Against Violence Everywhere ("SAVE"), a nonprofit organization that joins with the State's Attorney's office's Family Bereavement Center, which provides counseling and legal help for families of homicide victims:

SAVE 2008 Holiday Flyer

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Back in 1994, former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon wrote about the city police department in decline. He noted cuts to the budget and detective units, describing how the robbery unit transferred cop after cop into homicide as the murder count grew. Then bank robberies went out of control, and the department filled that unit with cops from sex offense, leaving one detective to follow up on more than 300 sexual assaults each year:

"Detective Dorothea Parker then went to her commander, Capt. John J. MacGillavery, telling him the situation was ridiculous, according to department sources. With a new case every workday, she had no time to interview victims or witnesses, no time to show suspect photos or identify a pattern of crimes. Women were being raped, and nothing was being done.

    The captain agreed but could offer no immediate help.

    'I guess you'll have to put on your roller skates,' he reportedly told her."

Today's story by Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton reminded me of that old account. The city police department is not in such dire straits anymore, but it does show that the fight over crime and budgets is not new, and using fear to stake out a position is as old as government itself.

Former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and his commissioner, Thomas C. Frazier, battled the police union continuously, arguing about money and crime strategy and low salaries for officers. The police union always argued (and still does) that budget cuts put the public at risk; the city always argued (and still does) that smart policing doesn't need unchecked overtime.

They're both right. In 1998 and 1999, police woke up in December and suddenly realized that homicides were out of control. They took every available cop and put them all in the Eastern District, typically the most dangerous area of the city. The first year it was a haphazard mess, cops everywhere but no supervision or direction. A body fell even as the police commissioner patrolled and noted that there were so many cops on the street they were bumping into each other. The next year, they tried the same thing, and one commander complained the previous year's effort lacked a plan. Both were seen for exactly what they were: a last ditch effort by a desperate department trying to get the numbers down.

Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld the III told Fenton the obvious -- "there isn't an unlimited pot of money" -- but also something else, that police don't have "a blanket policy where I just flood the streets indiscriminately with overtime."

This is consistent with the city's policing strategy of targeting the most violent criminals and getting them off the streets. Simply flooding a neighborhood with cops isn't a sound strategy -- it never worked before, and I give Bealefeld credit for sticking with his plan even after a month in which 31 people were killed in 30 days.

But there's also something in what the police union president, Robert F. Cherry said: "You're lying to the public if you say we're attacking all forms of crime, and you're lying if you say the budget cuts have no effect."

There are simply things you can't do without overtime or after a cut in your basic operating budget. One might be the community services unit, which provides vital outreach to at-risk kids and is part of the mayor's effort to restore community policing. Another might be sending detectives out to walk foot patrols. One we've already seen -- the marine unit shut down, at least for the winter, and its cops checking bags of visitors at City Hall.

The commissioner is right in that smart policing, not more policing, can be effective in curtailing violent crime. The union head also is right in that the budget cuts mean we're getting less, not more, out of our police department.

The public deserves a full accounting from both sides -- here's what we can't do anymore from City Hall; here's what it really means from the union. Otherwise, we're just stuck with the rhetoric and the citizens are left to wonder what its cops are really doing to keep them safe.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Daniel and Mary Jane McCann wanted to tell me about their daughter. In fact, halfway through a steak and potato dinner at their home in Fairfax County, Va., they apologized for going on for so long.

Tour their house and you immediately understand why. Annie McCann, who apparently ran away from home and was found dead a few days later in Baltimore of still mysterious causes, seemed a typical teen-ager.  But what is typical? She was involved with sports, active in school and church, had many friends (tributes run into the hundreds) and enjoyed engaging in strong-willed arguments about politics with her parents.

She appeared to be grasping the responsibilities of being an adult -- she was driving and one dresser drawer was filled with perfume -- while embracing the innocence of childhood -- she loved to cuddle on the couch with her mom, another dresser drawer was filled with videos more popular with 10-year-olds.

Her father works as a security chief for the Transportation Security Administration. Her brother Sam is studying journalism at a college in New York. Her parents were parents want to know why she suddenly apparently wrote a note saying she had run away from home and somehow ended up being found in Baltimore, dead in the Perkins Homes projects, her car with Virginia license plates parked five blocks away.

