About two weeks ago, after the indictments of Mayor Shelia Dixon, a city councilwoman and a developer, I wrote a column about how children looking for role models aren't likely to find them at City Hall.

I was referring to comments the police commissioner had made before the indictments came out about "trying to engage people's morality about violence in this city" and I wondered if that was possible with elected officials facing criminal corruption charges.

To get some perspective, I visited a group of high school students I had met at an earlier forum on youth violence. Some defended the mayor and others said they didn't expect much out of City Hall anyway. Most said it didn't matter because it was on them to make a difference.

I just got a letter by email from Samuel Burris, the chair of the Baltimore City Youth Commission.

He took exception to my article, noting that Dixon created his group when she was City Council president and that she remains a "strong and influential leader and an important role model for the young population of Baltimore."

I've gotten many letters expressing the same sentiment. Some people thought I was taking shots at all city workers and volunteers. I was not. I was simply wondering whether the charges disappoint all the hard-working people in the city. Are they motivated to continue their tireless, thankless work when prosecutors are questioning their leader's honesty and integrity?

Here is Mr. Burris' letter:

Dear Editor:

First and foremost, we would like to compliment the excellent journalism Mr. Peter Hermann provides as a writer for the Baltimore Sun. His blog, “Baltimore Crime Beat” engages your readers and keeps us well-informed about issues affecting our City’s communities.  However, we strongly disagree with his article on January 15, 2009 titled “Teens can’t look to City Hall for role models”.  The Baltimore City Youth Commission does and will continue to view Mayor Sheila Dixon as one of our primary role models.

The Baltimore City Youth Commission selflessly dedicates time to serve the youth of our city. We understand the struggles of the teens in our communities simply because the Youth Commission is comprised of young people. We are able to relate and recognize what drives our peers to make poor decisions, and we help create solutions to address these problems accordingly.

The Baltimore City Youth Commission was created in December 2005. In 2003, Mayor Sheila Dixon, then City Council President, sponsored a bill along with members of the City Council to form the Youth Commission. The purpose of this bill was to allow youth the opportunity to provide advice, recommendations and information to the Mayor, the City Council and municipal agencies on subjects such as community involvement, government practices and policies, and programs and services that support children, youth and their families.

In November 2004, then Mayor Martin O’Malley signed the bill thus forming what is now the Youth Commission. The Youth Commission consists of 17 voting members and 14 non-voting members between the ages of 16-25. The 17 voting members include one young person from each of the 14 council districts and 3 at-large seats. Some of the members of the Commission are high school and college students, teachers, city employees, police cadets, and ministers.

Mayor Dixon played a very significant role in the creation of the Youth Commission. Upon hearing the idea, she was a key supporter from the beginning and provided constructive criticism and advice to ensure the founders stayed focused and gave their best efforts.  She continues to remind us that public service is not always easy, but it is our way of giving back to the City and to the people who have already given so much more to us.

Mayor Dixon is a strong and influential leader and an important role model for the young population of Baltimore. She has broken barriers by becoming the first elected African American female City Council President, and the first African American female Mayor in a city where the mass majority of the political powerhouses are men. She provides a different kind of leadership to Baltimore and works tirelessly to implement her initiatives. 

Mayor Dixon’s twenty-plus years of leadership continue to make many of our citizens feel safe and secure as she continues to make Baltimore cleaner, greener, healthier, safer and smarter.  We are currently in the process of completing youth savvy policies for our peers, which we will present to Mayor Dixon. We know she will provide supportive, yet honest, input so we can continue to serve efficiently. 

Although she has endured many battles over the years, including the loss of her brother, she still manages to rise above her trials.  Even now, she raises her children and is still able to keep the citizens of Baltimore a top priority. Her work ethic is indeed admirable and her willingness to continue through her struggles is no doubt praise-worthy. 

Again, we have and will always, consider Mayor Sheila Dixon an outstanding role model.

Regards,

Samuel Burris
Chair
Baltimore City Youth Commission

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We'd heard rumors about a unique command-staff level meeting in the Baltimore Police Department. It involved cops, of course, but also an assortment of business types and others involved, for better or worse, in community life.

Our police reporter Justin Fenton tracked it down:

Col. John Skinner, chief of patrol operations, brought together more than 70 top ranking officials for a two-day training session at Johns Hopkins University. The focus:  operational priorities for 2009, such as targeting violent offenders and forging partnerships.

Skinner brought in a steady flow of guest speakers to give police various perspectives. He said Deputy Mayor Andy Frank, the former executive vice president of the Baltimore Development Corp, discussed the city's economic development plans for the coming years and the effect they could have on shifting crime patterns and priorities, and First Mariner Bank chairman Ed Hale talked about the impact of crime on tourism and perceptions about living and working in Baltimore.

There was also a panel discussion that included Anna Sowers, who has become a face of victim's rights after her husband was fatally beaten during a robbery in Canton, Kimberly Armstrong, a community activist from Northeast Baltimore whose son was murdered a few years ago, and Walter Lomax, who was wrongly imprisoned for 39 years and released in 2006.

"I wanted to bring people in who've had unique experiences with police, to talk about professionalism and how a single event can influence the rest of their lives," Skinner told Justin.  "Police can get focused on what's in front of them and can lose sight of the lasting impact they may make on someone."

Maj. Melvin Russell, the commander of the Eastern District and a pastor who has been forging strong ties with clergy in his district, brought in church leaders to talk about how their partnerships can help the crime fight, and the Maryland Muslim Council spoke as well.

The more voices heard the better, and I'd love to hear from people, both cops and others, who participated in this program. I'm particularly interested in the discussion of development and shifting crime patterns. I've always wondered if city services -- police, schools, trash collection -- kept up with the rise in housing and transformation of sketchy neighborhoods to trendy spots.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I've gotten a few responses to Monday's print column on Nanci Gosnell, who took a band of Cub Scouts to the National Aquarium this weekend only to have two of the group's vehicles broken into in a downtown garage.

She called 911 and waited for about 90 minutes before giving up on the officer, who never showed. Police later apologized and said the officer went to the wrong address, but no one ever called Gosnell back to work out the confusion. She left the city angry, her worst thoughts about city crime realized, and having to explain to children why the cops didn't seem to care.

I've heard two complaints. One that she called 911 instead of 311, which is reserved for nonemergencies. This call could've gone either way. A report could have been taken by phone but in my experience, even had she called 311, a dispatcher probably would've have sent a police officer, especially since the people who broke her window left behind a pipe and a screw driver. Seems like good evidence to have in the midst of a wave of car break-ins and worthy of a police response. It doesn't have to be lights and sirens. Also, Ms. Gosnell is from Bethesda and might not know about 311.

Rosie Behr of Baltimore wrote me about using this as a teachable moment:

The thing that I found most disturbing about this column was the quote from Nanci Gosnell: "So all the way home, I had to explain why the police didn't come, why they didn't care." She missed a golden opportunity for a talk about perspective, about what's really important, and instead taught a lesson about fear and hate.  
 The police didn't come. It turns out they were busy with actual emergencies, matters of life and death. 911 is for emergencies. Having one's windows broken and property stolen is inconvenient and irritating, but it's not a matter of life and death.  Ms Gosnell might have said that to the children, might have pointed out their good fortune that they had a wonderful overnight advanture, that they have Caddilac Escalades, that they, fortunately, were safe and sound, though cold. Might have pointed out that stuff is only stuff, inconvenience is only inconvenience; meanwhile the police were busy helping people with actual emergencies. Instead, she taught them that "they didn't care," reinforcing fear and isolation.

I agree this is a valuable teachable moment, but just before turning my column in, I deleted a graf that addresses these concerns. Ms. Gosnell did tell me that she tried to tell her son that a car is just property and can be fixed, and they all should be thankful that nobody was hurt. She told me her son -- as most boys are -- was fixated on the car and kept wondering why someone would "hurt" someone else's property.

I took this out because it ended with her saying the cops didn't care, and I wanted to tone it down after we learned that the police officer made a mistake and went to the wrong address, and didn't simply blow off the call.

But I'm curious how parents might handle this. I'm going to mention this to my colleague, Kate Shatzkin, who writes about family issues with the Charm City Moms blog, and see what her readers have to say. Do 5th-graders like Gosnell's son understand the difference between "hurting" a car and "hurting" a person?

I don't think Gosnell taught these children the police don't care; instead, she had to react to their feelings. They were stuck outside for 90 minutes in the cold, waiting for police who didn't come, comparing that to what they learn in school -- that police quickly come to help in emergencies.

Yes, this wasn't a life and death situation, and police were busy that weekend, but to this group on this day, it certainly was an emergency, and not coming meant not retrieving valuable evidence that might have led to an arrest and helped end these crimes.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

We don't usually read police reports for their literary value (and perhaps we still shouldn't) but I've got to hand it to Homicide Detective Gordon K. Carew for at least taking a moment to expound about the weather while writing about a slaying.

Now, to be fair, the snowy weather played a crucial role in making an arrest, as Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton reports in today's print edition story. Officer Jen Rollhauser arrives at a house on Windsor Avenue in West Baltimore to find a woman "with a gunshot wound under her chin, dead on the porch."

It's then that Carew's report takes off:

"P/O Rollhauser advised Sgt. [Steve] Olson she observed a fresh set of footprints in the snow leading off the porch from the crime scene."

Sure enough, Olson followed the prints and found a suspect standing at the other end!

You really can't make this stuff up.

Here's Carew's second paragraph: "The crime scene was very cold and heavy snow was falling during the evening. Many area schools had been closed because of snow and icy conditions the day of the murder. Snow was still falling in the evening when the police responded to the residence for the shooting. The roads were icy and subject to falling snow, traffic was light, and there was few pedestrians in the area."

Now, I'll let my colleague, chief of the copy desk and You Don't Say blogger John McIntyre, opine about the literary merits of the above graf -- we've gone back and forth on our favorite cop phrases -- and yes, even while describing the weather, Carew managess to slip into copspeak -- roads subject to falling snow -- but comparing this to other police reports Carew's is utter genious, in a "dark and stormy night" kind of way.

I can't wait for the trial and testimony from a forecaster at the Natioinal Weather Service. Maybe the homicide unit should contract out to the Baltimore Sun's Frank Roylance, our fearless weather blogger at Maryland Weather.

I tried to reach Carew to chat about his writing style but he wasn't in this morning. Detective Dennis Steinhice once sent us a Christmas poem and the commander of the unit, Maj. Terry McLarney, is known for his skill putting his pen to paper.

McLarney wrote an afterword to a 2006 edition of David Simon's book Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets, in which the reporter spent a year chronicling the unit and the city's obsession with violent death. He wrote about how Simon captured "the controlled chaos that permeates every urban homicide unit: the rollercoaster tempo of some investigations, the frustrations, the triumphs, the steady stream of unfathomable violence."

The major ends talking about how since Simon wrote his book, gangs have discovered Baltimore and the cops now have DNA to catch them. "Yet in the overall scheme of things, those changes are minor and the job remains much as it was when captured by David Simon," McLarney writes. "It is all about crime scenes, interviews, and interrogations, played out against a back-drop of flawed humanity. It always will be."

Please send me more literary nuggets from cops. I'm tired of reading about "city man" getting killed. And in a city where there's rarely a good reason for city man to be killed, words and descriptive phrases might have to fill the gap.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Yesterday, Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III clarified his spokesman's new policy of not naming officers who shoot people. In a letter being sent to the City Council's president and public safety committee chairman, he described it as an "informal policy" with several exceptions -- an officer who unjustly shoots someone would be named, as would any officer who the commissioner wants to name.

As I point out in today's print edition column, I find the new policy inconsistent. I note that this past weekend Bealefeld named a police officer who fired on two gunman who had shot his partner, calling him a hero. I have no doubt the commissioner is right, but what signal does that send to other officers whose names aren't made public?

I know most police disagree with me, but I think the department should go back to its years-long practice of naming every officer involved in a shooting. It sends a powerful message to the the city that these incidents aren't being covered up and is in keeping with citizens knowing what their protectors are doing.

The more information the better, especially as Mayor Shelia Dixon tries to restart community policing after years of a zero-tolerance strategy in which tens of thousands of people were locked up each year.

By coincidence, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., yesterday heard a a free-speech case brought by a Baltimore police commander who says he was removed from his position after a memo he wrote criticizing a police shooting found its way into the Baltimore Sun.

Lt. Col. Michael J. Andrew, who now commands the property division, was a major in charge of the Eastern District when he wrote the memo in 2004, when Kevin P. Clark was commissioner. A lawsuit he filed in federal court was thrown out when a judge ruled that Andrew's actions in giving the newspaper his memo were part of his official duties, meaning he was not protected by the First Amendment. Andrew is trying to get the case reinstated by arguing he was acting as a citizen when he offered up the memo.

Andrew had argued that tactical officers prematurely stormed an apartment and killed an elderly man in a gun battle. Police ruled the shooting justified but Andrew argued that officers could have calmed the situation without gunfire had they exhausted other options before barging through the door.

It’s important because sometimes justified shootings by police can be avoided with more training, and a thorough, public and consistent vetting of procedures should be a requirement of any agency hoping to instill trust in the citizenry it serves. In this shooting, the officers were neither heroes nor villains, and under today’s rules their names would not be made public.

I hope that Andrew's concerns were taken seriously (though the way he says he was treated after they became public leads me to believe they were not).

I understand the department being angry with Andrew, but his memo is the kind of debate we all should be having about police involved shootings. Police should come out after their investigation and say, 'Yes, we cleared the officers but we feel that tactical mistakes were made in how we handled the incident. Those issues are being reviewed."

Simple, direct, forthcoming and accountable.

The debate should be about the shooting, not about what Andrew did with a memo.

Here is the letter Bealefeld is sending about naming police officers:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Last year in Baltimore, more than 6,500 cars were broken into (my stats end Dec. 13, and at that point the figure stood 6,589). That was a 10 percent increase from the same period in 2007. In one seven day period of December, city police say they took reports on 121 larceny from autos. In the first 10 days of January, 182 cars were broken into. And that's a 12 percent drop from that time period in 2007.

In today's print edition, I wrote about one more of these frustrating crimes. Nanci Gosnell took 10 5th-grade boys to visit the National Aquarium on Friday. It was a neat -- and expensive -- overnight stay, and the kids loved it. But when they returned to their two Cadillac Escalades parked on the second floor of the garage the aquarium told them to use, they found windows broken, the interiors ransacked and a missing iPod and GPS device.

These are two of the most commonly stolen items, and police have warned for years not to leave them or cell phones in your car. Even a charger will tell a crook that something more valuable might be hidden inside. But it wasn't the crime that got Gosnell angry -- it was that a police officer never came to her 911 call.

