From Sun reporter Nick Madigan, covering the trial of the three men accused of killing former City Councilman Kenneth Harris:

A prosecutor trying the case of three men accused of killing Kenneth N. Harris launched this morning into an impassioned assertion of the state’s case against them, and used every evidentiary weapon at her disposal to argue for their conviction.

The defendants came “locked and loaded” to commit a crime, Assistant State’s Attorney Cynthia M. Banks told the jury as she looked at the defendants, Gary Collins, Charles McGaney and Jerome Williams, sitting in the courtroom in downtown Baltimore.

Banks projected onto a screen an image from a slightly out-of-focus surveillance video that included the captioned names of the defendants with an arrow pointed at each of the men — Williams on the left, Collins in the middle and McGaney on the right — as, Banks said, they walked away from the camera shortly before the hold-up on Sept. 20, 2008.

The use of the defendants’ names on the screen prompted an immediate objection from Jerome Bivens, a lawyer who represents Williams. “Your honor, you need to see this,” Bivens said, referring to the fact that the screen, facing the jury, was out of the judge’s range of sight. After a conference at the bench, the judge, David Ross, allowed Banks to proceed.

She then showed an array of other images taken both outside and inside the New Haven Lounge, where the hold-up occurred, displaying for the jury a detailed timeline of what she said were the defendants’ actions during the robbery, again with names and arrows for each. The killing of Harris, a former Baltimore councilman who was shot as he tried to flee in his car, was not captured on video.

Banks described how Harris and his friend Keith Covington, the club’s owner, emerged from the building’s front door after the New Haven had closed for the night. “The moment they walk out that door, they’re ambushed, from the left and from the right,” the prosecutor said. One of the assailants led Covington back inside with “a gun pointed to the back of his head” while another followed Harris to his car, where his female companion awaited.  

Using the digital-clock displays from the videos, Banks timed the movements of Williams, the man she said was the gunman, and estimated that “the murder of Mr. Harris took 23 seconds” before Williams joined his accomplices inside the club.

“If Kenny gets away, the 911 call is going to be made, you know that,” Banks said. She then referred to Covington’s testimony that, the moment the gunmen appeared, Harris uttered an expletive and blurted out the name of his wife, Annette, who was not the woman in the car.

“He’s thinking about his wife,” Banks said. “He’s thinking about his family. He may not have been a perfect man, but his last thought was about his family.”

As Harris was being chased down and shot, the other two defendants “continued with their primary goal of robbing the Haven,” Banks said. “They didn’t stop. They didn’t miss a beat.”
Meanwhile, she went on, “Ken’s dying — he’s bleeding out.”

After going through the actions of the perpetrators inside the club, where employees were robbed and the safe emptied of some $2,000 in cash, Banks went to the crux of the state’s case, the DNA evidence left behind on items carried, worn and touched, she said, by the three defendants.

Traces of the men’s DNA were found on bandanas, surgical gloves, a coat and a Halloween mask, all of them linked with varying but irrefutable degrees of probability to the defendants’ biological make-up, Banks said. She acknowledged that their fingerprints were not found at the site of the robbery, but said it was because all wore gloves throughout, a point that the defense has contested.

The three defense lawyers will have a chance to rebut the state’s allegations when he court session resumes this afternoon.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

At the crime scene in Northwest Baltimore, there was the victim, the gun, and the discarded shirts.

Richard Lawson could not identify his attacker; in his last moments on Dec. 14, 2007, the 24-year-old  told the first responding police officer that he had been robbed and shot in the chest by an unknown man, according to court records. That was the best Lawson could do before he was rushed to Sinai Hospital.

The gun, a revolver, sat in the threshold of the doorway, ditched by the shooter.

Then there were the shirts – a white t-shirt, a dark thermal long-sleeve shirt, and a dark-hooded sweatshirt. They were layered and inside-out, the white t-shirt over the other two, as if they had been taken off all at once, and they were spattered with blood.

Lawson would be pronounced dead within an hour of the shooting, and for more than two years the case went unsolved.

But on March 23, records show, police received notification from the state DNA database that they had matched genetic material from the inside neckline of the black thermal shirt to a 24-year-old man named Vincent Clark (pictured at right).

Detectives picked up Clark on April 28 and interviewed him. He said he had never seen the victim and had never been inside of his home, in the 2900 block of Chelsea Terrace. He denied taking part in the murder, before requesting an attorney and ending the interview.