Spending an evening with the McCann's was heartwrenching. I met the family beagle, Breeze Max, and learned a favorite back and forth between father and daughter -- "Oh, blessed beagle!" he would say. "Oh sainted hound," she would reply.

The night before she disappeared, Annie, a rabid New York Yankess fan, told her Red Sox-loving father: "I wish the World Series was still on. I'd love to watch a game with you." Daniel McCann remembers that as if they were his daughter's last words. It wasn't. Intead of baseball, they talked politics, of her love for Obama, his support of McCain, of how she opposed abortion but for her it wasn't the only issue. Her mom couldn't make stuffing for Thanksgiving (it was Annie's job) or put up the Christmas tree (she loved to help).

The house is a virtual shirne to Annie. Prayer cards fill desktops and are taped to walls. Her elaborate artwork is framed and hanging on walls. Her father saved a soda can because it said, "New York" on it. Her room has been cleaned of clutter but everything else left in tact, from the stuffed animals on the bed to the Yankee penants on the ceiling. At the front entrance, a newspaper clipping about Annie is next to a candle and vase filled with red roses. It will stay, her mother said, until they find out what happened.

So far, the story is a mystery. The autopsy has not revealed how she died. Police say they have no clue why she left her home, how she got to Baltimore and how she ended up dead. Her parents say they are prepared for the worst: drugs, an Internet predator, but so far authorities say nothing leads in any one direction.

The McCanns admit Annie was sheltered. She only recently got her own e-mail address (before, the family shared one) and her mother has access to all the messages. Same with her cell phone. She drove, but mostly only to school and to a nearby shopping center, and was legendary for getting lost when going out alone. She shunned organized basketball, preferring to instead play for a club team that allowed her to get home earlier in the afternoon. She served as an alter girl for her church. Her father told me a girl couldn't be more sheltered in today's society unless she lived in a convent in the middle of Amish country.

Her note she left behind when she disappeared indicated she wanted to be free, and fly someplace far away. Was she smothered at home? If so, her parents said she showed no signs of any problems. Her father has hired a private detective and has consulted colleagues at the TSA, many of whom are former police officers. The computer is being analyzed by police, and teenagers have ways of leading lives beyond their parent's knowledge.

Still, Baltimore police admit that have few leads and almost no new information on the case, which is now a month old. It's a mystery not only in how Annie died, but how she got, as her father says, "from here to there."

The Mount Vernon Gazette in Virginia recently ran a story on Annie on its front page, "A mystery wrapped in an enigma" and showed a picture of a rock decorated by her classmates at West Potomac High School. On it they painted, We love Annie. The love was was in the form of a giant red heart. Off to the side were the initials "NY" with the Y superimposed over the N, the way the Yankees do it.

A few days before she died, Annie wrote a poem. Her mother gave it to me and it's posted below. Much of it is personal -- it talks about the Coast Guard (her father served); names of music bands she liked; of her Irish and Czechoslovakian heritage; of trips to the New Jersey Shore and to Yankee Stadium (and Fenway Park); of her dog's "jingling collar."

Death is usually straightforward in Baltimore. Annie McCann's parents not only don't know how she died and why, but why she came to this city in the first place.

Below is her poem and some pages from her funeral program.

Hermann.cover03

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Annie McCann
        

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The police weren't wearing uniforms, but the young men at West Lafayette Avenue and Monroe Street quickly figured out who was approaching and walked down the street. That left Anthony Parham, a recovering heroin addict, sitting on the steps of a rowhouse next to Tanya Johnson.

The message from Officer Keith Harrison was aimed more at the kids who had fled than the man who stayed behind and agreed with everything that was said. Still, it was an effort by police to warn residents that what happened to the man in picture on their flier could happen to them.

The man in the picture was Akiba Matthews-Bey, the cameraman for the infamous underground Stop Snitching DVD that encouraged people to honor the code of the street and not to cooperate with police. It put Baltimore in the national spotlight on crime and troubles authorities face in urban American, and prompted city police to create their own DVD, Keep Talking.