That left she, another chaperon and 10 kids standing in the cold, waiting from 9:15 to 11:05 in the morning, when they finally gave up, and having to explain to childen why Officer Friendly didn't show up. Turns out the officer made a mistake -- he went to a garage at 100 South Street instead of 100 S. Gay St.

But still, no one ever called Gosnell back to say the officer couldn't find her. The officer was a mere two blocks away. One extra call would have solve the whole problem and Gosnell could've driven home with at least the satisfaction that somebody cared. It's bad enough she fell victim to city crime after having scolded other mother's who expressed concern about sending their kids into the city. Her experience with police only soured her more.

I'm happy that the officer didn't simply blow off the call. But communication is key, and one more step could've have helped put a bright spot on an otherwise awful day.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

It was another busy weekend in Baltimore and I'm sure my colleagues and I will be sorting it out today. I spent Saturday on Orchard Street in the Seton Hill neighborhood, where complaints about crime finally boiled over.

On Friday, an undercover city police officer made a drug buy and when he tried to make an arrest, police said the suspect resisted and one of his friends opened fire on the officers. They returned fire and at the end two suspects were wounded and the officer, Dante Arthur, an 8-year veteran, was hit twice in the face.

It appears that Arthur is going to recover -- he's still at Maryland Shock Trauma Center and doctors say one bullet grazed his cheek and the other shattered his jaw. Police released Arthur's name on Saturday, but it surprised me that they also released the name of his partner, Daniel Harper, who also fired at the suspects. That seems to contradict a new policy of not naming officers who shoot people. The names of both officers are in public court documents that were released on Sunday, so maybe that's why the department went ahead and put their names out. I'll be checking into this.

This incident occurred just steps from where police had put up a spotlight to deter drug dealing from a dark spot where Orchard Street meets Pennsylvania Avenue. Drug dealers had repeatedly broken the light and cut the wire, and the city had repeatedly replaced it. Then one day the city stopped and the Seton Hill community was outraged. I wrote about the back-and-forth between different city agencies -- the cops wanted the light fixed but were told by somoene in Public Works that they were tired to making the repairs. Public Works told me it was a problem of the transportation department, which told me they just carried the light back and forth. I still haven't gotten good answers, and while the light was there on Friday night, residents told me it hasn't worked for a week and a half.

"Now that a police officer has been shot, maybe they'll do something," one Seton Hill resident told me on Saturday.

The community is now divided. Seton Hill residents who live in some of the city's oldest rowhouses complain that their Orchard Mews neighbors (who live in subsidized housing) are a threat to public safety and that the management company that runs the townhouse complex does nothing. A management official told me on Saturday that they want to hire private security but Seton Hill residents don't want to help pay.

On Saturday, an Orchard Mews official said she had just joined the Seton Hill Association and a board member from Seton Hill said there has been talk about reaching out beyond their historic boundaries. It's a start.

In other violence this weekend, a 14-year-old boy was killed and police this morning found a body in a taxi cab. Also, a city police officer shot and killed a man who authorities said was stabbing another woman. Looks like we'll have lots to discuss this week.

Here's an e-mail I got this morning from a city resident about Seton Hill and Orchard Mews:

I just read your article about the terrible shooting of the undercover Baltimore City Police Officer on Friday the 23rd. I would like to point-out that not only is it Orchards Mews in that local vicinity that struggles with violence, drug-dealing and drug use, there is also Pedestal Gardens (1500-1600 Block of Eutaw), Medeso Manor (1900-2000 Block of Eutaw), and Madison Park North (1900 Block of Park Ave, along North Ave.).  I believe all of these properties were sold through HUD and although privately owned, HUD does have some authority for the housing process.
 
In my opinion, I agree that there are hard working men and women who must live in these subsidized housing projects in order to make ends meet. Nonetheless, I think many of these honest hardworking folks would much rather have the opportunity to use a housing voucher and choose a place to rent as opposed to living in an environment that sustains a culture that truly threatens one's life if he or she chooses to speak out against the drug culture. Additionally, the onsite management of these porperties has the unenviable responsibility of confronting hardcore drug dealers when such persons seek to stay in these residences. Confrontation with a drug dealer seeking to live in one of the project housing units threatens the drug dealer's business of making money. This is met with violence toward one's self or one's family. Keep in mind the owners of these HUD properties do not come into direct contact with the drug dealers.
 
Another aspect of these housing projects that I find difficult to understand is how hard it is to find out who is the actual owner(s) of the property. Many times it is an LLC that has a resident agent but no description of ownership.... especially if it's a Maryland LLC owned by an out of state LLC.
 
I talk with the Baltimore City police leadership in the Central District. I do believe Major Bailey & William Cole are taking the problem seriously and devoting as many resources as they can toward the problems. Nonetheless, this is an issue that is complicated in many different ways. At the risk of sounding naive, I'd like to see the hardworking families in the housing projects receive housing assistance that can help them find a place to live that is safer, closer to work, or more amenable to their individual circumstances. Perhaps then, these housing projects, that provide cover for illegal activites, could then be turned into more productive endeavors.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Baltimore Sun education reporter Sara Neufeld has a story today that city schools chief Andres Alonso is urging students at the Homeland Security Academy in Walbrook to transfer and that he will ask the school board to close the building this summer.

I had visited this school a few months ago to speak at Phil Turner's journalism class. I noted in a column and blog how the students came from bad neighborhoods yet were eager to learn, and that they felt frustrated because they felt the school was unsafe, teachers didn't teach and the principal didn't care.

By that time, Alonso was already considering taking drastic action. After the column ran, the student I wrote about met with the mayor at City Hall, administrators from North Avenue descended on the building to keep order and the principal was removed. A good lesson for students studying journalism about making change.

As I reported, the school was in a deplorable condition. I was allowed to walk in without anyone questioning why I was there -- remember, this is a HOMELAND SECURITY school -- and I wandered around the building freely. Students complained bathrooms were locked, the halls were full of kids when they should've been in class, and, when Sara visited later, she noted an entrance sealed with crime-scene tape, even though there was no crime.

The Homeland Security Academy was born in 2005 when the city broke up Walbrook High School. The academy's theme is law enforcement and similar disciplines -- kids can learn about police or firefighter work, or the armed services. The name might have changed four years ago, but the troubled school's link to police began back in 1998. Here's part of a story I wrote in June of that year:

Students who return to Walbrook High School this fall may not recognize their old haunt in the heart of "the Junction." Classmates wearing sports shirts. Teachers in the halls. A police officer at the home of every student who takes a sick day.There will be a new principal. And a new name. Bleachers, long missing from the athletic field, will be in place. And skipping the cafeteria lunch to grab a sandwich at the corner deli will be out of the question.

Welcome to the Uniformed Services Academy at Walbrook.

Targeted by the state last year for takeover because of poor test scores and scarred by violence, the Northwest Baltimore school will be operated by a private, nonprofit group headed by Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier.

The long-awaited takeover became official this week when the city school board approved the consortium's choice for principal -- Audrey Bundley, himself a product of city schools.

Bundley, 38, leaves his post as principal of Greenspring Middle School and replaces former Walbrook Principal Marilyn E. Rondeau, who has yet to be assigned a new position.

"We're going to make a change to the school. We're going to clean the place up," said Col. Alvin A. Winkler, the head of the Police Department's Youth Bureau. "We want to make it fun to learn. But you can have fun without carrying a knife or a gun to school."

Parents have some reservations about the project, which transforms Walbrook -- on Edgewood Street in an area known as Walbrook Junction -- from a neighborhood school into a citywide magnet, where students will choose one of four themed acade- mies: police, fire, maritime or business.

It's a shame it has failed again.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey called me earlier this week to sell a story: "Peter, have I got something for you. You know that famous picture by Norman Rockwell with the cop and the runaway kid ... "

I stopped him right there. Not only do I know about it, the coffee cup I use every morning has that illustration on it. For the record, my desk is a collection of strange cop things -- two baseball caps with police written in Hebrew and Arabic, from my days in the Middle East, a cup from the city homicide unit that says, "Our day begins when your day ends," a "John Doe" toe tag from the morgue and a mouse pad from the gift shop at Los Angeles County Coroner's office, "Skeletons in the Closet" that has a chalk outline of a body and the slogan, "We're dying for your business."

So yes, I was interested in meeting the now retired Massachusetts State Police trooper who in 1958 posed for the Rockwell illustration. His name is Richard "Dick" Clemens. (He's seen above on the right shaking hands with Capt. Marty Lurz. Lt. James Pianowski is in the background of the photo taken by Algerna Perna).

Clemens flew here to present an autographed illustration to Baltimore County Police Lt. James Pianowski. Turns out Pianowski won a similar illustration last week at a leadership seminar, but gave it to a colleague who was best friends with an officer who suffered a stroke and died during an investigation last summer. Hearing that story, Clemens rushed to Maryland to make sure Pianowski got a replacement.

Clemens handed over the gift -- and another illustration to hang in the county police museum -- at the training academy in Dundalk during a class of recruits. (read that story here). They were in the midst of lesson when they were ordered to clear their desks of dictionaries and law books, neatly fold their caps and keep only their name tags visibile. They stood at attention as Clemens and members of the command staff entered. Clemens had arrived at BWI earlier and was greeted by a throng of officers from the Maryland Transportation Authority, and last night he spoke at a graduation of Anne Arundel County police officers.

Clemens gave a few remarks. The story is both simple and complex. Rockwell lived three doors from Clemens in Stockbridge, Mass. Rockwell's Bassett hound wandered over to Clemens' yard and the two became friends.

I think what struck me about the story that Clemens writes is that the entire illustration is staged. I must have known that the illustration couldn't have captured such a perfect moment -- the stoic cop staring down at a young boy he had just found running away, sitting at a soda fountain in a Howard Johnson restaurant. I guess I just never thought of it.

Clemens details (his full account is below) how much Rockwell manipulated the scene to get it right -- he changed countermen, tried differrent models, used a Howard Johnson but removed its name to make the scene more rustic. And the boy who appears with Clemens -- Eddie Locke -- was also used in another Rockwell painting -- that of a doctor giving a boy a shot.

This takes nothing away from the painting or the message, but it did remind me that waxing nostalgic about the old days doesn't mean the old days were perfect. Clemens told the recruits in Baltimore County that policing is more than the TV shoot-em ups, that they are serving people. He's right, of course, but then I think back to programs like Leave it to Beaver, the Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, and realize that like Norman Rockwell's "The Runaway," they too are spruced up versions of reality.

I asked Clemens whether such a painting could be done today and he answered, "I don't think so." I didn't include this exchange in the print edition of the column because when I got back to the office and reviewed my notes I wasn't sure if he understood the question. I'm not even sure what I was asking. I think I wanted him to address the state of policing today, the disrespect people have for law enforcement. It's too complex a question for a simple answer. Here is a letter he sent explaining his story:

Hermann.rockwell0127

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Baltimore branch of the NAACP has scheduled a rally at noon on Saturday, Jan. 31, to end the violence in this city. According to a flier being distributed today, many public officials are scheduled to attend. I mentioned a few weeks ago that this was being planned and I'm happy to see it's really happening.

I've been to many of these -- some held on street corners where young men have died -- others in auditoriums. State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy just completed a series of workshops designed to get youth and adults talking about wide range of issues, from truancy to class studies to gang violence.

For too long, Baltimore has accepted that between 250 and 300 people, and sometimes more, are going to be killed each year. It doesn't have to be this way (click here for a map of city slayings). Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton wrote in today's newspaper about a panel discussion in which young offenders told stories about why they resort to crime.

One youth said he could make $850 a week selling drugs, and that even if he stopped now, he would still carry a gun for protection. There is a disconnect between the youngsters and the adults. We spend a lot of time talking among ourselves about this problem. We need to find a way to actually do something.

NAACP- Voices Against Violence

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The more than 300 video surveillance cameras positioned around Baltimore has been a source of constant debate between city police and prosecutors. Now, a new report from the University of California, Berkeley on cameras in San Francisco cast doubt on their usefullness, at least as far as deterring violence crime. Above is a photograph taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Glenn Fawcett at a fatal shooting Jan. 9 on East Lombard Street.

Researchers concluded that the cameras did little to prevent murders, drug dealing and prostitution, but did help prevent property crime. The report also says that in court, the videos don't always provide conclusive evidence of guilt.

What I think from reading the 180-page report and reviewing statistics and cases in Baltimore is that the surveillance cameras help, but do not replace, good old-fashioned police work. Yes, cops love to release videos showing crimes, and we call watch and are horrified. But it's often hard to identify an acutal suspect from the video, and more often than not, only a part or the aftermath of a crime is caught on the tape.

That leaves attorneys to argue and jurors to decide what actually happened. In one case city prosecutors described to me, a witness testified to being one place on the street when the video clearly showed her standing someplace else when she saw one man shoot two other men. Defense attorneys seized on this to question her integrity, but did convict in the end.

One interesting point in the report is that prosecutors in San Francisco complained that cops put up the cameras but didn't consult them. That's important because the tapes, like bullet casings and other evidence, has to stay in what is called a "chain of custody" to ensure it's integrity once it arrives in the courtroom. Prosecutors in Baltimore complained several years ago that police didn't sit down with them to discuss how the tapes would be used and in what way.

"When the cameras were announced by then Mayor O'Malley and brought into the city, no one consulted with our office on how to use the cameras effectively to bolster prosecutions," Margaret T. Burns, the spokeswoman for the city State's Attorney's Office, told me. "They were viewed by the administration at the time as a quick fix to violent crime."

Cooperation has improved, but Burns said questions remain. She said community members continue to tell State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, "We would just like another police officer."

Added Burns: "Our preliminary results are similiar to the preliminary results in San Francisco. The cameras are not always relevant to the violent crime that is being prosecuted. They are helpful investigative tools. The footage is often used to point us in the right direction. Whether or not they have an overall affect on violent crime in the city, whether or not they are cost effective, are things we can't speak to, but they are questions that have been raised."

Burns said the cameras are catching a lot of nuisance crimes, such as people smoking marijuana, leading to arrests that she says "are being thrown out at a high rate." She added, "I think the jury is still out. I think the public wants some conclusions. They tell us, 'Rather than a blue box, we'd like Officer Friendly on the street. We do hear that often."

The problem isn't in what the cameras do or don't do, but how the program was sold. We love to tout new toys, especially expensive ones, and the city police surveillance program was initially sold to us as a way to prevent crime, keep people safe and help put bad guys in prison. The report shows that in San Francisco, the cameras don't prevent violent crime and witnesses and cops are still need to put criminals away.

