More violence in Charles Village
The recent and latest attacks in Mount Vernon on Saturday, May 9, has sparked more people to write in about violence in the area. Chris Brown, who works at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote me about an attack May 17 on her son's roommate.
She questioned how Baltimore police responded to this and I'm checking with the department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, to see if a report was written on the incicent. It happened a week after a man and a woman were brutally attacked just before a Circuit Court judge heard an appeal from the owners of Suite Ultralonge, located in the basement of the Belvedere, a number of blocks south of where this latest attack occurred, who are appealing a decision by the liquor board to pull their license to sell alcohol after a scuffle led to a shooting on the street outside earlier this year.
City Councilman William H. Cole represents the area and wrote this in response to the complaints:
There have been a number of attacks in recent weeks that match the MO you describe. Unfortunately, we are not dealing with one group. For example, the attackers on Charles Street two weekends ago were all female; the attackers on Calvert Street were a mixture of males and females.
Councilman Young and I have both been in direct contact with Central District Major John Bailey and with Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. The police department has deployed a number of additional resources in the area until this recent wave of assaults is extinguished. I was out last Saturday night between 10PM and 1AM riding through the area to see the police coverage and it was definitely visible. While the largest concentration is around the Belvedere (which is likely the source of these teenagers), they are also canvassing the area and keeping a close eye on large gatherings.
If the Circuit Court upholds the decision of the liquor board regarding the club in the basement of the Belvedere, I firmly believe that we will rid the area of a true nuisance establishment. The appeal hearing was last week and we expect the judge will rule within the next 2-3 weeks.
Here is the e-mail Chris Brown sent me:
I am writing to bring this to your attention, having read your article in the Sun Paper (March 2009) about a rapist in the Charles Village / Mt Vernon area and thought this was something similar that you might want to look into.
Several assaults have recently taken place in the Mt. Vernon /Charles village area and there is no coverage about it on the news. Police may respond to a 911 call, but don’t always file an assault report about it. They can’t seem to find these thugs or do anything about it. And if the assaults are happening in different districts it’s also possible that they don’t realize that cases could be related. One thing hampering catching the police is that these thugs are just coming up behind people, so the victims are caught unaware and don’t really get to see them while they are being beat up. No robbery - just brutality.
What is also upsetting is that this is not being publicized at all so people are really unaware of this going on. They could use the information to take more care or just not go out if they knew about this.
The most recent attack that I am aware of happened to my son's roommate on Sunday evening (May 17th) in Charles Village, while he was minding his own business walking a block away from his apt. on 26th street near North Charles. He had just gone out to pick up some food. The punks just ran up behind him and beat him up badly. They did not rob him or demand anything. This sounds like it could also be some type of gang initiation activity.
When my son (the victim’s roommate) came to the scene to help, several policemen who responded were just hanging around chatting and laughing amongst themselves while the EMT worked on the victim. I was not there so I don’t know what else they did or did not do, but just hearing about this type of behavior is upsetting. It was not very professional of them, no matter what they could or could not do about finding the perpetrators.
When my son called the Northern district station to ask to speak to a supervisor about it, the officer who answered the phone told him to quit playing around and actually hung up on him. He did finally speak to the shift commander who assured him that the police did canvas the area for these thugs, but when this actually happened we don’t know. And, since the victim could not see who beat him up, there is a problem of who exactly they were looking for. In any case, no one but those involved really knows about this happening.
My other son’s girlfriend works at the Baltimore Hostel and told us that one of the other victims of this same type of assault was an out of town guest of the Baltimore Hostel who was beaten in a similar way in Mt. Vernon / Downtown. The police did not even take a report from him and said they could not really help him. This poor guy got a really bad experience in Baltimore and you can’t really blame him if he never comes back!
Categories: Confronting crime, Neighborhoods
Comments
I think this is so sad. You watch the Baltimore City Police when they're directing traffic and they take it so seriously that they will literally chase a car down on foot if they don't stop when they ask them to. Yet, when something serious and life threatening happens to someone, they couldn't care less. How can they train these officer to not be so power-drunk and to actually start being protectors of the people as opposed to enforcers of traffic signals?
Posted by: Jenn | May 20, 2009 11:00 AM
I just don't understand why bored teens these days resort to attacking random people on the street.
I've been a victim of an attack like this in a small town in the midwest, so it isn't just Baltimore.
Just the other day a Woman and her DISABLED CHILD were attacked on the Metro by a group of teenage girls. I have to say, thats a new low for Baltimore. Didn't know we could get much lower.
Posted by: blarg | May 20, 2009 11:05 AM
I have been reading these accounts of violence in the Mt. Vernon area, and they have me deeply concerned.
I will be attending the University of Baltimore this fall for graduate school, and until now, I have always read good things about the Mt. Vernon area, in terms of it being a vibrant cultural district & having great night life. It just sounds like this Ultralounge place has been a haven for unpleasant characters & it doesn't seem to belong in Mt. Vernon. I certainly hope the culture of service in the police department is restored.
I definitely want to feel safe at all times when I finally move to Baltimore.