"We want to send a message that just as you exploited the media, we are going to exploit you, to expose the fraud that you are," Baltimore Police Col. Rick Hite explained, reffering to Matthews-Bey and pointing to his picture on the flier announcing his 30 year sentence in federal court on drug and gun convictions back in August.

"More importantly," Hite continued, "we want to send a message to the young people to get out of the game." He noted that federal prosecutors have recently convicted 11 other drug defendants and got long prison terms. Authorities like to use the word "exile" beause in the federal system, you serve 85 percent of your time and you get shipped to prison in far off places.

Hite said that it's difficult for Matthews-Bey and others "to receive care packages" and added, "You'll be in a place with no homies, in a strange place with poeple who don't want you. You will understand what it's like to feel vulnerable, about what it means to be sexed into a gang. You will understand all of that because it will real to you."

The officers handed out the fliers on Mount Street near where Matthews-Bey had lived and plied his trade. "It's important to go back to the source and tell neighbors it is OK to sit on the front steps in the summer time and i'ts OK to be part of the community again. It also sends a message to the suspect's homies, 'This is what happened to your friend.'" Of Matthews-Bey, he said, "that smile he had on the video? He's not smiling anymore."

Harrison, the officer, chatted for a while with Parham and Johnson. "Keep selling those drugs and get exiled for 30 years," he said.

Parham said he knew Matthews-Bey, called him a "great guy" and said he had no idea his old friend had been sent away to prison for three decades. Parham said he was addicted to heroin and is now in a Methadone program "and trying to get my life together."

Looking at the picture of his buddy, Parham said, "This hits close to home. It's not worth it."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Robert Carroll Eichelberger was sentenced to 20 years in prison for distributing medthadone that killed 17-year-old Harry L. "Trey" Angle in Western Maryland. It was only the second time federal prosecutors have filed to hold a drug dealer accountable for what happens to their customers.

It's an innovative approach and one that authorities in Maryland are looking into more and more. The problem is that police have to make a definitive link between the drugs and the person who used them -- in other words, prove that drug dealer A sold the heroin to addict B and that the addict did indeed die from those very same drugs. Prosecutors could go for manslaughter, which would require them to prove the dealer knew or should have known that his product could kill. But they'd still have to link the drugs to the victim.

Try that in Baltimore where addicts form lines that can rival those at stores on Black Friday.

Eichelberger's case reminded me of a recent visit I had with Dr. David Fowler, Maryland's chief medical examiner, and why his office lists so many overdose deaths as pending. Critics charge that he is hiding murders behind the classification to keep the city's body count low (or, at least, lower).

Fowler says that his office is one of only a handful in the U.S. that classifies most overdose deaths as pending instead of accidental. The reason, he told me, is that he doesn't know what really caused the death: it could be accidental; it could be suicide; it could even be a homicide. By making the deaths pending, he's actually leaving open the possibility that police could charge a dealer with supplying the drugs, instead of closing the case altogether. That would add hundreds to Baltimore's already sky-high homicide count.

Should police use this tool more frequently to go after drug dealers or is it too much of a burden on an already taxed department? Are there enough resources to investigate thoroughly every overdose death in the city? The Western Maryland case shocked a community not used to dealing with such pain. And the suspect and victim were friends and everyone seemed to know where the drugs came from.

Baltimore's heath department released a study in January on drug overdose deaths in the city. Here are some main points:

Intoxication is an urgent public health challenge. Drug of abuse- and alcohol-associated death rates are three to four times higher in Baltimore than in Maryland or the United States as a whole. The number of people who die in the city from intoxication associated with drugs of abuse or alcohol is comparable to the number of people murdered. In six of the last 12 years, the number of intoxication deaths exceeded the number of homicides.

• Heroin is the most common drug associated with intoxication deaths. More than three-quarters (77%) of drug and alcohol intoxication deaths among city residents over the study period were associated with heroin. Cocaine was implicated in 29% of the deaths, and alcohol in 26%.

• Intoxication deaths have declined by a quarter since 1999. Intoxication deaths associated with drugs of abuse or alcohol among Baltimore City residents peaked in 1999 at 321 deaths, or 48.8 deaths per 100,000 residents, and have decreased relatively consistently since then, to 244 deaths in 2006, or 37.9 deaths per 100,000 residents.