Clark, of the 4100 block of Norfolk Ave., has now been charged in Lawson’s death. Police broadcast his picture last week, and he was picked up on Sept. 28. He is being held without bond.

According to court records, Clark has a record of burglary, convicted in 2007 and sentenced to a 10 year sentence with all but time served suspended. He was charged in 2009 with burglary, theft and malicious destruction of property; those charges were dropped.

Clark was one of two men charged with murder this week by city police detectives. Lamont Jackson, 23, of the 2900 block of Ridgewood Ave., is accused of shooting 50-year-old Michael Carroway on May 12 in the 4300 block of Daytona Ave., in Northwest Baltimore’s Towanda-Grantley community.

Police located witnesses who identified Jackson as the suspect, and officers found Jackson in possession of the firearm used to kill Carroway, Detective Sandra Forsythe wrote in charging documents.

A motive for the crime was not disclosed.

According to court records, Jackson, of the 1600 block of Darley Ave., was already being held on handgun and drug trafficking charges that were filed in May.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Northwest Baltimore
        

The parents of 16-year-old Annie McCann, who was found dead nearly two years ago in Southeast Baltimore, are threatening to sue the city for up to $12 million, alleging police shelved the investigation and wrongfully concluded that the girl took her own life.

Dan and Mary Jane McCann have been fighting the city since their daughter mysteriously ran away from their Fairfax County, Va., home on Nov. 2. She left a letter that police concluded was a suicide note. But her parents note she wrote that that she thought about killing herself but had changed her mind and decided to run away.

How she ended up dead behind a trash bin in Southeast Baltimore had remained a mystery for nearly two years, and the McCanns have relentlessly pursued detectives and other authorities to do what they consider a proper investigation.

Find more stories on Annie McCann here.

The Medical Examiner ruled the cause of Annie's death undetermined but said she ingested a lethal dose of lidocaine from drinking from a 5-ounce bottle of Bactine. Police have suspended the case, saying the evidence points to suicide.

With the help of private investigators, the McCanns say they have unearthed many clues that have yet to be answered. They include:

A mysterious text that Annie got on her cell phone days before she disappeared from a convicted drug dealer in Northern Virginia.

A still mysterious woman that a waitress says she saw with Annie at a Little Italy pastry shop one or two days before her body was found.

The McCanns pressed police to charge two juveniles and one adult using Annie's car and driving it to a gas station five blocks away. One of the teens admitted to removing Annie's body from the car and putting near the trash bin. The juveniles were found responsible for the unauthorized use of the car; charges were dropped against the adult. The McCanns do not believe the youths had anything to do with the death.

These are just a few of the inconsistencies the family says they want resolved.

"The mayors and deputy mayor have been miserably disengaged from their sworn, paid duty to oversee the Baltimore Police Department," Dan McCann said in a statement, which concluded: "We will never stop looking for the killer of our daughter. When will the City of Baltimore start?"

Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi responded: "We stand behind the homicide investigators. It is an extremely horrific and tragic situation. We can never imagine the amount of grief that this family is going through, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming that this is not a homicide."
Read the McCann's full statement:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Categories: Annie McCann, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

Two men were shot in Baltimore over night, one fatally.

A 55-year-old man died from wounds he received in a shooting on Bowley's Lane in the Frankford neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore. The shooting occurred about 8:40 p.m.

About 10:45 p.m., another man was shot on Boarman Avenue in Northwest Baltimore. He walked to a hospital on his own with a gunshot wound to his back.

No arrests have been made.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Northeast Baltimore, Northwest Baltimore
        

[Here's the link to the full story, which appears in Thursday's paper]

City police have disbanded the plainclothes unit that investigates drugs in Northwest Baltimore amid allegations of misconduct against at least three officers in two different units, the department confirmed.

Six officers who comprise the Northwest District drug unit were sent back to patrol amid the suspension of the unit’s supervisor and one officer, who are accused of using a stolen license plate on an unmarked vehicle, said Anthony Guglielmi, the department’s chief spokesman.

Separately, an officer assigned to the elite Violent Crimes Impact Section (VCIS) was suspended last week after being targeted in an internal affairs “integrity sting,” which is typically used to catch officers pocketing drugs or money.

Guglielmi confirmed that the officer was suspended and that police were conferring with the state’s attorney’s office on charges, but would not comment further. Sources identified the officer as Kody Taylor, a three-year veteran, and said he is accused of pocketing money planted on an undercover officer.