There is a middle ground here. The cameras won't prevent or solve everything, but they will help cops and prosecutors with their cases. The Urban Institute is studying Baltimore's program and says a report could be out by March. I'm anxious to see what it says and whether they reached the same conclusions as out west.

Sheryl Goldstein from the Baltimore mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, told me that what is unique about Baltimore's camera system is police officers are often watching streets in real time and can quickly direct their colleagues to crime scenes. She read parts of the San Francisco report and sent me this response:

The report highlights issues with technology and stakeholder relations. Baltimore has made significant progress improving technology and building the relationship with the State's Attorney's Office which has increased the efficacy of the camera program. We continue to build on those areas. In addition, Baltimore's live monitoring has made the cameras an effective tool to engage in targeted enforcement and to capture and sometimes even prevent violent crimes in progress. I think the San Francisco study says that camera footage was only used to help solve or prosecute 5 or 6 cases of violent crime since 2005.  Baltimore has been far more progressive in that area. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

My Baltimore Sun colleague, Melissa Harris, attended the funeral for Mark P. Cohen, who died Sunday of cancer. Cohen, the city’s top homicide prosecutor, was interred this afternoon after a brief and crowded service at the Sol Levinson & Brothers Funeral Home on Reisterstown Road.

The region’s criminal justice leaders, from Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to the state’s attorneys in Howard and Harford counties, attended.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy gave the eulogy, describing the man who served the city for more than 30 years as "a symbol of what a good prosecutor should be." He had a "love of the law" and a strong "moral compass," she said.

He lead the office’s softball team, which garnered him the nickname "skipper," not only because of his love of sports but also so he could meet and mentor younger prosecutors, Jessamy said.

The rabbi who spoke before Jessamy described Cohen as "legendary" — the equivalent of an NBA star or major league ball player — an "icon" in the city’s criminal justice system. Comparing a thin, pale man with glasses and curly, blond hair to a meaty, superstar athlete would seem ridiculous, if it were not true.

Cohen, 62, underwent a transformation in the courtroom — from a shy man to a force to be feared.

I watched Cohen argue for one of the last times, if not the last, before Baltimore Circuit Judge John C. Themelis late last year.

In less than 30 minutes, Cohen reduced an "expert" witness hired by the defense to a near-quack, proving that the man from out of state didn’t know a lick about the case and had contradicted himself on numerous occasions.

His questions were as precise as a surgeon’s incisions. He asked the witness to point out which page in the record supported his claims and then stood silent, watching the man squirm for minutes as he thumbed through hundreds of pages of transcripts. The witness concluded, as Cohen already knew, that the facts didn’t support his statements at all.

Cohen, on the other hand, seemed to have the packet memorized.

His knowledge and experience will be difficult to replicate.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

I spent a snowy Monday morning with members of the Regional Auto Theft Task Force. Comprised by police officers from Baltimore City and County, they are responsible for catching car thieves, investigating insurance fraud and just about anything else connected between cars and crime.

They do have some neat tools. With cameras on top of their window-tinted SUVS, they can scan license plates -- each cop can do about 3,000 a day -- and get an instant alert if one comes back stolen. Officer Mark Bucsok showed me can examine the plates on cars driving by on roads or parked on streets or in lots.

Click here for a look at cars that are most popluar to steal.

It takes the guess work out such work. Before, officers Like Bucsok had to either call in a suspicious plat number to a dispatcher or type into a portable computer in his police car. Now, it's all done for him. And while in the past Bucsok would only check cars he knew topped the list of stolen cars, now he can check everything. "I'm getting hits on cars I never would have thought to be stolen," he told me.

On Monday, the officers hit Northwest Baltimore around Liberty Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road. It was a slow day -- a parade and snow seeme to keep traffic light -- and in a sign of a bad economy, even lots used to store stolen cars and parts were empty.

Since the task force began in 1995, here is some of what they've done:

Arrests
Drugs: 345
Carjacking: 228
Handgun possession: 115
Burglary: 119
Robbery: 80
Attempted murder: 53
Insurance fraud: 81
Murder: 13
Kidnapping: 8
Rape: 8
Counterfeiting: 2

Below are some more stats:

Vehicle Theft

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

I've been in a lot of courtrooms but never had I experienced the level of detail evident in yesterday's plea hearing for the woman who ran over Maryland Transportation Authority Police Cpl. Courtney G. Brooks.

The suspect, Kerri J. King, a dancer on Baltimore's Block where she used the name Precious, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and driving under the influence of alcohol. She got the maximum 10 years on the manslaughter charge, five years out of a possible 10 for leaving the scene of the accident and one year on the driving under the influence.

The DUI charge actually stemmed from a different incident that occurred three months before the officer was struck on Dec. 31, 2007, while directing traffic on I-95 away from the city 20 minutes before the New Year's fireworks started. King had been pulled over, ironically just a few hundred yards from where she later hit the officer, on I-395 on Sept. 27, 2007. Her blood alcohol level was measured at .12 percent that night, far above the .08 legal limit.

Prosecutors didn't pursue the DUI charged filed in connection with the later crash involving Brooks because, by the time they arrested her more than seven hours after the incident, her blood alcohol content measured .05. That's quite an accomplished night of drinking if you can still be near the legal limit after having stopped drinking for seven hours. Prosecutors said she started downing vodka around noon on Dec. 31 and drank continuously for 11 hours. They estimated that based on her body weight and height that when she hit Brooks she probably would've blown a 1.7 on the breathalyzer. That's not a typo. And yes, that's nearly comatose.

Assistant State's Attorney Thresa Shaffer is assigned to the homicide unit and is nothing but thorough. Normally at plea agreements, the prosecutor reads a statement of facts to which the defendant must agree before the judge accepts the plea. Shaffer read the most detailed account I've ever heard, spending 45 minutes recounting the events on on that fateful day for both Brooks and King. The officer got up and went to work. King got up, went to a strip club with a bottle of booze and partied.

The details are in today's print column; Shaffer deliberately contrasted the officer's day with that of King. She included what they were wearing -- Brooks his pressed uniform, King a revealing T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

Brooks had a hard and not very exciting job that New Year's Eve night. With thousands of people at the Inner Harbor, the city barred trucks from entering downtown. Brooks had to make sure that truckers didn't get off I-95 onto I-395, the spur that ends near Camden Yards and turns into city streets. Brooks relieved a tired colleague and stood in a wide section of the highway between the three-lane exit to I-395 and three lanes of northbound I-95. Police had set up 16 flares in groups of four, shaped like Vs, and had a truck that Shaffer said "was lit up like a Christmas tree."

Brooks' job was to make sure the flares stayed lit, which meant standing on the highway as cars sped by.

King had finished her night of partying -- she was tossed from a strip club where she tried to dance because she threw up and fell down on the floor -- and was thrown out of a pizza restaurant at the Inner Harbor because she was loud and obnoxious. I'm guessing the threshhold is quite a bit lower at Chez Joey than at Chicago Uno, but nonetheless, you'd have to be really drunk to get ejected from a strip club on The Block. She then got her car from a downtown garage, and was caught on video throwing up on a pay machine. The attendant had to help her.

King then got onto I-95, where it was revealed for the first time yesterday that an off-duty Maryland State trooper on his way home from work noticed her driving eratically and pulled up beside her on the highway. He stayed with her for a few minutes but couldn't detect anything wrong and pulled away, continuing northbound on I-95. King, realizing she was about to get off at I-395, veered to the left to stay on the highway. She crossed the area where Brooks was standing, running over the flares and hitting the officer, sending him flying 71.9 feet across the highway.

She tapped her brakes and continued driving through the toll, back into the city and then to her home in Elkton using local roads, afraid that going through more tolls would lead to her arrest. She was right; a man driving home to New Jersey had chased her down, got her license plate and told police, but after she had gone through the first toll. King called a friend to get directions to Elkton, stopped near a city church to inspect the damage to her Ford Explorer, called her son and was overheard by his friends saying she had done something really bad, stopped for cigarettes at a Royal Farms store, where a surveillance cameras caught her damaged vehicle and then abadoned the SUV at a truck stop. Truckers called police after seeing the car and hearing news reports of the accident. Police arrested her at her home shortly after 7 a.m. on Jan. 1.

It was clear that police had conducted a thorough investigation, tracking King through her day of drinking and her escape using cellphone records, video surveillance and interviews with everyone from a toll collector (she paid a $2 toll with a $50 bill); to the parking garage attendant who had to clean up her vommit from a machine.

Shaffer even had video of King throwing up while sitting in a bathroom on the second floor of Chez Joey strip club on The Block. The bathroom doors are open to discourage drug use and sex acts, but who knew there's actual video of strippers going to the toilet? Surveillance cameras really are everywhere! Shaffer spared the court a public viewing.

Shaffer even found a woman, who she described as a "church lady" who saw King inspect her damaged car after the accident on a street outside a church after midnight mass.

What I left out of the print column was Brooks' family. His grandmother spoke, as did his uncle (who also was his godfather), his sister and fiancee. We had covered much of that ground in earlier stories from the funeral, but I'll say here that the speeches were from the heart. They described Brooks as a prankster -- before leaving his post for the night, he left everything on in his cruiser, from the lights to the blaring stereo to the wiper blades, never failing to scare the next occupant).

A dozen Maryland Transportation Authority officers packed the courtroom, including the chief, Marcus Brown, but they chose to remain silent when it came time to address the court. The family said it all. Brooks' sister, Kelly Tucker, could barely get out a handful of words -- "It's been hard," she sobbed -- forcing Shaffer, the prosecutor, to take over and read her lengthy statement.

In it, Tucker had written about the man she knew as "Spankey," about how he helped her with his children, was always there for late night phone calls: "He was the person I called when I need to laugh," she said. Brooks wrote private poems for his family and took the family photographs. He was about to marry his girlfriend of nine years, Susan Geisler, (in the photo to the left) with whom he had two children, now ages 3 and 4. He had a teenager daughter from an earlier marriage, and he never got to see her graduate from high school. Shaffer told the court that his devotion to family was so strong that he proposed in the cemetery where his parents are buried and had planned to marry in the church his grandparents attend.

I think Tucker summed it up best: "He was just a great person to have in your life."

She turned to King, who never uttered a word through the hearing, "He will be missed, and all because someone did not care to not drink and drive."

Brooks' uncle and godfather, Derrick Brooks, told the court, "I don't know if any amount of time will satisfy us at this point."

Shaffer, the prosecutor, sent me an email this morning with a bit more about Brooks:

Officer Brooks grew up in NE Baltimore in a neighborhood off of

Northern Parkway

and The Alameda. Both he and his sister attended parochial schools (St. Matthews) until he joined the Army and became a military police. After his honorable discharge, he began his career with the Transporation Authority.

 

When I called his sister Kelly, to get this information for you, she asked me about the children of Kerri King. This is in keeping with the family’s concern from the beginning. She was sorry that the defendant’s children were in separate foster homes. FYI—The King children have been in foster care three times previously, according to information from MTA investigators.

Shaffer also sent me a copy of the notes she used when she read her statement of facts. It's not written in story-form, but we don't often unedited notes from prosecutors in such a signficant case. It's a rare opportunity and makes for interesting reading, though I warn you, many parts are mere fragments:

This case is  the story of Officer Courtney Brooks and Miss Kerri King, and how they spent their respective  New Year’s Eves,  last year, on December 31st, 2007, a day when their very different worlds collided, literally, at 11:17 p.m. on Interstate 95 northbound at Exit 53.

Courtney Brooks was a 40 year old police office. He worked for the Maryland Transportation Authority in the Commercial Vehicle Safety Unit. He enjoyed his work and felt as if he was contributing to our nation’s security, especially after. Friends and family sometimes called him “Spanky”

Kerri King is a thirty- five (35) year old exotic dancer. She was a freelancer for some of small clubs on Baltimore St. She sometimes used the name “Precious King” and was known by her friends professionally by the name “Defiant”

Courtney Brooks was a father to Casey, his 17 yr old daughter from his first marriage to Cabrina Sutton. He was also  father to a four yr old  son  Blake, (born 6-23-03); and to two yr old Regan (born 8-25-05)  his children by his partner, lover, friend  and fiancée Susan Geisler, with whom he had maintained an intimate monogamous relationship since 2000.  

Kerri King was a mother. She had four children. The eldest was a son, Codi, age 15. The youngest was still in diapers.

On New Year’s Eve 2007 Courtney Brooks left his home in Hampstead at 4pm to go to work, downtown. He was dressed in his police uniform , black nylon gun belt and various holders, handcuffs  and black work boots. The belt was fully equipped.

On New Year’s Eve 2007 Miss King also left her home in Elkton in the morning, also to at go downtown. At about 10 o'clock am, Codi thought she was going “to work”  Really, she was going “to party.”   Oddly enough for a young woman going to  party in the City on New Year’s Eve, she was dressed in pajama bottoms with a multicolor fruit print pattern; fuzzy green “frog head” slippers and a black spaghetti strap tank top with the logo “Lust, Baltimore Md.” spelled out in rhinestones across the chest. The pocket of her jacket that day  included three condoms and a green button in the pocket.

When it was all over, Officer Brooks  had  chewing gum in his mouth, glass fragments embedded in his holster and green metallic paint chips in his clothing.

When it was all over Kerry King had prescription painkillers and an open bottle  of vodka in her truck;   Officer Brooks’ blood on her windshield, mirror and in her clothes.

Kerri King is the Defendant in this criminal case.   She is charged with Vehicular Manslaughter,   Driving Under the Influence; Failing to Remain at the Scene of a Fatal  Accident and other charges in connection with the tragic death of Transportation Authority Officer Courtney Brooks at 11:17 pm on December 31, 2007 .on I- 95, northbound, @ Exit 53. 

At the time of the fatal collision, Officer Brooks was positioned in the gore area  that separates Exit 53N  to Interstate 395 and I-95N at mile marker 52.3. The gore area, which is a non travel V-shaped area  about 150 ft long was LIT UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE with sixteen carefully positioned flares and emergency vehicle lights activated. Officer Brooks was working a Homeland Security detail to prevent commercial vehicles from entering Baltimore during the New Year’s celebrations.
             
Kerri King was driving her dark green SUV in the exit lane for I-395,  after a long day of drinking alcohol which inhibited her judgment and ability to drive,  when she made an abrupt and sudden left turn from the exit to I-395 through the gore area, striking  Officer Brooks and propelling him into the air , landing 70 –some  feet from the point of impact.

Kerri King then fled the scene, northbound on I-95, first tapping her brakes but not slowing, not stopping, not concerning herself with the seriously injured father of three.