• Heroin-associated intoxication deaths in particular have decreased dramatically since the late 1990s. Nearly half as many heroin-associated fatal intoxications occurred in 2006 than in 1999 (150 vs. 283.) In the late 90s, heroin was implicated in almost 90% of intoxication deaths; while in 2006, only 61% of deaths were associated with heroin. Nonetheless, heroin remains the substance most commonly implicated in fatal intoxication deaths, and it is the most common cause of single-drug intoxication deaths.

• Intoxication deaths increased in 2006, but appear to be decreasing again in 2007. Despite an overall trend of declining deaths, 2006 saw a 14% increase in drug of abuse or alcohol intoxication deaths compared to 2005, from 214 to 244. Data for the first three quarters of 2007 suggest intoxication deaths may be lower in 2007 than in 2006.

• Cocaine-associated intoxication deaths doubled between 2005 and 2006. After a decade of relatively stable counts, cocaine-associated intoxications more than doubled from 52 deaths in 2005 to 116 in 2006. Almost all the additional cocaine associated deaths also involved opioids, in particular heroin or methadone. One third of the increase in cocaine-associated deaths could be due improvements in detection of recent cocaine use in toxicological samples. Data for the first three quarters of 2007 suggest cocaine deaths declined in 2007 compared to 2006.

• Methadone-associated deaths increased gradually over the study period. Methadone-associated deaths increased from 7 in 1995 to 61 in 2006, with a major jump occurring from 2002 to 2003. Since 2003, the increase has been more gradual, with deaths increasing from 52 in 2003 to 61 in 2006. In 2006, methadone was associated with a quarter of the city’s drug of abuse- and alcohol- associated intoxication deaths. Data for the first three quarters of 2007 suggest this trend will continue in 2007.

• Alcohol is involved in a quarter of intoxication deaths. Alcohol-associated deaths peaked between 1997 and 2000, and decreased by more than 50% between 2000 and 2005. As with drug of abuse-associated deaths, alcohol-associated deaths increased in 2006. Data for the first three quarters of 2007 suggest alcohol deaths in 2007 have returned to 2005 levels.

• Victims were predominantly male, African American and middle-aged. From January 2003 to September 2007, 69% of intoxication deaths among Baltimore City residents occurred among men and 65% among African Americans. This mirrors the racial composition of the city. Age at death ranged from 14 to 77 years, with a mean of 44 years.

• Non–city residents accounted for between one in ten and one in six fatal intoxication incidents occurring in Baltimore. Non-residents who suffered fatal intoxications in Baltimore were more likely than residents to be Caucasian (73% vs. 33%) and more likely to be male (79% vs. 69%).

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The Midtown Community Benefits District has taken a survey of its 3,200 property owners and concluded that crime is a top cocern. Not exactly earth-shattering news, but there are a couple of interesting tidbits here.

Finding most people are more scared of their neighborhood during the night than the day, the district plans to work for more lighting and to boost police patrols in the evening hours. In fact, over the next four weeks, the taxing district is spending $25,000 to pay overtime to eight Baltimore officers to patrol Mount Vernon, Bolton Hill, Charles North and Madison Park.

One number I found interesting was that a majority of those surveyed felt that crime was encroaching into their communities from the periphery, but a majority also felt that people who lived elsewhere unfairly malign their neighborhoods as unsafe.

"People see crime coming from all sides," said Peter Merles, the executive director of the benefits district. He admitted that a lot of the cocern was based more in perception than hard numbers. For example, he said residents are seeing more homeless people, and associate that, rightly or wrongly, with more crime.

Crime is always and issue. A series of rapes have frightened residents, an increase in car break-ins make commuters using Penn Station wary, attacks of students puts Maryland Institute College of Art on notice. The area is the heart of the city's nightlife community, filled with bars, restaurants, shops and museums, and the city is trying to revitalize the Station North area, which could improve North Avenue.

These are all important issues that can't be ignored, and the residents of the benefits district have taken matters into their own hands to help curtail violence keep an important area of our city safe.

Back in 1998, Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos complained that city police were neglecting the downtown area and he and other business owners shelled out $700 a month to pay overtime for officers to walk up and down Charles Street. The initiative cost $100,000 a year; I called Angelos to see if he could tell me whatever happened to the program and whether it worked, and I'm awaiting a call back.