“These are internal personnel matters being investigated by internal affairs,” Guglielmi said. “We’re going to determine if there’s any criminal component to this, and if there is, we’ll work with the state’s attorney’s office’s police misconduct unit.”

The breaking up of the Northwest drug unit comes amid a slew of shootings in the district, which includes the Arlington, Park Heights, and Reisterstown Station neighborhoods. Six people were shot in the district between Friday morning and Sunday night.

More in tomorrow's paper and online.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Breaking news, Northwest Baltimore
        

Race was a theme in the Democratic primary election for Baltimore's top prosecutor, which pit a white upstart against a veteran black state's attorney.

Many pundits speculated that the vote would fall along racial lines, with white residents drawn to Gregg Bernstein's tough on crime message and blacks attracted to Patricia C. Jessamy's call for social programs alongside prosecutions.

But The Baltimore Sun's Tricia Bishop reports that an analysis by the newspaper -- full coverage here -- shows a different conclusion.

Political newcomer Gregg Bernstein garnered support across racial boundaries to unseat a longtime incumbent in this year's contentious — and close — primary election for Baltimore state's attorney, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of precinct-level data released this week.

Bernstein, a white defense attorney who campaigned on a tough-on-crime message, earned most of the city's white vote, particularly in areas like Canton, where he had wide support. Yet figures show he also took a significant portion of the black vote — from as many as one in three voters in some of the city's most heavily black neighborhoods — as he defeated fellow Democrat Patricia C. Jessamy, who's been Baltimore's top prosecutor for 15 years.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, State's Attorney Campaign
        

The latest from the trial of the accused killers of former City Councilman Kenneth Harris, from Sun reporter Nick Madigan:

Jurors will hear closing arguments Thursday in the trial against the three men accused of killing former Baltimore Councilman Kenneth N. Harris — if the case sticks to schedule.

After the prosecution rested its case — which involved testimony from dozens of witnesses since Sept. 13 — the defense put three witnesses on the stand, and may swear in one more on Thursday morning before closing statements begin.

In preparation for handing over their case to the jury, prosecutors elected to pursue first-degree felony murder charges against the defendants rather than first-degree murder. The latter would have required proving that the defendants planned to murder Harris before the hold-up occurred, a factor typically referred to as premeditation or “with intent.”

“From a layman’s perspective, it’s no different,” Joseph Sviatko, a spokesman for the Baltimore State's Attorney’s Office, said on Wednesday. “First-degree felony murder is still on the table, and the penalties for both charges are the same — life in prison. It’s not necessary for the state to prove that the defendants intended to kill the victim.”

Sviatko said that felony murder requires a lesser burden of proof than the premeditation charge. Prosecutors will explain to the jury that the law defines felony murder as a killing that took place while the defendants were in the act of committing another felony — in this case, an armed robbery.

The defendants are Charles McGaney, 22, Jerome Williams, 17, and Gary Collins, 22, who are accused of holding up a jazz club in a shopping center on Havenwood Road in Northeast Baltimore on Sept. 20, 2008. Harris, a married man who was spending the evening with another woman, was shot after he had stopped at the club to borrow a corkscrew and use the bathroom, according to testimony in the trial.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

The parents of Annie McCann continue to seek answers.

Convinced that their 16-year-old daughter did not run away from her Virginia home of her own volition, and did not kill herself once she reached Baltimore by drinking Bactine, Daniel and Mary Jane McCann (at left, in a photo by The Sun's Amy Davis) are refusing to give up.

The couple have scheduled a news conference for Thursday to update the public on their private investigation. They say have "significant new developments" into the case but wouldn't divulge them to me on Wednesday.

As you might remember, Annie left home Oct. 31, leaving behind a note that said she had contemplated suicide but decided to run away instead. Her body was found two days later off Lombard Street east of the Inner Harbor. Her car was found dumped two blocks away.

The cases has had dozens of twists and turns, including youths who admitted to finding her body in the car, removing it to near a trash bin at a public housing complex and taking the car for a ride. There were other suicide notes, written and crossed out, found both at Annie's home and by her body. The Medical Examiner has ruled the cause of her death undetermined but said she overdoses on lidocaine from drinking a bottle of the antiseptic Bactine.

