Attorneys for the family of Gerard Mungo Jr., the 7-year-old boy who was arrested in 2007 for sitting on a dirt bike, have apparently abandoned plans to call former Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm to testify as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. When the story hit the news nearly three years ago, Hamm said the officers could have acted differently and "had other options," a comment that the defendants in the suit believe is inaccurate. Attorneys had planned to call Hamm to testify at the civil trial, being heard this week in Howard County Circuit Court after a change of venue motion was granted, but that apparently will not happen, attorney A. Dwight Pettit told me. Hamm has made few public appearances since being replaced as police commissioner later that year.  We'll update if that changes.

During today's proceedings, two of the officers involved in the arrest 11 days later of Gerard's mother, Lakisa Dinkins, said they had no idea who she was and that the arrest had nothing to do with a rally for the family that occurred earlier that day. Detectives Calvin Moss and Jermaine Cook, members of the plainclothes Violent Crimes Impact Division, testified that they saw two men engage in what appeared to be a drug transaction and then take off running after seeing the officers in an unmarked patrol car. One of the men ran into a home, and the detectives pushed open the door and followed him inside.

Dinkins and one of her sons have testified that the officers did not identify themselves, and that they believed the men were "robbers." The officers did not end up searching or arresting the man they chased into the home, but instead Dinkins, who they said created a disturbance, calling the officers "white [expletives]" and impeding the investigation.

"Let me get this straight: you chase him, apprehend him, don't ask him any question and don't search him?" Pettit asked.

"Ms. Dinkins wouldn't allow us to do our job," Moss said.

Pettit was also incredulous that the detectives could end up in a home with Dinkins the same day as a protest held by the NAACP in the neighborhood to condemn Gerard's arrest.

"Of all the houses in Baltimore, you're telling me it was a coincidence that you went into the same home as Ms. Dinkins?" Petit asked.

"I seem to be a very lucky fellow," Moss joked. "Yeah, it was a coincidence."

One of the attorneys for the officers, James Fields, said the officers were just doing their job. "If the suspect had run into [the house next door], would you have run into that house?" Fields asked. "Absolutely," Moss responded.