A sharp thinking witness to the collision, Ravanna El, who was driving home to NJ,  followed the defendant until she was stopped at the toll plaza on I-95 where he was able to write down her tag number and relay it to the police through the lady at the toll booth. 

Once the owner and driver of the SUV was identified, investigators, led by Primary Detective: Cpl Christopher Lamb, painstakingly recreated  Kerri King’s movements from the time she left her home until she was taken into custody at 6:28 am 

You will hear from a series of witnesses: some civilian, some law enforcement, some law enforcement  related.  The civilian witnesses can be divided into three time periods: pre-crash; crash; and post crash.

Some of the law enforcement or “law enforcement related” witnesses can be similarly organized, but they will testify additionally concerning: investigative and scientific evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt

an extremely inebriated Kerri King

a woman who announced she was there to party when she arrived at club Lust at shortly before noon [House-Jobin Wilson]

a woman who had been drinking for at least 11 hours

including at a pizza place where the manager had to speak to her several times and then cut her off, [manager Mike Owens and Natasha Jones]

who the went to another  club, Chez Joey  where she is captured on videotape falling on the floor, staggering up the steps, vomiting and unable to dress, [Christy Butt]

a woman who had been drinking for at least 11 hours

then is captured on videotape leaving her garage, having vomited on the pay to park machine, [Forest Spriggs]

so “high” that the attendant had to pay her ticket and insert it in another machine to get her out of the garage,

DROVE HER SUV,
 
And  killed Courtney Brooks  when

she left the travel lanes of the highway

crossed INTO and through 

the well lighted and marked GORE area

and hit Officer Courtney Brooks, [at 41.77 mph per reconstruction by Sgt Kevin Ayd]

whose body was propelled up onto the SUV shattering the windshield, breaking off the antennae, headlight and part of the grill,

and thrown 71.9 feet onto the concrete surface.

throwing him high enough into the air that three teenagers in the car behind her were stunned,  stopped and backed, {Ebony Johnson, Ebony Brown, Brandy Campbell]
. 
Throwing him high enough that a car several lengths behind Kerri   King saw him.  [Ravanna El]

And she doesn’t even slow down. Just taps her brakes not slowing, not stopping, not concerning herself with the seriously injured father of three.

The evidence shows she actually knew what she had done.

Church lady sees her at mulberry st  [Ashanti Kenyatta]

She gets off toll roads and calls Codi “I hit a cop car” “I ll get arrested”[Matthew  Pritt}

Calls her neighbor for directions who gets out a map and GPS [Tessie Hayes]

Stops at the Royal Farm store- conversation, people in lot, videotape.

Dumps the car at a truck stop. [own statement, Hayes, Codi]

IS picked up the next day about 7 hrs later and is given breathlyer: results:

  Opinion of toxicologist Brain Lavine  1.7 at POI

 Staggering disheveled make up down her face asks to sit down reeks of booze

Exhibits to include:
reconstruction of the collision, including impact speed.

toxicology results and elimination rates.

autopsy of Officer Brook’s body Multiple injuries. Need photos [Rubio]

Examination of item’s recovered from the crime scene as  well as clothing worn by the defendant and victim using high intensity lighting, magnification and polarized light microscopy

Sal Bianca ---puzzle and exam and concude

results of DNA testing of blood on her car Jason Befus

results of DNA testing on vodka bottle.  Jason Befus, forensic scientist iii

With witness testimony corroborated by:
cell phone records showing her movements after the accident
videotape from multiple locations showing her condition.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

City Councilman Bernard C. 'Jack' Young took exception to my column in today's Baltimore Sun about the indictments filed against Mayor Sheila Dixon, a city councilwoman and a developer. I'll let him have his say first, though I want to thank him for giving me yet another opportunity for the crime columnist to weigh in on this subject.

Mr. Young wrote:

I'm deeply troubled by your characterization of the hard working people at City Hall. There are many City Council members who are role models for the youth of this City to look up to. Many of us volunteer our time and resources to the youth programs in our Districts. You went as far as to say that the City Council and Mayor finagled a pay raise while cutting the police budget which is misleading the public. The raise that you claim was finagled was approve by the Citizens of Baltimore in a referendum. The purpose was to appoint an independent Commission to recommend raises for the Elected Officials just like in other jurisdictions. That was the process that was voted on to insure that the Elected Officials could no longer give themselves a raise. No one included you knew that we would be in this finacial mess that we are faced with. I don't blame nor lump all reporters in the same boat when bad or distorted reporting is done, so you should not lump all of us together either. You should get all of the facts straight before you make yourself Judge and Jury of the hard working and dedicated workers at City Hall. I just could not let you get away with that without letting you know how I feel about what you have written.

I agree that there are City Council members who help the youth, volunteer their time and perform great deeds in their communities. My argument is that the indictments has made thier jobs more difficult. It's harder now to convince kids and others to do the right thing when the very people helping them are alleged to have done the wrong thing.

I didn't say everyone at City Hall is corrupt. I said the charges that a few of them are corrupt taint the rest. The hard working employees and elected officials Mr. Young is talking about should be appalled by the allegations, outraged that everything they are doing could be undermined by the petty actions of a few. On Saturday, the city will be in the national spotlight with an historic visit by the president-elect and everyone wonders whether Dixon should recuse herself to help Barack Obama avoid -- yes -- the taint.

And yes, the mechanism  that led to the pay raise was approved by voters long before anyone anticipated the financial mess we are in today. But it still had to go through the Board of Estimates, and instead of being listed in an upfront manner, it was hidden using arcane language that prevented anyone who didn't know what job classification numbers meant from understanding what was going on. In other words, the only people who knew what the vote was about were the people who wrote the agenda and the people voting on it, the very people who benefited.

If it was truely above-board, why not list it s a "raise for the mayor and city council" and defend it in public? The way it was done only proves to me that officials knew a pay raise during a budget crisis would not sit well, and tried to find a way to take a public vote without revealing what it was they were voting on.

Mirriam-Webster's on-line dictionary definds finagle, "To obtain by indirect or involved means" and "to obtain by trickery." I stand by my use of the word.

It was the teenagers I talked to who felt let down. But even more troubling, they dismissed the accusations as simply the way business is done. Some get caught. Some don't. These are teens who were rescued from the street and are in school trying to make something of themselves. Is this the lesson we want them to take home?

Today we learn from the Baltimore Sun's City Hall reporter Annie Linskey that Dixon might score some points because the city did not keep a list of companies that do business with the city. That meant that she, and others, could argue that they had no way of knowing which companies they could take money from and which ones they couldn't, so how could she be charged with inappropriately taking money from them?

So Dixon could be helped by the city's own ineptness.

The arrogance just keeps piling up.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton went to a vigil last night and ended up at a shooting in Southwest Baltimore. "Couldn't believe," he wrote me in an e-mail at 10:47 p.m.

It's one more sad part of a city trying to stop the killings. The city's NAACP president, Marvin "Doc" Cheatham Sr. is trying to organize a rally on Jan. 31 to get people angry at the violence. There have been more than a dozen slayings in Baltimore so far this year. Here is the Baltimore Sun's homicide map.

Here is Justin's story:

More than 70 people gathered in the street in front of Tomasina Degree's home last night to mourn the death of her 23-year-old son, Kip, who was fatally shot in Southwest Baltimore last week. They remembered his love of dancing, and talked about how he had found God and was making something of his life. A youth pastor concluded the candlelight vigil with frank warnings of the dangers of gun violence.

But Baltimore's streets recognize no moment of silence. As the crowd dispersed, several patrol officers sent to monitor the vigil jumped into their cars and joined the slew of officers responding to a shooting less than a mile away in the Jamestowne apartment complex, where a man was rushed to Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

The vigil for Kip Degree had been relatively upbeat -- there were more laughs than tears as they recalled his infectious personality, seemingly always breaking into spontaneous dancing and goofing off.
 
"Kip brought positive energy everywhere," said one friend. "We all know how good of a person he was. So crazy, so fun."

Co-workers and his manager at Shoe City spoke about how well he connected with customers, and how he aspired to become a manager. "He was like a son to me. I never, never saw him unhappy," said a man who identified himself as Degree's manager.

"We partied together, we danced together, we cried together -- we did everything together," said his mother, Tomasina Degree, who played Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from speakers blaring from her front porch.

Kip Degree was shot in the head last Thursday night in the 5000 block of Dickey Hill Rd, found in the hallway of an apartment complex. His mother said she did not know why he would have been there, but recalled being worried after not hearing from him for several hours. She returned home after driving around looking for him to find a card tucked into her front door that instructed her to call Baltimore homicide detectives.

She acknowledged that her son had gone through troubles in life -- court records show several arrests related to domestic violence and peace orders -- but said he had become deeply religious and repented his sins.

"Put down the guns, stop the violence, and keep Kip and my family in your prayers," she pleaded.

Minister Anthony N. Savoy, a youth minister at New Generations Ministries, spoke directly to the issue of street violence. He decried black-on-black violence and gang activity that he said is impacting generations of Baltimore's families.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Back in august and September of last year, I reported on a horrible attack on Emilia Miller, who had been visiting Baltimore from Jennings, La., and was accosted outside the Spotlighter's Theatre on a Sunday afternoon on St. Paul Street.

The 66-year-old woman was here to get a slipped disc repaired at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She and her family took an afternoon to see a play when a man approached Miller and took her pack which contained money, a camera and her medical records.

Her son-in-law Michael Brand chased him and a motorist helped to get police and arrest a suspect, identified as Dajuan Daugherty of Middle River. Brand got a feel for the topsy-turvy world of Baltimore justice when they learned that Daughterty, first charged as an adult by police, would be charged as a junvele by prosecutors. That's because he allegedly implied he had a knife but didn't really have one. A charge of armed robbery was reduced to robbery, meaning he could not be charged with an adult.

But that decision was quickly reversed when prosecutors discovered the suspect wasn't 16, as he had told police, but actually 19.

Yesterday, prosecutors said Daugherty accepted an offer and pleaded guilty to the robbery charge. He was sentenced to 10 years, all but three suspended, to attend a boot camp and serve five years on probation.

Brand sent me an email about his experience.

Well, the trial for Dajuan Daward (a.k.a. Daugherty) -- the mugger who attacked & robbed my mother-in-law in front of The Spotlighters Theatre -- was scheduled for yesterday (13 Jan.).  However, he decided to waive his right to a jury trial and plead guilty instead.  For the mugging, as well as his subsequent knife threats against me & another witness who were chasing him, he received a 10-year sentence:  the first three will be spent in prison (which will include a "bootcamp" designed to rehabilitate youthful offenders). ...  Unfortunately, the court did not make any provision for him to be required to eventually make financial restitution to Mrs. Miller for the $514.00 worth of cash & personal items that he and his partner (who escaped with her purse and was never apprehended) stole from her.

What follows is a statement Brand read in court yesterday before the suspect was sentenced:

Victim Impact Statement (Michael's Version)

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore's Health Department is releasing today an interim report on its Operation Safe Streets program, modeled after a similar program that helped Boston curtail violence and gang activity. One of the most startling details was that not a single homicide occurred in the East Baltimore neighborhood of McElderry Park in the 17 months the program had been in place.

The report by Daniel W. Webster, the co-director gun policy and research at Johns Hopkins University, called the lack of slayings in that one community "a highly statistical reduction" and noted that trends showed that the area should have had four homicides over 17 months. For more, please see my column today.

The program combines law enforcement already being used with mentoring and conflict resolution porgrams. Webster found that Safe Street workers did extensive outreach with "high-risk clients" and held 53 "mediations of potentially-lethal disputes."

Webster said: "Young men in McElderry Park ... were much less likely than in the two neighborhoods that had not implemented the program to hold attitudes supportive of using guns to resolve disputes."

Click on the link above to read the reports. Below is a letter that highlights the results:

Jan13.2009.Letter.jhspH

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

My former colleague (and boss) and now fellow blogger David Michael Ettlin sent me a picture he took over the weekend of a sign on a downtown city street prohibiting cruising. Mr. Ettlin professed to have never seen such a sign and was curious.

The signs went up in the mid-1990s when police were trying to curtail what were then weekly "car shows." Teens from all over Baltimore gathered with pricey cars, usually on Eutaw Street near Lexington Market, and drove around the blocks to show them off, for mostly female spectators.

Fights and shootings sometimes broke out, and Lt. Ken Finkenbinder likened it to a "Mardis Gras every night." I went out with him one night in June 1996 and discovered that 3 a.m. on Eutaw Street was worse than rush hour. "The only thing that makes them go away is the sunlight," the lieutenant said.

City leaders didn't quite know what to do. Kurt L. Schmoke was mayor then, and he wanted to make sure people were safe but at the same time make inner-city youths feel welcome downtown. Police estimated that up to 4,000 people gathered on four blocks around the market from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. It was the place to be seen, get dates, talk to friends, park on sidewalks and show off your wheels. It took police 21 cruisers to monitor the event.

The signs were put up to help police by making it illegal for drivers to circle certain blocks during certain times of the day. I think the car show went out of business, or moved to some other part of the city, when the west side of downtown started to get redeveloped and some late-night shops, such as Crazy John's, shut down.

If anyone's heard of this event continuing, please let me know.

Here's part of the story published in the Baltimore Sun on June 3, 1996 (the photo below was taken by Baltimore Sun photograher Karl Merton Ferron:

 

By day, the Eutaw Street corridor near Lexington Market is a bustling marketplace, drawing thousands of shoppers who converge on a neighborhood struggling to recapture its old-time luster.But during the pre-dawn weekend hours, teen-agers and young adults turn the west side of downtown into early morning gridlock as they parade their pricey cars for a street corner audience.

"It's like Mardi Gras every night," complains Lt. Ken Finkenbinder, a 25-year Baltimore police veteran who says he is powerless to stop the "car show" that makes 3 a.m. on Eutaw Street look like evening rush hour.

"They run into each other. They shoot each other. They just don't care," Finkenbinder said. "The only thing that makes them go away is the sunlight."

The last weekend in May, an 18-year-old honors senior from Walbrook High School was shot and killed during an argument just west of Lexington Market, near several nightclubs that police say add more revelers to the already boisterous crowd.

Two months ago, a police officer shot a 15-year-old boy in the leg after the youth threatened him with a .357 Magnum handgun in front of Crazy John's in the 300 block of W. Baltimore St.

And two years ago, a series of violent incidents near the market sparked concern, including one in which a dozen people opened fire into a crowd of 200 because, police said, "they just wanted to see people run."

City officials have been trying to revitalize the shopping district for the past several years.