Did she drink it herself or did someone force her to down the bottle? The McCanns say the drug wasn't enough to kill her, that her note indicated she had changed her mind and was not a declaration of suicide, that she met at least two mysterious people in Baltimore. They are angry that Baltimore police shelved the investigation in March 2009, saying they're sure Annie took her own life.

It is not a conclusion the McCann's can live with. We'll have more have the news conference on Thursday.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Annie McCann, Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

Timothy E. Rawlings Jr is a 24-year-old former quarterback for Parkville High School and the father of a 3-year-old boy. He's also a leader of the 92 Family Swans, an subset of the Bloods gang, and he ordered a fellow member killed because he thought he was gay.

Rawlings was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without parole for the killing Steven Parrish, 18. Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Robert N. Dugan said Rawlings "ordered this murder with the same casual attitude of someone walking into a fast-food restaurant and order one of the specials off the menu."

The Sun's Nick Madigan reports:

Prosecutors said that Rawlings had demanded that two men kill Parrish after they discovered that he had exchanged salacious phone messages with another man. Rawlings believed that Parrish's apparent homosexuality would "make the gang look weak," prosecutors said.

Parrish, 18, who was about to graduate from high school, was stabbed and beaten, his head stomped and a red bandana left over his face as a sign of disrespect.

"He was brutally murdered for something that wasn't even true," Michelle Parrish, the victim's mother, said in court on Tuesday. Then, looking directly at Rawlings and in a barely controlled voice, she said, "You chose to take his life … and you deserve what you get."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Gangs
        

A 31-year-old man has pleaded guilty to raping an Anne Arundel County woman in 2003 after authorities linked him to the crime through DNA.

But the story doesn't end there. As The Sun's Andrea Siegel reports today, the victim spent years suffering from anxiety attacks and worried about the rapists threats to kill her. The arrest seven years later renewed those fears, and police confirmed them.

Andrea reports the woman had to quit her job and police officers escorted her to summer classes.

Now, Donnell Thomas Bellamy, who had lived in Glen Burnie but most recently resided in Wisconsin, faces 25 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to first-degree rape on Tuesday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

City prosecutors say a 25 year old man received a double life sentence for two drug-turf murders that occurred outside a carryout store on Greenmount Avenue last year. Here's the press release:

At a hearing today Judge John N. Prevas sentenced Datwan Ramsey, 25, of the 1000 block of Radnor Avenue to two consecutive life plus 20 years in prison terms.  A Baltimore jury convicted Ramsey August 16, 2010 of two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and three counts of use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. 

Motions began August 2; it took three days to seat a jury and testimony began August 12 with the state resting its case August 16. The jury deliberated two hours and reached a verdict the same day.

On March 17, 2009 at 2901 Greenmount Avenue police responded to Yau Brothers Chinese carry out for a report of a shooting.  Upon arrival they located Adrian Martise and Anthony Bailey inside of the location suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.  Travis Williams was located outside suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.  All three were transported to area hospitals; Mr. Bailey and Mr. Martise were pronounced dead shortly after their arrival and Williams survived.

Investigation revealed that the three victims were inside the carry out purchasing a bottle of water when Ramsey and an unknown codefendant pulled up and walked in the front door.  Both opened fire on the victims firing at least 12 shots while they blocked the only exit. Mr. Martise and Mr. Bailey were each struck five times and Mr. Williams was struck two times.  The investigation also revealed that the motive was an ongoing dispute over drug territory.

The primary investigator, Detective Marvin Sydnor, has retired from the police department but returned to court each day of the more than two weeks it took to complete the case.  The state sought court ordered body attachment warrants for two identifying witnesses to compel their appearance in court.  The second detective on the case, Joseph Landsman, worked tirelessly with other police officers to locate these witnesses and bring them to court.  Their thorough investigation and continued commitment to this case are yet another example of the cooperative efforts between the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Baltimore City Police Department to bring violent criminals to justice.

Assistant State’s Attorney Tonya LaPolla of the Homicide Division prosecuted this case.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, North Baltimore
        

A 33-year Baltimore police veteran was killed Monday evening in a single-vehicle accident in Pennsylvania while traveling to a training program, police said.

Officer James E. Fowler III, of Catonsville, was driving through Lewiston Lewistown, Pa. at about 5:25 p.m. when his 2002 Chevrolet truck hit a berm on U.S. 22/322 West and came to rest along a concrete barrier on the left side of the roadway.