Posted by: Maurice Corbett | May 20, 2009 11:12 AM
I am a lifelong Mt. Vernon resident and it is a beautiful and special area to live and still is. The addition of specific "lounges" and "bars" that bring a certain unwelcomed element to the area, should not deter anyone from visiting Mt. Vernon. The key lesson as in any area, be it Baltimore, DC, or New York is simple, be aware of your surroundings, no matter what.
Posted by: LifelongMtVernonlover | May 20, 2009 11:56 AM
Mr Corbett-
I just graduated from UB and have lived in Mt Vernon (and now Bolton Hill) for 10 years. This is a beautiful area and a great place to live. It is one of the few areas in Baltimore where you really don't need a car. That said, you will not feel safe at all times in Baltimore and if you do, it is an illusion. The best thing you can do is be aware of your surroundings and body language so you do not look like a victim. That is cost of living of living here I am afraid. That will be true even once this current increase in violence in gone. In the 90s we had to be careful of transvestite prostitutes... last year rapists on the balconies.... now young thugs. Welcome.
Posted by: Adam M | May 20, 2009 12:23 PM
We have to remember a childs upbringing starts at home; strangers and cops and the judicial systems should not be in charge of raising our children. Where are the parents of these children at that time of night? We should continue to monitor our children up to and beyond the age of 18. And if they cannot be law abiding citizens then we need to enforce better laws and stricter curfews. We should also hold those parents of disruptive kids responsible for those children who are constantly in trouble. Society cannot expect just the village to raise a child, the parent must help and be responsible too!!
Posted by: cat | May 20, 2009 12:31 PM
Makes you wonder what is going to happen when we have a New Orleans type of event in Baltimore.
At least I will be one of the people with legal weapons to protect my property and person. I will have no problem blasting people if they step on my property. In fact, I can't wait.
Posted by: Tony | May 20, 2009 12:35 PM
Even Mayor Dixon last week acknowledged that a lot of children growing up in the city are coming from uncaring parents. Unfortunately, this is by product of history, i.e. intollerance, poor planning, government etc.. There are large parts of this city where hope does not exist and there are few positive examples to be found. This social problem has existed for a long time, now that social trends are changing and cities are slowly being revitalized people are discovering what has been here the whole time.
A long time ago I heard a quote that sticks with me. "You can judge a nation's health by the state of its cities." Ponder that for a little bit.
Posted by: Dunn | May 20, 2009 12:48 PM
Tony,
I can't wait until you leave Baltimore and/or expire, so the city can be rid of one more person with an attitude like yours.
Posted by: John | May 21, 2009 10:29 AM
Dunn, sounds sort of like you're excusing the behavior. History is a context, not a cause.
Once the persons comitting crime are of age, they simply must go to prison. That's where animals belong.
Posted by: galt | May 21, 2009 12:01 PM
How many people here think that the "Lower crime rates" are really just a reflection of police just not taking reports as often any more?
I've heard of a number of incidents where the police had all sorts of excuses for not taking reports.
Posted by: fea | May 26, 2009 4:38 PM
The bigger problem than nonreporting is MISreporting.
If an assault with a blunt object is recorded as a 'common assault', for instance, rather than an aggravated assault, it becomes a UCR Part II crime, rather than a Part I crime.
Baltimore City only tracks Part I, so if you reclassify incidents a little, they drop off the radar screen (into Part II limbo).
Officers know this, so they often downgrade incidents so as to 'get their numbers down'.
The Commissioner knows this. He knows it every time he runs a CompStat session with the District Commander.
The numbers, therefore, are a bit of a farce.
A really good idea would be for the City Council to request historical data on Part II counterpart incidents, which data is said to be 'unavailable' upon public request.
If the Part II's are going down at about the same rate as the Part I's, then maybe there's some truth to the claim of lower crime.
If they are going in opposite directions, then it's just juking the numbers.
Posted by: galt | May 28, 2009 11:43 AM
As an important qualifier, it's my understanding that crime is down nationwide according to preliminary FBI statistics. Forgive me for my inability to find a link at the moment.
Local jurisdictions (Baltimore included, natch) all over seem to be capitalizing on the statistics to trumpet their effectiveness, when it seems clear there are broader social, economic and political forces at work.
Of course, no one fully understands what those forces are -- particularly in the depths of a recession. Add to that, these preliminary statistics don't seem to give an accurate impression of changes in the types of crime -- whether there's perhaps been a shift from violent towards property crime, let's say.
As a corollary, this dip in crime is approximately across the board -- meaning reliably dangerous cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Atlanta still top the leaderboards for per capita crime statistics.
My fear is that many of these self-satisfied municipal leaders (Bealefield excluded, let's hope) may be getting a false impression that the course they're currently staying is correct.
Posted by: Matters of Grammar | May 31, 2009 7:05 PM
I don't understand why the Belvedere doesn't evict club Ultralounge. It sounds like the problems are centered around that. You would think the other businesses and residents of the Belvedere would be up in arms with management!
Posted by: Jeff | June 2, 2009 10:30 PM