Lexington Market, which attracts 15,000 people a day, is the nation's oldest continuously operated public market and a major city tourist attraction.

    Area shop owners complain that reports of violence cut into their profits. "Everyone who would normally come [to shop] won't because they perceive it as a cops-and-robbers street," said one, who didn't want his name used.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has to maintain a delicate balance of protecting the image of the city's business districts while making inner-city youths feel welcome in every part of Baltimore.

"We want the young people to come down and enjoy downtown," the mayor said. "But we don't want them to cause problems for others. We don't want to create a situation where fights get started and escalate to something more serious."

Eutaw Street between West Baltimore and West Saratoga streets has been a hangout for years, anchored by Crazy John's to the south and 7-Eleven to the north -- two all-night establishments that form the cruising boundaries.

Police estimate that between 2,000 and 4,000 people -- most between ages 14 and 25 -- gather in that four-block stretch, mainly Sunday and Monday from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.

The hot spot is the parking lot next to Crazy John's, a free-for-all of drinking, fistfights and revelry.

"It's something to do," said Damon Lan, 25, a West Baltimore resident who sat on the roof of his Suzuki Sidekick parked on Eutaw Street early yesterday. "The clubs all close early. People don't have anyplace else to go. We're not causing no violence. We're just chilling."

It is the place to be seen. Groups of young women saunter up and down the streets in tight dresses and short skirts, drawing hoots from men.

A cacophony of noise fills the air -- from hip-hop music blaring from car speakers to horns blasting helplessly at clogged intersections.

Drivers stop in the middle of roads and talk to friends. They park on sidewalks. They drive the wrong way down one-way streets. They cruise the blocks, offering up a steady diet of dark-colored Lexuses, Mercedeses, BMWs, Jeep Cherokees and Acura Legends.

"I like to watch the Lexuses," said Keisha Jones, 18, who took in the action from the steps of the Baltimore Equitable Insurance Building at Eutaw and Fayette streets. "Those are for the big boys."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Next to Baltimore, Prince George's County has always been considered one of the most dangerous jurisidictions in the state. Today, the Washinton Post has a story on how the county has made a turnaround, announcing drops in crime for the third consecutive year.

Final numbers for Baltimore's 2008 are not yet available, though slayings dropped fro 282 to 234. Stats from mid-December show drops in the city in shootings, rapes and car thefts but rises in assaualts, burlgaries and thefts from cars. At the same time, arrests in many categories were down last year, including for homicide, larceny and assaults.

This year in Baltimore is not starting out well, with a dozen slayings in the first two weeks. See the Baltimore Sun's homicide map.

A week before Prince George's released their numbers, officials in Montgomery County announced a 7 percent decrease.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

My column in Sunday's newspaper quoted several students talking at a forum about Baltimore school safety and truancy. One student, Chante Bonner, 16, told the city school police chief that she felt unsafe at Western High School because, she alleged, the police officer assigned there stayed in her office and didn't patrol the hallways.

That prompted responses from readers of Sara Neufeld's education blog and from the school's principal, Eleanor P. Matthews, who called the student's statements false. At the time, the school police chief took notes and promised to look into her allegations.

Here is what Matthews wrote (she gave me permission to post these lines):

Every Sunday morning, I read the Baltimore Sun from front to back page; yesterday I read your article with interest, foremost because your topic dealt with the students in Baltimore City, and secondly because a student in my school was featured.  My pleasure at the mention of Western was quickly replaced with consternation when I read the line credited to our student, Chante Bonner, "We have one officer and she is always in the office or sitting somewhere.”  And, your reply, “It matters that the police officer assigned to Chante's school doesn't seem to do her job.”  I was astounded.  In two quick sentences your article impugned both our school and our police officer’s reputation.  To imply that students at Western are not inclined to attend school because of the school police officer, or to assume in print that our school police does not do her job is erroneous. 

You wrote, “…So let's try and find a way to keep Chante safe in her school…”  Obviously, you have never visited our school.  Western exhibits most of the characteristics of a college preparatory school.  Students are in the classrooms during the class periods and out of the hallways; very little mischief occurs in the hallways or the restrooms.  Over 94% of our students arrive on time to school every day.  Western has one of the largest number of minority students enrolled in and taking Advanced Placement Classes. 

The vast majority of our students are focused on their studies; yes, there are students here who are involved in minor mischief, but please don’t make the assumption that one student, one who is well known to all of the administrators in the office, speaks the truth about the safety issues in our school.  I do invite you to visit our school at your convenience.  

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Baltimore has long remained silent on violence.

Either we accept it, are indifferent to it or we think death is a part of what it means to be Baltimore.

The year 2008 ended with 234 dead, far fewer than the 282 from 2007, and we survived a last minute surge in November and December. Now, shootings are up in January -- a New Year doesn't always mean a fresh start. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld talked about needing help, about people rising up in anger.

It wasn't the first time such a statement was made. The city police union repeatedly criticized then Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke for his lack of passion when it came to death on the streets. His comemplative and bookish approach to solving crime failed to rally his citizens.

Years later, police commissioner Edward T. Norris stood inside Johns Hopkins Hospital after a police officer had been shot. He said "public outrage should be in order" as he held up the gun used in the shooting -- a 14-inch long ruger Blackhawk used by deer hunters. "It's like what they used in Dirty Harry movies," Norris said.

In the first week of 2007, city police took 87 guns off the streets. And sadly that's not even a record. On New Year's Day 2001, city cops got 120 guns and made 100 arrests.

After a dozen killings in the first 10 days of this year (another 17-year-old was killed Sunday night), the city's NAACP president, Marvin L. 'Doc" Cheatham Sr. told me it's time for a city rally. He wants to hold it downtown on Jan. 31, along with city council members, Bealefeld and residents. The Rev. Willie Ray has held small rallies at killng scenes for years and has even considered giving up because too few people attend and more people keep getting shot.

"Someone needs to take the lead responding," Cheatham told me, hoping some publicity will help get things started. "We need to do it now and not way until we get all the way to the end of January, and not wait until March or April when we get 100 deaths.

"It seems to me that we get lulled to sleep in accepting these numbers," Cheatham continued. He said he held rallies on three consecutive years on Gilmor and Baker streets in West Baltimore, near where he grew up, and watched young people pass on by without stopping. By the third rally, Cheatham said they were mourning some of the same faces who had igorned the group a year or two before.

Reporting death is no longer enough. "In some way we must, for the sake of our fellow citizens, get them outraged about 12 deaths in 10 days," the NAACP head said. "If all we do is report the killings our community will continue doing what we have done - basically little to nothing. Please work with me in putting different approaches together to get us to help ourselves.

"Eventually it's going to hit everybody," he added. "We need to bring different players together, show a unified front. We've got to put some responsibility on ourselves. The community has to get up in arms. It's us killing each other."

Anyone interested in helping out can reach Cheatham by calling 410-669-8683.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Baltimore's 13th slaying in 12 days came last night in Northeast Baltimore. Another teenager, another candle to light at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation on North Charles Street, where they mourn the city's dead youth every Sunday.

The fatal stabbing occurred at The Alameda and East 32nd St. in Coldstream-Homestead Montebello nearly one year to the day that another youth was killed a block away from there. On Jan. 9 of last year, Zachariah Hallback, 18, was shot in a robbery while waiting at a bus stop at The Alameda and East 33rd St.

Here is a look at one of the articles The Baltimore Sun ran on Hallback, by police reporter Gus G. Sentementes and school reporter Sara Neufeld:

Though he had dropped out of high school and was completing his GED, Zachariah Hallback had found a cause to believe in: improving inner-city schools.

The 18-year-old was an advocate with the Baltimore Algebra Project, a student-run tutoring group known for its passionate stance on improving education. He regularly wore on his hat a button displaying the group's slogan, "No Education, No Life."Hallback was shot in a robbery last Wednesday at a bus stop in front of two friends at East 33rd Street and The Alameda in Northeast Baltimore. He had visited a friend who was attending Morgan State University. He died in a hospital Saturday.

"He was funny," Faye Brown, 21, said of her friend during a vigil at the scene of the killing yesterday. "He had a great attitude. He was all about life. All he wanted to do was better himself."

At the vigil, Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, pleaded with city residents to help police catch Hallback's killer.

"This was a good kid," Cheatham said, "a good kid who was doing good things with the Algebra Project. ... He was killed senselessly. ... If a young good child like this can be killed - not a bad child, not a kid doing something wrong - then it could happen to any one of us."

We don't yet know many details in the latest killing, part of a wave of violence that has swept the city since the beginning of the year. A fellow crime blogger, Jerry 'Buz' Busnuk, a retired Baltimore police commander, sums up the year in his latest blog entry. And Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III talked about violence in a wide-ranging news conference last week after several slayings in East Baltimore.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Kevin Gary, left, is pictured with red-tinted eyes, a symbol of his affiliation with the Bloods gang in Baltimore. He pleaded guilty today to federal racketeering charges. The picture was taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Andre Chung. 

For years, Baltimore officials denied there were gangs in this city. They were neighborhood groups, kids who controlled corners but were not organized in the way, say the Crips and Bloods were out west in LA.

And for years it was true. We had groups such as the Old York and Cator Avenue Boys, or the Veronica Avenue Boys -- some violent, others not, all somehow involved in drugs and other crime. But in recent years, evidence mounted that more structured gangs were making in-roads in Baltimore. Kids were getting beaten and killed for wearing the wrong "colors." Gang graffiti covered walls and alleys.

In 2007, when I was an editor overseeing crime coverage, I became convinced we needed to do a story on this. A veteran photographer, Andre Chung, teamed with reporters Annie Linskey and Gus Sentementes and hit the streets. Andre, a veteran of city streets who has spent time photographing the worst of the worst in Baltimore, and spent a month with a city homicide detective, pulled me aside to say he was worried the paper had concluded the city had a gang problem and he wasn't convinced.

I told Andre to report it out and come back to me later. It took less than a week. Andre reported that not only was there a gang problem, there was a big gang problem. The work he, Annie and Gus did finally, after years, proved that gangs were out there and were in some way connected to the West Coast gangs of the same name. Here's their compelling story.

We detailed a killing in which members of the Young Gorilla Family shot and killed a member of the rival Bloods for simply walking through their turf, the Barclay neighborhood near Guilford Avenue and East 22nd Street. Baltimore school police identified 33 gangs in schools. No longer were groups of neighborhood kids buying drugs on their own and selling them on corners. The drug trade was now becoming organized with rituals and deadly reprisals.

The reporters found a man named Kevin Gary, who was then 25 and told us how he had started dealing drugs when he was 15 in Baltimore. He was recruited into the Bloods while in prison and talked to us after he got out, saying he had given up the lcriminal ife but still stayed on as an "elder" of the Tree Top Piru Bloods gang sect. He said he wanted to make the gang legit, publish a magazine on gang life called "B'More Careful" and open a child care center called Teachers Teaching Parents. The initials are unmistakable -- TTP -- for Tree Top Piru.

Gary was photographed wearing red tinted contact lenses -- the color of the Bloods.

As a reporter, this was the smoking gun behind Baltimore's gang problem. True, he talked to us because he felt it going public was the first step in making the Bloods a legitimate organization. The federal authorities disagreed, and arrested and charged him with a variety of crimes.

 On Friday, Gary pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a racketeering conspiracy that involves running the gang from 2005 through 2008, distributing drugs and "sanctioning violence on behalf of the gang." Federal authorities say he was caught in a telephone conversation telling a gang member he would get them a gun and ordering another member to be beaten for violating the rules. "Kevin Gary contacted incarcerated TTP members and sought to have one of them murder an inmate with the Maryland Department of Corrections, who Gary believed killed his brother," according to a statement from prosecutors.

Here is a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office: 

FIFTH TTP BLOODS GANG MEMBER PLEADS GUILTY

IN RACKETEERING CONSPIRACY

        Baltimore, Maryland - Kevin Gary, age 27, of Baltimore, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to conduct and participate in the activities of a racketeering enterprise known as the Tree Top Piru Bloods (TTP Bloods), announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.  This case is the result of a long-term joint investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office and the United States Attorney’s Office.

        According to Gary’s  plea documents, TTP Bloods originated from a street gang known as “the Bloods” that was formed in Los Angeles, California in the early 1970s.  As time passed, the Bloods spread to other locations and broke into individual  “sets.”  One such Bloods set based in Compton, California was called Piru Bloods.  From this set emerged a subset known as Tree Top Pirus (TTP).  The name derived from a group of streets in Compton named after trees.

        TTP spread throughout the country, including Maryland.  TTP in Maryland has its roots in a local gang which began in the Washington County Detention Center in Hagerstown, Maryland in about 1999.  The gang was formed for mutual protection in response to the aggression of other inmates from Baltimore.  TTP spread throughout Maryland mostly as a result of recruitment from inside Maryland prisons. Over time, a group of female gang members formed a subset of TTP known as the Tree Top Pirettes.

        As part of the conspiracy gang members of TTP would meet regularly to discuss past acts of violence and other crimes committed by gang members against rival gang members and others; to notify one another about gang members who were arrested or incarcerated; to discuss the disciplining of TTP gang members; to discuss police interactions with gang members; to share with one another the identities of individuals who may be cooperating with law enforcement and propose actions to be taken against those individuals; to plan and agree upon the commission of future crimes, including murders, robberies, drug trafficking, and assaults, and the means to cover up these crimes; and to reinforce gang rules.  TTP gang members and associates of TTP purchased, maintained and circulated a collection of firearms for use in criminal activity by TTP members.  In addition, TTP gang members and associates of TTP committed acts of murder, and other acts of violence against rival gang members and imposed discipline within TTP itself, and committed violent acts on other occasions as deemed necessary.            

        From at least 2005 through February 2008, Gary was a member and leader of the TTP Bloods, participating, as part of the racketeering conspiracy, in the distribution and possession with intent to distribute controlled substances.  Gary was responsible for the distribution of 50 grams or more of crack cocaine and one kilogram or more of heroin, as well as 3,4-methylenedioxymeth-amphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as Ecstasy.

        In addition, Gary committed and sanctioned acts of violence on behalf of the gang.  Specifically, on September 15, 2005, Gary, along with other TTP members, participated in the beating and murder of Terrance Williams in a gang-related dispute.  In recorded telephone conversations in 2006 and 2007, Gary is heard telling a gang member that he would obtain a gun for them and ordering that other gang members be beaten as punishment for violating gang rules.   In February 2008, in a series of recorded telephone calls, Kevin Gary contacted incarcerated TTP members and sought to have one of them murder an inmate with the Maryland Department of Corrections, who Gary believed killed his brother.