At the time, Angelos summed up the problem: "I'm not saying the downtown isn't safe. There is police protection. But you need more than a police office driving by in a vehicle. Perception is key."

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

When Baltimore police put out a wanted post and a video of a suspected armed robber yesterday, they linked to a web page I hadn't seen before. Apparently, it's been up for a year, designed by detectives in the robbery unit.

If you ever want to watch a slide show of three dozen wanted posters, this is where you go. But that's not all -- there are podcasts that allow detectives to narrate the scenario, so you can watch video of the crime and listen to the officer describe his case.

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

Today we learn that one of the three people shot and killed on Oakford Avenue on Sunday was a 14-year-old boy. Another young life lost -- the 24th this year under the age of 18.

Details remain sketchy in the shootings that neighborhood residents attribute to a drug war between rival factions that live just blocks apart. The streets here are beyond ruin. On one side of Oakford, there crumbling rowhouses surrounded by metal gates and sagging porches. Each has a small patch of grass, most turned to mud and some covered over by green carpets. On the other side is a line of apartments, some still offering rooms to rent, with all the beauty of large storage bins made of aluminum siding.

An empty lot next to where the killings spree took place is overgrown with weeds and trash; in the back, the homeless built a shanty next to a dying tree.

A reporter from Essence magazine visited Oakford Avenue and lived with a woman, a nightshift housecleaner at the downtown Hyatt, who wasn't afraid to call the police on the drug dealers. The long report documents life on Oakford -- the shootings, the 241 emergency 911 calls between 2004 and 2006, the hardships of living on a street under siege. The story chronicles Mia, who dared to go down to the police station and pick out suspects from their mugshots. She later watched from her windows as police arrested those very same people, and later as a gunman confronted her, pointed a weapon at her head and warned, "You ain't going to make it to court because you're going to be dead."

Mia got to court but ran when she was confronted by some of her neighbors outside the downtown courthouse.

The story tells a lot about how a street like Oakford Avenue becomes a street of despair and hoplessness. The recent shootings tells us this city still has a long way to go.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Baltimore police are looking for a robber suspected in a string of armed holdups in the city and in Baltimore County. One occurred this morning at a 7-Eleven store in the 200 block of West 28th St. in Remington. An off-duty Howard County police officer assigned to the Warrant Apprehension Task Force was in the store at the time.

Here is an an account by Baltimore police spokesman Donny Moses. The robbery attempt was captured on a surveillance video:

As late as this morning, this suspect attempted to rob the 7-11 located in the 200 block of West 28th.  During the attempted robbery, an off-duty Howard County Police Officer assigned to our WATF walked in the 7-11, startling the robber. Believing the suspect was a shoplifter, the off-duty officer attempted to grab the suspect as he was walking out, when the suspect pointed a small caliber revolver into the chest of the officer. The suspect was able to flee the location.  Approximately 30 minutes later, the suspect successfully robbed the 7-11 located at 6315 Sherwood Avenue in Baltimore County.

We are asking that you air this with hopes that someone will recognize the suspect pictured in the photos.  Note: One of the photos shows the suspect holding the gun over the counter.  The suspect is ARMED and considered DANGEROUS.

Anyone who recognizes this suspect is asked to call Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7-LOCKUP or call the robbery unit at 410-366-6341.

Below is a wanted flier distributed by police.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Sunday's column about John Steele, a neighborhood vagrant in South Baltimore who recently died, continues to provoke memories. It was my goal to add a new dimension to a character many frequently saw stumbling around Riverside Park and Fort Avenue. Yes, John Steele had many problems, and caused many more. But most people who have written me seem to appreciate learning about his difficult life.

Charlies Collins told me I could post his thoughts:

I am writing you in reference to the article you did on Sunday 11/30 on John Steele. I would like to thank you for doing the piece on someone that I feel was a friend. I have been a lifetime resident of South Baltimore and knew John for many years, But not as well as my wife who was born and raised in the same block as the Steele’s. He was a nice guy even after his problem started and was ever so polite to me and my family. Yes, he had a drinking problem but was always respectful to us. John would always ask me “How’s the Family” and “How’s your mother in-law”. Never did I here him say anything disrespectful about anyone. Yes we had our words about his habits, public urination, Sleeping on our steps, But even thought those words were said John would still say every time I saw him, First thing out of his mouth was “ How’s the Family”.