        Finally, in furtherance of the racketeering conspiracy Gary obstructed justice.  Specifically, in a letter written on November 20, 2006, while he was incarcerated pending trial in state court for the murder of Terrance Williams, Gary wrote to a TTP co-defendant in this case and directed her to take steps to prevent the eyewitnesses, who were females, from testifying against him and another TTP member at the state court trial.  Additionally, on December 19, 2007, in a recorded telephone call with a TTP member, Gary, based on paperwork provided to him by a TTP co-defendant, identified an individual he believed was cooperating with law enforcement officials in a 2006 murder case against two TTP gang members.                     

        Under his plea agreement, if accepted by the Judge, Gary faces a penalty of 30 years in prison. U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles, Jr. has scheduled sentencing for March 27, 2009 at 1:00 p.m.

        Twenty-four additional gang members have been charged in the racketeering conspiracy. Steve Willock, age 29, Van Sneed, age 32, both of  Baltimore, Maryland, Shaneka Penix, age 22, of Dundalk, Maryland and Orlando Gilyard, age 21, of Woodlawn, Maryland, pleaded guilty to the RICO conspiracy.  Willock was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Gilyard was sentenced to over 9 ½ years in prison and Penix to 10 years in prison.  The remaining defendants’ charges are pending.

        United States Attorney Rosenstein and Baltimore City State’s Attorney Jessamy praised the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Baltimore City Police Department, Baltimore County Police Department, Wicomico County State’s Attorney Office, Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office, Washington County Narcotics Task Force, Western Correctional Institution, North Branch Correctional Institution, Anne Arundel County Police Department, the Hagerstown Police Department and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for their investigation of this Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force case. 

        Mr. Rosenstein and Mrs. Jessamy also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Weinstein, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Mason, a cross-designated Baltimore City Assistant State’s Attorney, who are prosecuting the case and Assistant State’s Attorney LaRai Forrest who assisted in the prosecution.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Yesterday, city police officials held a news conference to discuss a rise in homicides in East 
Baltimore. It turned into a wide-ranging discussion on crime what police are doing about it. Here is a  partial transcript of the 40-minute briefing:

Maj. Terrence P. McLarney, head of the homicide unit:

"So far, in 09, we've had nine violent incidents resulting in death. All told, there are 11 victims. ...  of those 9 incidents, we've obtained a warrant for homicide for the very first murder of the year, 
Luzerne and Monument, which occurred just a couple hours after midnight.

In the remaining 7 incidents, we have solid leads in several of them. We're looking particularly at the double murder in the 1100 block of Orleans that occurred January 2, and we're also working diligently on the murder which actually occurred on the third, of Mr. Tian Wang, who was delivering food when he was a victim of a robbery and gunned down. We also feel we're moving forward on the murder that occurred on the 3700 block of Reisterstown Road.

We have help from VCID [a task force assigned to high-crime areas]; they have put operations squads at our disposal in the Eastern District, and we're working in conjunction with the Violent Crime Impact Team on the majority of these murders. So far this year, we've arrested six for homicide.

"We still have cases going from 08. ... We are working diligently with everything the department has to give us on this rash of murders that has occurred since Jan. 1, and we're cautiously optimistic on several of the cases."

Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III:

"Good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming. I'm going to run through a few things here that I think you might find instructive, and to talk about the start of the New Year, where we finished last year and that's going on in the city at least as far as we see. We finished up 2008 with a 20 year low in homicides. And, we said all throughout last year, many of you in this room, and on the streets of Baltimore, we said that we weren't declaring any victory. We certainly at the conclusion of the year did not count that as a victory. We counted that as an accomplishment, but not a victory."

Moving into 2009, we have to look at, most certainly, the last several months of violence in the city. We can't be maneuvering in and out of police tactics at random. We have to look over periods of time and gauge the most effective use of our resources and talents. And so, looking out over the past three months and looking at some trends of things that we've seen, we've made some adjustments around the city.

Certainly we've talked about guns, you've heard us talking about guns for the last 18 months. We've engineered some very good strategies locally in partnership with the City Council and the mayor's leadership to enact not only some good local laws, as it pertains to the gun offender registry, which we think is very successful, and the 48 hour rule on lost and stolen guns, which we anticipate will pay dividends as well. But a lot of work remains to be done there. We have done our best and we will continue to do our best, especially with the legislative session looming, to ramp up statewide attention on this gun violence issue as it relates to our city. We have focused on bad guys with guns, but we really need everybody to get behind this notion that gun offenders belong in jail, and we want to keep them in jail for as long as possible. We're training our officers better, we're motivating our officers to get guns, we're doing everything we can within our lane of travel to focus on bad guys with guns, but we really need all of our partners, all of the partners, to step up and help support our efforts to reduce violence in Baltimore by focusing very stridently on these bad guys with guns.

A quick snapshot of our year so far: since the beginning of the year, these brave men and women of the police department have recovered 87 guns. We've charged 37 people with gun offenses. I think that's a pretty good start. We're seven full days into the New Year and that's a doggone pretty good start. Last night, what our night looked like in terms of gun enforcement, down in South Baltimore, in Brooklyn, some officers did a search and seizure warrant on St. Margaret Street and recovered four handguns from the house. Four handguns. This was at 7:30 p.m., along with 209 pieces of cocaine, 3/4 ounces of cocaine, and 1 1/2 ounce of heroin, and $4,500. It’s not going to change the world in drug dealing, but we took four guns out of a very volatile area. That's focusing our energy in the right places, where we need to be.

That would be a good grab, but at 9:30 last night, in the 2400 block of Loyola Southway, where we've experience domestic violence and deployed some of our resources, street officers encountered two young people, a young man and a young woman -- the man had a suspicious bulge that drew their attention to him. As they exited their car to investigate, the man, Steven Cox, threw down 4 ounces of marijuana and 40 ziplock bags. The young lady continued on -- she tried to get into a house and was unsuccessful in doing so. Just before they grabbed her, she discarded a .22 caliber handgun.

Again, that's a good grab, but that's not all.

The East Side of Baltimore, where we've been hit with several violent incidents, we've redeployed some of our violent crime initiative teams, and three teams were in action over there last night. One did a search warrant in 200 block of N. Port St. and recovered a .22 caliber rifle, an ounce of cocaine and about 30 pieces of crack cocaine. A second squad got information from a source about an individual armed with a handgun. After doing an investigation, they weren't able to find the person, but they found the gun in the 700 block of N. Luzerne. These are streets that are very familiar to us.

Finally, a third squad working in conjunction with homicide and CID detectives was able to locate two people who were potential witnesses to a homicide in the 200 block of South Clinton Street. We're posting people and moving our resources around and trying to make effective use of everything at our disposal, not the least of which is some of our camera enforcement.

Last night in the Eastern, we made 19 arrests using camera monitors, an initiative we put together very quickly."

Bealefeld then talked about Linden Lounge and the decision by a Circuit Court Judge, Lynn Stewart, affirming the city's padlocking of the Reservoir Hill establishment last year, citing frequent violence and drug dealing.

"Judge Lynn Stewart affirmed our stance on the padlocking of Linden Lounge, not without controversy, and certainly the proprietors explored their legal options. We're encouraged by Judge Stewart's ruling, primarily because what we're trying to say to business owners in Baltimore is that they have to be responsible partners for public safety. This is a very affirming message of what we've long contended: that the police department should not have to act as a de facto security guard for people engaged in bad business practices who aren’t committed to public safety in this city. Everyone has an obligation to that.

You can't open up a place and allows anarchy to exist. We want to work with businesses, we reach out, and we want businesses to succeed. It would be counter productive for us not to want people to come to Baltimore to grow their businesses, but the mayor has made it clear, and we're working very energetically to hold everyone accountable for violence in Baltimore. Everyone has a stake in that.

I can't go around saying teach kids to read, clean up lots, engage kids in baseball leagues, and don't do something comprehensively. Bad businesses should take notice: you're not going to get a pass. And every soon I'll be back at this podium talking about other businesses that we're going to padlock. That will be coming shortly. Judge us on our actions, judge us on what we're doing. The homicides -- recently we're experiencing a spike, we've had 11 murders over the past 7 full days -- but again I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing. The homicide detectives are engaged, we put several of the murders that occurred this year down already. A tricky case in the Northeast District that they moved quickly on. There is an individual we want for the first murder of the year, where a cousin wound up shooting his other cousin. We have a warrant for that individual. Three people we're looking for murder right now. In two of those cases, we're sitting on their houses. Literally, as we speak.

We did a good job [with priority warrant service). It's easy to say prioritize robbery warrants, 
shooting warrants, but we engineered a formula to look at the offender. If there are open failure to appears, but the offender has a horrendous background, we want to work quickly to capture those guys. We identified 550 priority warrants on Dec. 1 and so far we've made 352 arrests off that priority warrant list. I've got to hand it to the men and women of this police department, they're adopting the tactics we put in front of them and they're pursuing them with great vigor.

On who in the city should step up:

"We're going to go back to the state legislature talking about things like diminution credits for 
people on gun offenses in jail. We're going to be talking about holding people accountable on a variety  of offenses and not just handgun violations, you know, the robbers, people out there doing armed robberies, we really have to focus on them as well, and include them in the giant pool. I think politicians are one, is an easy one. Courts is another one. [Baltimore State's Attorney] Pat Jessamy and [Maryland U.S. Attorney ] Rod Rosenstein have been fantastic partners to Fred Bealefeld and this police department. They have been.

But again we need everybody ... to step up and understand they have a big role here. We need parole and probation to continue to do what they do, but really focus on these bad guys with guns and make them a priority in their life. I can't, I mean look, what I have at my disposal is 2,500 dedicated cops to go out here and try to make this city safe. I gave you three examples just from last night. They're willing to do that. They need help. they need people to call in when they see guys with guns. They need people to call in when they know people have guns in their houses. We need that kind of help too. We need religious leaders, community leaders talking to people in this city and saying, 'You've got to knock this off.'

It can't just be the mayor and the police commissioner standing up and trying to engage people's morality about violence in this city. We need everybody to step and do their part, and if they support what we're saying about handgun enforcement and bad guys with guns, they need to make phone calls to their elected officials and say, 'Daggonnit we support these guys, and give them the help they need.'

"You've heard me talk about these guns. Eighty-seven guns, 87 guns in the first seven days in the  streets of Baltimore? Come on. That's the commonality here. We've got people riding around, talking around and standing around with guns. We mentioned this yesterday at the mayor's briefing. There was a man on downtown Water Street just a couple nights ago who's car window had been broken out. He was jumping up and down yelling about the fact his car was broken into. As he was jumping up and down, a gun fell out of his waistband."

Here are some documents listing the most recent homicide arrests and a letter about the padlocking of Linden Lounge:

Police Presser 0108

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Earlier today, Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, send me some links to a police shooting in California to demonstrate its violent aftermath. He argues that this helps prove his case -- that names of cops who shoot people should be withheld from the public.

I still disagree -- dozens of people have been shot by officers over the past few years and rarely has there been unrest. The closest came was in the 1990s when police officers shot and killed a man in the Upton neighborhood. A struggle over a gun between a man and two officers led to shots fired, an officer struck by friendly fire and a dead man tumbling down stairs to an open door where a crowd could see.

Demonstrations led to rock throwing and several police cars and TV trucks were damaged. When police asked the media to move to another location, the demonstrations subsided but the anger did not. The police commissioner addressed residents and calmed fears. Open dialogue, not hiding names, calmed tensions. The names of the officers were quickly released, the head of the homicide unit and his sergeant gave interviews -- including a telling statement that the gunman had gotten hold of a cop's gun, pointed it at his chest and fired. Only the gun didn't go off, and his partner shot the man after hearing the click.

Powerful. Open. Responsive. Let people talk and describe what  happened and you'll go a long way toward resolving problems.

But for full disclosure, here's an email I got today from a reader who disagrees with me. Jim Higgins wrote:

I have found your articles of interest but must disagree with the conclusions you have reached in this article.
 
Too many times in this world, half-truths are published about a person and these half-truths never receive the attention of the original piece of news. I don't believe with-holding an officer's name in a shooting is the root cause of mis-trust between citizens and the police department.
 
The question you raise but don't address is why do many residents not trust "the cops." Why do the residents in high-crime areas think the cops are out to get them. Perhaps you could do a piece on that before you jump to the conclusion that with-holding an officer name in a shooting is not a good policy in establishing trust between citizens and police officers.
 
Maybe the root cause is that the citizens in high crime areas are treated differently that those in low crime areas during the police investigative process. Perhaps things are reported but never addressed?
 
From my vantage point, the Baltimore City Police Department Leaders need to act upon what is right, rather than what is popular. Maybe the thing to concentrate on is how are police officers protecting the safety of the citizens of Baltimore. When a shooting occurs, normally more than one officer is present, perhaps we need to pause and reflect on how the "team" of officers involved are performing their duty. And then there's this cartoon from the California case:

Guglielmi sent me this email earlier today: "You should talk to officers and get their perspective and see firsthand how real threats and concerns of personal safety are. You or I as civilians can't even pretend to imagine these experiences so I urge you to get their point of view.  I did some basic digging and we've investigated 23 cases of threats against officers last year."

As per policy, police officers respond to reporters' questions by sending them back to Guglielmi's office. But I'm going to take his advice and hit the streets this evening.

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

I have to give the Baltimore Police Department credit for great timing.

Just as they're denying to divulge to the public the names of police officers who shoot people, they decide that a report detailing problems in the department's DNA lab, which have already led to the director being fired and raised questions about at least a dozen criminal cases, should not be made public.

Why?

Police say it's not in the public's interest.

The department's chief legal counsel, Mark H. Grimes, sent a letter to the Baltimore Sun explaining that he believes the document is exempt under the Maryland Public Information Act citing a provision that says certain documents can be withheld if they are "contrary to the public interest."

To which public is Mr. Grimes referring?

Certainly not the public that is me. Or my editors. Or, I hope, my readers.

I would argue that the "public" is a great deal interested in knowing how flaws in the police department's DNA lab could put criminals back on their streets, to drive up crime, to be arrested again, to maybe go free again because the lab can't get its act together.

It was the Baltimore Sun that first broke this story about how DNA samples were contaminated by technicians who had left their own DNA evidence on at least 13 cases. That doesn't render the samples bad, but police had not taken DNA samples of thier own workers to hold on file, complicating the test results because their own workers could not be quickly eliminated as suspects.

Already, the issue has caused headaches in one trial, that of a man convicted of killing a Baltimore police officer. During a routine sentencing hearing, prosecutors had to recall as a witness a lab official and spend an hour both defending the lab and explaining what had gone wrong. Brandon Grimes got life without parole anyway, but his lawyer plans to appeal and one issue will be the DNA lab. A national legal group that works to reverse wrongful convictions is calling for a separate investigation into the city lab.