There were many a time he would disappear and I would wonder if he had died and next thing I know here is was on the avenue looking to get change. Not a problem John I would say “I know that you’re good for it”. A good man I saw in Mr. Steele and I will miss seeing him.

I would only hope that your article will help other families and fiends of the John Steele’s still on the street do everything they can to get them help, If the help is not wanted at least try to give them hope.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Baltimore County Police Department is asking for help finding a suspect in five robberies of Provident Bank branches in the city and the county:

Provident Banks`City and County Robbed.rob

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Hearing from readers is one of the best parts of my job. And I heard plenty about Sunday's column on John Steele, a homeless alcoholic who roamed my South Baltimore neighborhood for decades before finally dying in November.

I had seen John Steele frequently in the three years I've lived in the area, and heard countless stories, most of them bad. John Steele stole and yelled and ultimately drank himself to death. The neighbor in me felt sorry for him, but also anger about his menacing ways. The reporter in me wanted to know his story.

Some readers apparently didn't. Here is parts of one email I woke up to on Sunday morning:

so this bum steele walks out on his family and his obligations, becomes a drunk, causes the community lots of trouble, cost society bundles of money.  then some fool at social security gives him $150.00 a money to drink every week. and you and the buffoons at the failing sun decide to give him press time and  make him out to some type of hero? there is nothing better to write about?

There is a misconception that newspapers write about people who aren't liked because we feel sorry for them or want to make them heroes. I simply wanted to tell John Steele's story. You can like him or hate him but that's your choice. The reader is angry that the government gave him $150 a month, which John readily admitted he poured right back into gin. His wife told me he chose to be the way he did. I think you have a right to be angry that we taxpayers supported his habit, but if I hadn't told you about it, you wouldn't have known. Now you can express your feelings to the governing authorities who make the rules.

John Steele isn't alone in this city. There are, unfortunately, many people like him. I understand writing about him disrupts some people's comfort zones, but that's exactly what I'm trying to do. You don't have to feel sorry for the John Steele's of this world. If anything, his story doesn't plead for sympathy. He had all sorts of offers for help and turned them all down. We shouldn't have to pay for his gin; we shouldn't just throw him away either. And we should all want to know his story.

I got this e-mail from another reader:

Thanks for your column and follow up on John Steele of South Baltimore.

His wife lived across the alley from my old house on Gittings Street where he would come at night, loaded, and yell mean and vile things at her from their back fence because her firmness on not letting him into the house.  When me and my friends would go play music in the park where John lived, he would constantly egg us on supportively, and tell me personally "God bless you". It was a little stressful having him hanging around the neighborhood, due to his terminal drunkenness.  Perhaps an uncomfortable reminder of our own mortal shortcomings.

Anyhow, while I was kind of used to him being around, and considered him a minor nuisance, you are correct in that we all as Baltimorons, and people, should be interested in hearing John Steele's story.  To think otherwise misses the point entirely, or is simply mean-hearted. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

I've returned from my Thanksgiving break only to be met with headlines that are, unfortunately, all too familiar.

Three dead in Northwest Baltimore shooting

2 men killed in separate East Baltimore shootings

In all, six people were killed Sunday going into Monday. Since you looked at your morning newspaper, a third victim died in a quadruple shooting in Northwest Baltimore and two more people were killed after midnight.

The official homicide number is now 216 so far this year, compared with 268 at this time last year.

Rough patches like this can be expected, but now Baltimore officials can no longer claim we're at a 20-year low for murders. The holiday weekend of violence put us over the 213 mark for the year, the total number of slayings in 1985, the lowest in more than 20 years. The best we can hope for now, according to numbers from Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton, is the 234 mark set in 1988. There were 24 people slain in November, making it the deadliest November since 1999, when there were 36.

And the city is lucky more people didn't die this weekend. Three people were shot at a nightclub in downtown Baltimore and a 63-year-old man was shot in the face as he was being robbed of his wallet at a gas station on Gwynns Falls Parkway.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)