And so we ask what has been done to correct the problems. And the department decides that its answers are not in the public interest.

I won't try to make a legal case here -- I'm not a lawyer -- but it's worth mentioning that the police attorney, Mr. Grimes, cites a part of the public information act that deals with investigatory records and that denials are reserved for documents that would "interfere with a valid and proper law enforcement proceeding" or, among other things, "endanger the life or physical safety of an individual."

And a state law that took effect Oct. 1, 2007 -- which is designed to regulate DNA labs as if they were hospitals by 2011 -- says, "Forensic laboratory deficiency statements and plans of correction are public documents" and mandates that "A forensic laboratory shall make discrepancy logs, contamination records and test results available to the public within 30 days of a written request."

We have seen a deterioration in information being released by police over the past few weeks and months, and residents have long complained that they aren't getting information they want about crime in their neighborhoods. I can only conclude from this latest dismissal that police have no interest in helping the citizens understand what they do and how they operatate, in good times and bad.

Mayor Sheila Dixon has made community policing a centerpiece of her administration, reversing a strategy in which tens of thousands of people were locked up on charges that judges and prosecutors routinely threw out. Cops beg for help from citizens in solving cases, but you can't go asking for a handout from people and then shut the door in their face when they seek routine information.

We're not asking for homicide case files filled with senstive interviews and information that may or may not be true. We're not asking to reveal confidential informants or out the latest high-tech crime fighting tool. All we want is a report on the general conditions of a lab that helps put away criminals, and a clear understanding of problems that could lead to convictions being overturned. I can't imagine the public not being interested in this.

And I don't buy a response from the police public affair's office that their hands are tied because of a legal opinion. The lawyers can argue that they don't have to release a document. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

The letter from the attorney Mr. Grimes:

Police

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The debate over whether Baltimore police should name officers who shoot people in the line-of-duty got more interesting when the chair of the City Council's public safety committee and City Council president wrote a letter to the police commissioner about whether a new policy banning the release is a good idea.

The department's new spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, says it's needed to protect the safety of police officers. The letter from Jack Young and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake notes that a careful balance must be struck between safety and ensuring an open and transparent department.

This morning, after my column criticizing the new policy came out, Guglielmi sent me this email with a link to a story in California:

This story reaffirms the importance being cautious with police identies

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

(01-06) 22:06 PST San Francisco -- Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who fatally shot a man on the Fruitvale Station platform in Oakland early New Year's Day, is being kept under wraps and moved from place to place after receiving a number of death threats, BART spokesman Linton Johnson confirmed Tuesday night.

Mehserle, 27, a two-year veteran of the BART police force, shot and killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward as Grant lay face-down on the station platform following a fight between two groups on a train.

While the nature of the threats hasn't been revealed, Johnson said at least one of the threats was made to Mehserle's family. As a result, he has been moved twice.

Here's the letter:

 

Scan 001

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Baltimore police are no longer publicly releasing names of officers who discharge their weapons, a change that defies years of accountability. I'm not exactly sure what prompted this change at this moment; last year, police spokesman Sterling Clifford floated the idea, which we at the newspaper first learned about when attempting to obtain the information. An article at the time prompted the mayor's office to say it would review the proposal before it took effect.

Today's column in the print edition is about this issue as well.

Now, a new spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, has taken up Clifford's quest. He says it's in part to protect officers from retribution and that he finalized his decision after doing several ride-alongs with officers on the street.

It's possible there have been threats made on officers, but so far there hasn't been any convincing evidence put forward. Guglielmi told me last night that the department investigated 23 cases of threats against officers last year; he did not say how many involved officers who shot people.

He also cites a backlash against Officer Salvatore Rivieri, who was on patrol in the Inner Harbor last year when he was caught on tape berating a teenage skateboarder. Yes, the department released the officer's name, but he also shouted it loud enough so that it was heard on the tape that was posted on YouTube -- followed by, "The sooner you realize that the longer you're going to live in this world."

That's an example of an officer whose identity we want to protect?

In the early 1990s, a police officer shot and killed a suspect and was later indicted on manslaughter charges. He was convicted, but the case was overturned on appeal. He had shot an unarmed teenaged driver in the back of the shoulder during a traffic stop, and he argued that his gun accidentally discharged whe the youth backed the car up and hit his hand. The department said his neglegence rose to the level of criminal misconduct.

The shooting sparked protests, and people spraypainted his personal van with the words "killer." But all that happened after he had been indicted and his name made public throught the courts. The Police Department also named him the day after the shooting, and criticized him for failing to notify the dispatcher that he had fired his weapon, delaying the response of detectives. Also in the 1990s, after a police officer shot a youth in the back of a head during as struggle for a gun, protesters marched through the streets holding coffins with the officer's names on the side.

The point is we've had far more controversial police shootings in the past than we have now, and no thought, at least publicly, was floated then that names of cops be withheld.

This is not the time to withhold information from a public that already distrusts the police.

Today's column shows what we learned about Officer Charles M. Smothers a few years ago when he shot a man outside Lexington Market. He was was on the force despite being on probation for shooting at his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. In another case last year, we learned an officer who shot and killed somebody had shot four people in the past.

This is all information we should know, and can't know without having the names of the officers. Yes, other Police Departments do not release names. But others, such as Prince George's County, do. We can go back and forth forever on who does what. Baltimore should do what's right for Baltimore, and we should be building trust instead creating new ways to undermine it.

Gary McLhinney disagrees with me. He's a former long time union chief who represented Baltimore police officers, later served as chief of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police Department and is now a labor consultant. He told me he's been to 200 police involved shooting scenes and that naming officers before investigations are complete "puts them and their families in jeopardy."

He said the officers' children often get teased and made fun of in school. "A department that wants to take care of their officers shouldn’t be releasing the names," he told me. "The name is not being redacted from reports. It's just not being publicly announced the minute the bad guy hits the pavement. Let’s find out the facts. The media is quick to put on so called witnesses ... There's a lot of erronious information that comes out after a police shooting, a lot of it from the Police Department itself. What needs to happen is that everyone needs to calm down to ensure a thorough and fair investigation is completed."

City police say they will release the name of the officer if the department rules the shooting unjustified. If it's justified, apparrently they won't release anything. My problem is that the department doesn't relese the outcome of any internal investigation as it stands now, regardless of how it turns out. And public disciplinary hearings called trial boards are almost impossible to attend because the city refuses to give us a schedule.

That does nothing to assure the public that the case has been handled appropriately.

Last year and the year before, city officers shot and killed about one person a month. One officer was indicted on manslaughter for shooting an unarmed man during a scuffle. You have to go back to 1996 before you find another criminal indictment for a police duty-related shooting. Police do investgate shootings for violations of internal policy -- the shooting may be legally justified but still violate the department's own rules and procedures.

This is dated, but since access to city police has been curtailed in recent years, I have only this to offer. In 1999, I was allowed to review more than 100 internal files on investigations involving police misconduct, including shootings. What I found was that officers were more likely to be disciplined for accidentally shooting their gun while handling it in the locker room than when shooting at a human being.

Time after time I sifted through files that contained only a few pages even though the shootings were listed as "out of policy." Those involved cases in which officers opened fire on cars -- in one case, the officer said he fired at the windshield when investigators concluded the rear window had been shot out. Another officer who fired at someone and missed, only to have a stray bullet graze a child in the head, was written up only for failing to properly report the missfire.

The vast majority of police involved shootings are justified. But the cases in which an officer was recently indicted, the Smothers case in which the officer shouldn't have been on the street at all and the case in which an officer has shot five people over the course of his 19-year career, demonstrate the need for accountability.

Some police argue that their names should be shielded to keep them safe; other police say the names are part of the public record and they owe the public a complete accounting of when their members use deadly force. I worry that this new policy will result in the release of some names and not others.

For example, an officer who shoots and wounds a drug dealer, and then charges the dealer with a crime, will probably see his name in the court charging documents and then in the newspaper. If the person he shot dies, there's no one to charge and then the name won't be released. And if the department insists that releasing the name hinges on the outcome of internal investigations, then we need a system in place to make that information available.

The public needs to be able to assess the integrity of officers hired to serve and protect. Now we'll never know how many times an officer has shot someone, whether berating a youth over a skateboard is part of a troubling pattern or simply the product of a bad day. We deserve to know.

One more bit of irony. Late last year, an officer coming back from the District Courthouse on North Avenue saw a man stabbing a woman on the street. He stopped, jumped from his car and when the man didn't stop, shot him. A woman bystander told the officer to shoot the man and finish him off; the wounded man, who had attacked his wife, begged the officer to shoot him again.

Rightly the officer refused. The woman died. The man survived. Police refused to release the name of the officer, yet his name became public when the man he was shot was charged with killing his wife. We wrote a story about the case, included the officer's name -- Joshua Laycock -- and what the bystander had urged him to do.

City police had one complaint -- that this newspaper didn't make the officer into more of a hero. That from a department that wouldn't release his name and declined our invitations to interview him or his commanders.

In the end, this new policy means the citizens of Baltimore will know less about the men and women who protect them. It will be harder to find out about officers like Smothers, who shouldn't have been on the force and whose shooting, while ruled justified, cost taypayers $500,000. And it will be harder to learn about officers like Laycock, who tried his best to save a life and might well be a hero.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Last year, the notoriously dangerous east side of Baltimore was the darling of the police department -- homicides went down and at one point the district boasted the best crime reduction in the city.

This year, six of the first 11 slayings in the city have occurred in East Baltimore, the latest at Eager and Bond streets this afternoon. My colleague, reporter Justin Fenton, who got there about 45 minutes after the gunfire reported crime scene tape and crime lab technicians, but little else. Police tell us that three people were shot there, and one of them died.

We're checking with police now to see what is going on that side of town. I know Maj. Melvin Russell, who I spent time with a few months ago while he showed off his new community policing programs. He is working tirelessly to build a community policing strategy and re-engage frightened residents in helping the police help them make their neighborhoods safer.

I got a call earlier today from an official working to redevelop parts of the east side who expressed concern about the gunfire. At this point, we're not sure if there's a drug war going on or something else, but I'll report back when we hear.

Here's the latest tally from East Baltimore:

1. Jan. 1, 12:55 a.m., Man fatally shot 700 N. Luzerne Ave. (He died Jan. 2)
2. Jan. 1, 5:30 p.m., Man fatally shot 800 N. Kenwood Ave., (He died Jan. 4)
3. Jan. 2, 5 a.m., Two men fatally shot 1100 Orleans St.
4. Jan. 2, 1 p.m., Two men shot and wounded at East Biddle Street and Luzerne Avenue
4. Jan. 3, 11:50 p.m., Man fatally shot 800 Webb Court in apparent robbery of delivery man
5. Jan. 7, 2 p.m., Three men shot, one fatally, East Eager and Bond streets

Here's a map of city homicides.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The history of Oldtown Mall is depressing. Riots, looting, fires and a long-stalled development plan. One of the big property owners, Stanley Zarden, told me back in 1999, "Everybody that is here should get a medal."

I returned to Oldtown Mall, a pedestrian thoroughfare off East Monument Street in East Baltimore, yesterday after the owner of a Chinese carryout, Tien Zin Wang, was shot Saturday night while delivering $20 of food to what turned out to be a fake address on nearby Webb Court.

The 51-year-old, who immigrated here in 1991, died earlier this week. He was shot four times, twice in the back, according to his son, Sam Wang, who sped to the shooting scene shortly after bullets flew and his wounded father managed to call the store from his cell phone.

Sam Wang told me his aunt once ran the carryout but gave it up because the neighborhood had turned bad. His father took it over five years ago because he wanted his family to work together. All told, he, his father, mother and three sisters ran the place despite aggravation from neighborhood youths who threw rocks and trash at the store, and even a firebomb.

The night he was shot, Sam Wang said the family was sitting down to eat and preparing to close. It was about 11:30 p.m. when an order came in for food at 810 Webb Court. The father told his family to stay and eat, that he would take care of the last order. He drove off in his SUV with the food, a cell phone and pocket change. He was shot about 11:50 p.m. near his parked SUV. Wang said whoever shot him didn't take the food or the phone.

I remember Oldtown Mall from a fire in 1999. Two stores burned in a blaze that took firefighters hours to extinguish. Even then, a plan to revitalize the outdoor mall -- one of the city's earliest farmer's markets before the turn of the century -- had been in the works for five years. A new shopping center was planned, along with new stores.

Last year, Baltimore Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella reported an update, which sounded much like the story years earlier. Developers needed more time and more space. Yesterday, I talked with M.J. "Jay" Brodie, the president of the Baltimore Development Corp.

He told me that plans are still about a year away. The developers discovered that the narrow street layout didn't work for a large supermarket, so the the city started to acquire an additional 18 homes outside the mall area that carries an history designation. They have got all but seven, and the remainder should be in hand by fall, Brodie told me.

"The developer can't go forward until it has the property in hand," he said.

City officials are working with the transportation department to reopen Gay Street to traffic through the mall, and everyone is waiting for the city's housing department to finish demolishing Somerset Homes across the street. Brodie said work at the now empty public housing complex has been slowed because of environmental concerns, and workers have to take it apart virtually brick by brick. That could take another year, he said.

Brodie said officials also are working on a master plan that would include Oldtown Mall in a larger area being studied from Monument south to Fayette Streets. That would include some areas now being developed as part of the Johns Hopkins redevelopment plan so that Oldtown could tie into gains being made there.

Still, Brodie agreed that it's tough for the few tenants sticking it out. And the killing of one of them doesn't help matters any. Brodie also said his staff members, while attending community meetings to discuss the mall, have noticed more and more drug dealing in the neighborhood. He said he planned to contact the Eastern District major and police commissioner to discuss the problems. Eastern District, which had relative few homicides last year in what is normally the most dangerous area of the city, started this year out with the first four. Wang's was the fifth on that side of the city.

Wang's story is sad. He was a businessman trying to made a buck and keep his family together. He came to America for a better life and got killed trying. His son told me had had delivered to Webb Court many times in the past and had no trouble, so he didn't think of the address as particularly dangerous. He said his father also warned him not to fight with anybody who tries to rob him.

Police aren't saying what if anything the gunmen took from Wang. His son told me he carried only pocket change and that nobody took his phone or food.

We're only seven days into a new year and we've already lost an immigrant who wanted a better life, three teens who should have more lives to live, and who knows who else. Barely a week into 2009, there are already too many killings to keep track of.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

My colleague, Baltimore Sun police reporter Justin Fenton, attended a community meeting last night in Southeast Baltimore. On the agenda: prostitutes and a recent murder in Canton. Here is his report:

The numbers don't mean much to Maj. Roger Bergeron.

At the first Southeastern District Police Community Relations Council meeting of the year, he said he's happy about reductions in homicides (43 percent), shootings (35 percent), and rapes. But he said he knows that those numbers are of little solace to those experiencing break-ins, vandalism or seeing prostitutes in their neighborhood. Bergeron said he hopes his officers this year will forge even stronger ties on their posts.

Among the initiatives he hopes to put in place this year is a full-time liaison to the community's burgeoning Latino population. Bergeron, who speaks fluent Spanish, said there has been a significant increase in Spanish speakers in the area over the past three years - and conversely, a rise in the number of victims of crime who are uncomfortable or unable to talk to police.

He created a new post in the O'Donnell Heights neighborhood in 2007 in response to several disturbing shootings and homicides, and there was only one shooting there last year. He expects to add two more posts this year.

And Bergeron said he wants to tackle the issue of prostitution, increasing sweeps and looking for women with open warrants. He said he doesn't like the idea discussed recently in the Southern District of sending letters to suspected Johns informing them that they were spotted in high-prostitution areas, saying the potential for error could be extremely harmful to the innocent. But he does want to turn up the heat on those who are confirmed to be engaging in prostitution, suggesting that their names be published in the newspaper as a form of embarassment for them and their families. (Former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke proposed this in the mid-1990s -- singling out Johns -- but gave up after he learned city cops had only arrested two men on prostitution charges over a three-month period).

If he can come up with the funding, the major wants also start a so-called "John School," a program where first-time male offenders are told of the negative consequences of prostitution on neighborhoods, the criminal justice system and prostitutes themselves. Programs are currently in several cities, including Washington. Bergeron suggested the program could be funded here through court fines imposed on johns.

The Southeastern District was where York County, Pa. politician and former police officer Michael Johnson Jr. allegedly went on Nov. 2 to target prostitutes. Posing as an officer, police said Johnson picked up a woman - who claimed not to be a prostitute - on S. Conkling St. and said he would arrest her if she did not have sex with him.  Johnson would later be charged with committing two similar rapes in York, and fled when local authorities gave him the option of turning himself in. With federal marshals closing in, he committed suicide on Dec. 22 in Albany, NY.

Bergeron talked briefly about a Dec. 23 homicide in Canton. Police said 22-year-old Alaina Ciara High was shot in the head and dumped in the 800 block of S. Bouldin St., and a vehicle was seen leaving the scene. Few details have been released, but High had several drug arrests and Bergeron said "she lived a pretty hard life, for sure." As for Canton residents concerned about the incident, Bergeron said she did not have any ties to the neighborhood and said the location was likely chosen because it was quiet and not heavily policed.

"We've got some leads, but nothing concrete," he said.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We're five days into the New Year and it looks much like the old.

Seven slayings on Baltimore streets. It's too early to start projecting the body count for 2009, but this doesn't bode well. Last night, another youth fell to gunfire, a 16-year-old boy, and another candle will be lit at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation. Then, this afternoon, we learned that a 17-year-old shot in the head on Friday has died. Now the church as two more names.

On New Year's Day, the church had its annual vigil in which they lit a candle for each city homicide victim 18 and under, and then blew out the candles one by one as part of a somber ceremony. There were 43 candles. Now, just a few days into 2009, there's already one more candle to be lit this coming Sunday.

Reporters are still gathering information on the victims, and I'll have more to report later on the circumstances. I'll also update you on the church servives; the reverend, Jan Hamill, asked parishioners to fill out cards noting how they planned to help Baltimore's children this year. They wren't required to sign their names -- the pact is between them and God -- but Hamill said she'd let me read through them and report back to you on their ideas.

Last week I met with the commander of the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit, Maj. Terrence McLarney, a longtime "murder police" who expressed frustration over his unit's clearance rate but also noted many factors that makes these recent years differ from the past -- gang violence, witness intimidation, strong mistrust of cops and a young detective unit (of 48 detectives, one-third has 15 or fewer months experience). I also published the city's analysis of 2008 slayings. At this time last year, there were two slayings.

Last week, I published a blog with some comments from a reader, Patrick R. Lynch, who works on Pulaski Highway in Baltimore. He sent me a longer version of his letter on violence over the weekend and I'll share it with you this morning:

The Baltimore City recently released a report pertaining to how many youths were murdered in Baltimore city. The report took my breath away. Forty-three lives lost to violence in 2008. Forty-three youths' lives laid to waste.

I particularly remember reading about one of those murders. It only occurred a few weeks ago. A fourteen year old youth was doing the "good neighbor" thing before Christmas, delivering grapefruit to an elderly neighbor. Imagine this young man's mother, patiently waiting for her son to return home. Waiting for what? Certainly not for word that her son had just become the most recent addition to the police blotter listing. Just imagine the mother's angst when she learned this young man was never going to come home again. Pathetic. It makes any feeling human being want to vomit.

The genocide of our youth (many committed by other youths) is indicative of the downward spiral of our city. Have we as a society become inured to the murders of our youth (as well as adults) to the point where we now accept it as a by-product of existence/survival in the big metropolis? How can this template for city living be shattered and another template put into place that shows our youth the inherent value in all of us? When has murder been relegated to the status of that of being only a bit more dangerous than volleyball?

Ignorance and lack of education foment much of the violence that we see in our city. It is incumbent that the mayor, the police commissioner, and the clergy in Baltimore come up with more aggressive measures to attempt to get through the youth of the city. Organize and market outdoor rallies that focus on taking back our neighborhoods and counseling the youth. Even one life saved would be most beneficial. The alternative is to watch our city continually (and perhaps exponentially) expire to wanton vigilantism. Perhaps offer the youth who are contemplating harming another to verbalize his or her feelings to a counselor or minister. Talk them off that figurative "ledge"  Come up with a slogan that is catchy to the youth, something that might make want to take a second look. Lure the youth by offering handouts (for guns, perhaps). Many of these youths do not have an adult figure in their lives they can talk to or confide in. Provide them with adults (perhaps those who live in their own neighborhoods) with whom they can talk out their frustrations, anger, displeasure, etc. before they choose to pull the trigger that renders yet another juvenile lifeless.

Organize neighborhood rallies if necessary; the theme being to snuff out youth violence. Go door to door and seek out the youths; ask them to put their potential feelings of violence toward another "out there". Getting one juvenile to talk it out would be a great moral victory, would it not? It just might be a life-saving measure.

I was born and raised in Baltimore County but am very proud of the city, ever since as a youth I would visit my maternal grandmother and walk down to Greenmount Avenue to "whiff" the fumes of the passing buses. I loved going to the city, and still do as a middle-aged father of two teen-aged sons.

As adults, we cannot stand by indolently on the sidelines. We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves as responsible human beings and ask "how can I help"?

I truly dread to think of what will become of our great city if we don't take a stand against violence, particularly as it pertains to our wonderful youth, the torch bearers of the next generation.

 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As I write this, on Day 2 of 2009, three people have been shot and killed and two more were seriously wounded. By the time you read this, there will no doubt be more violence. This picture is from the latest of the killings on Orleans Street in East Baltimore. The good news is that the city recorded 234 slayings in 2008, compared with 282 the year before. 

I'm not going to try and figure this out in this posting, but I will tell you what police are telling us about 2008. But first, some background:

Thirteen years ago, Baltimore had a problem. Shootings were going down but homicides were remaining steady. Nobody could figure out why. In 1996, 16.7 percent of the gunshot victims died, up from 11 percent in 1993, when a record 353 people were killed.

A study dismissed medical care and ambulance rides and concluded that more victims than before were shot in the head at close range with larger guns. The good news was that fewer bystanders were being hit. "Drive-bys are out, executions are in," then Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier explained.

The numbers were startling: 17.5 percent of shooting victims in 1996 had head wounds, up from 13.3 percent in 1994, and 20 percent of the victims died at the scene, compared with 9 percent the previous year.

I thought of these numbers as I looked over the latest year-end homicide analysis from the Baltimore Police Department. It's got all sorts of interesting data; I'm not sure what it tells us about our murderous past or what we can anticipate this year, but the statistics are sobering:

"Wound locations for all Homicides -- Head: 126; Limb: 61; Torso: 145." That's up from 2006, when 93 homicide victims were shot in the head, 28 in a limb and 96 in the torso.

The report offers no conclusion or analysis (despite the name) and I'll offer none here. The issues are far too complex for simple explations and thoughts, and the data doesn't include a myraid of other factors that have to be considered when examining violence and death.

One word about motive. Police list as unknown the motive in 187 of last year's slayings. Most are related to drugs or gangs, but determining why someone was killed is difficult. A man may be found dead with drugs in his pocket, but the killing could've been done during a robbery, or in a dispute over something else, or during an argument over a girl. Maybe the shooter got into an argument over drug territory but shot him weeks or months after the initial run-in. Is that an argument or a drug-related killing? That's why most are listed this way.

Here are some interesting tidbits from the 2008 report:

Victims: 234

With records: 194 (82.9 percent)
With drug arrest history: 163 (69.7 percent)
On parole and probation at time of death: 80 (34.2 percent)
Victims on parole and probation for gun offense: 14 (6 percent)
Arrested for violent crimes: 92 (39.3 percent)
Arrested for gun crimes: 81 (34.6 percent)
Average number of arrests: 10.3

Suspects: 107
With records: 94 (87.9 percent)
With drug arrest history: 76 (71 percent)
On parole and probation at time of death: 36 (33.6 percent)
Victims on parole and probation for gun offense: 6 (5.6 percent)
Arrested for violent crimes: 50 (46.7 percent)
Arrested for gun crimes: 52 (48.6 percent)
Average number of arrests: 10

Murders by:

Handgun: 186
Knife: 19
Blunt force/beating: 9
Strangulation/suffication: 6
Shotgun/rifle: 5
Other: 5
Drowning: 4

Places of Occurance:

Street: 137
Home/dwelling; 34
Vehicle: 18
Alley: 12
Business: 11
Public parks, other areas: 8
Parking lot: 7
School grounds: 6
Church: 1

Motive:

Unknown: 187
Domestic: 13
Argument: 12
Robbery: 8
Family dispute: 4
Drugs: 4
Other: 3
Abduction: 1
Neighborhood dispute: 1
Retaliation: 1

Age groups (victims):

Adults: 205
Juveniles: 28
Uknown: 1
24 and under: 113
25-34: 61
35 and over: 59

Race (victims)

Black: 214
White: 12
Hispanic: 6
Other: 2

Race (suspects)
Black: 101
White: 4
Hispanic: 2

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The city's top cop, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, joined a long list of his predecessors on New Year's Day by confronting a man he had seen firing a gun into the air and pinning him down at gunpoint in the basement of a house. He did all this while a member of his security detail -- in this case his partner -- searched the upstairs for another suspect.

It's certainly nice to see the commissioner on the streets instead of riding a desk. It certainly endears his troops -- though it turns out, not his wife -- and he needs to see what his officers see if he wants to make a real difference and a real impact. And being out on the street means he could find himself in some precarious positions.

In 1998, then Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke hit the streets with a Western District officer and ended up standing over two teenagers with bullet wounds in the back. A friend of the injured walked up the mayor and asked, "So what are you going to do with that boy's cigarettes?" The question startled the mayor, who just couldn't understand how indifferent one citizen could be toward another.

A few weeks later, Schmoke allowed me to accompany him on a tour of East Baltimore. He was equally appalled at meeting 10-year-old boys standing on street corners at 10:40 at night. It was after 11 p.m. when the officer he was with got a call for drug dealers in a playground. "They are preventing the children from playing," the dispatcher said. That's one problem; the other being, why are children playing so late?

The most memorable moment was for a routine call for a body. A 39-year-old woman had passed away on her living room couch; her children thought she had fallen asleep and realized she was dead when they tried to wake her. Schmoke arrived shortly after the paramedics to find a grieving family and the woman covered with a white sheet. It looked like a drug overdose, and the picture of the mayor standing over a body brought much of Baltimore's problems to the forefront.

Schmoke's police commissioner, Thomas C. Frazier, also patrolled city streets. I went with him in early December 1998 when he flooded Eastside streets with officers in a desperate, and failing, bid to end the year with under 300 homicides. In retrospect, the operation was leaderless, with cops hitting corners but working without a strategy. The national media made fun of Baltimore as a city that couldn't save itself.

Frazier himself realized this when about 9 p.m. that night a man was shot in an argument on North Chester Street and a few minutes later died. That put Baltimore nine shy of 300 killings and there was still two weeks to go in the year. There would be 313 homicides by Dec. 31. The commissioner noted the futility: "We have 80 extra cops over here. Cops are tripping over each other. If somebody is intent on killing, it's going to happen. The corners are clear and there's still a dead guy in the street."

Edward T. Norris would later, in 2000, repeat the Eastside offensive. But he did it earlier, in September, in an effort to show that police can do something about murder and crime. Norris was a different kind of cop than Frazier, and told officers on that day: "This is the one chance you are going to have to show people you can make a difference. If we don't, people will say it is the same old, same old, and it's not going to get any better."

Norris and his driver, Sgt. Anthony Barksdale, who is now a deputy commissioner of operations under Bealefeld, chased an armed man down an alley after a confrontation at homeless shelter and rushed to a hit-and-run accident in which a 12-year-old girl was critically injured. By that point, Norris had already arrested or help arrest six people.

When the boss hits the streets, there are funny moments, as even the most routine events become so much more inportant. I was with Norris one day when his car was rear-ended at a traffic light by a man who said his foot slipped off the brake. Why did it slip off? He was wearing a plastic bag over his shoe so the newly buffed footwear wouldn't get scuffed. It earned him a ticket.

And Ronald L. Daniel, who served as commissioner for 39 days in 2000, was out patrolling in a nor'easter when he spotted a drug deal and arrested a 30-year-old man who had driven 30 miles in a blinding snow storm to buy drugs. Daniel was in an unmarked car when the man in front stopped and blocked traffic to make the deal. He slapped the cuffs on the man and found four pink packets of crack cocaine.

But this suspect got treated better than he could have imagined. Daniel helped two other officers fill out the reports and fed the suspect homemade chicken soup and a cheesburger before taking him to Central Booking.

Daniel told me later that he believed the suspect had "learned their lesson and won't come back to the city again to buy drugs."

The man Daniel arrested was sentenced to probation for a year. That was nine years ago this month. According to court records I checked this morning, he was never arrested again, in Baltimore or any other county in the state.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)