Fowler joined the Baltimore Police Department in 1976 after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy. The bulk of his career was spent in the patrol division and traffic investigations, Guglielmi said.

According to a 1993 Sun article, he was dispatched to respond to a citizen's call of a frantic woman screaming and helped deliver a baby in the back of a police wagon. Fowler had received medical training in the Navy and served as a volunteer medic with a Carroll County fire department.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Breaking news
        

The killing of one patient allegedly by another patient at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center for the criminally insane raises lots of questions. Baltimore Sun reporter Yeganeh June Torbati describes a state audit that shows a history of violence at the facility.

But even more troubling is how the suspect, El Soudani El-Wahhabi, a convicted killer and sexual predator, had been housed on the same floor with women. He is charged with killing Susan Sachs, whose body was found Sunday morning face down in her bed with a string around her neck.

El-Wahhabi had been to Perkins before, when he was deemed unfit for trial after he was charged with sexually assaulting his sister-in-law while he was wearing lingerie. While at Perkins that time, he was convicted of assaulting a guard. In 1995, he killed a woman during a struggle in which part of his tongue was bitten off (the piece was found at the crime scene, linking him to the death).

Workers at Perkins told Torbati that the suspect had not threatened anyone in years but why take the chance with someone with that kind of history. Sachs had been convicted of a killing several years ago in Chevy Chase.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Howard County
        

An update from Sun reporter Nick Madigan, covering the trial of three men accused of killing former City Councilman Kenneth Harris:

Under a barrage by highly detailed scientific testimony, jurors in the Kenneth N. Harris murder trial had difficulty staying awake Monday during a long cross-examination of a DNA analyst.

Lawyers defending three men accused of the former Baltimore councilman’s murder two years ago unloaded a stream of questions at the state’s witness, Kelly Miller, a DNA analyst with the police department’s crime lab, who had pinpointed evidence at the crime scene as having come into contact with the defendants.

Such DNA evidence, which relies in large part on mathematical equations and probabilities, is almost invariably the most complicated of any criminal trial, and its complexity alone is usually enough to glaze the eyes of the average juror. Add to that the defense lawyers’ seemingly endless questions, some apparently designed to confuse more than to enlighten, and you have boredom of a high order.

Some of the jurors in Baltimore Circuit Court appeared to wither as the day wore on, heads nodding, eyes at half mast. Even the judge, David Ross, who is taking a break from retirement to oversee the trial, allowed himself to close his eyes on occasion, if only briefly.

But under the defense’s relentless parsing and repetition lay an apparent concern that the prosecution’s DNA evidence might provide crucial proof in the jury’s eyes of the defendants’ culpability. The lawyers seized every chance they could to undermine Miller’s testimony, including asking her on at least three occasions about why the crime lab’s director, Edgar Koch, had been fired in August 2008. (The reason given at the time was that some crime analysts had contaminated evidence with their own DNA.)

But Miller, a microbiologist, remained unflappable, even when forced to repeat herself time and again. Referring to a piece of evidence on which a DNA match had been made, she said its profile was “unique to Jerome Williams,” the youngest of the three defendants. That precise profile would be repeated only if Williams had an identical twin, she said.

Another piece of evidence — part of a Latex glove — bore trace evidence of having been touched by another defendant, Charles McGaney, although his lawyer, Jason E. Silverstein, made much of the fact that the DNA of an unknown man was also found on the glove. McGaney’s DNA was found also on a coat discarded near the scene of the crime on Sept. 20, 2008.

Jerome Bivens, who represents Williams, spent considerable time getting Miller to explain the crime lab’s procedures and its equipment, and seemed intrigued with the plastic tubes used to house liquid solutions containing DNA. “Is plastic a derivative of petroleum?” Bivens kept asking.
Miller replied that she didn’t know. Finally, exasperated, she said, “I don’t understand the relevance.”

The judge sighed: “Ask another question.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

A Harford County Circuit Court judge ruled this afternoon that a motorcyclist who was arrested for videotaping his traffic stop by a Maryland State Trooper was within his rights to record the confrontation.

Judge Emory A Plitt Jr. tossed all the charges filed against Anthony Graber, leaving only speeding and other traffic violations, and most likely sparing him a trial that had been scheduled for Oct. 12. The judge ruled that Maryland's wire tap law allows recording of both voice and sound in areas where privacy cannot be expected. He ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no expectation of privacy.

"Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public," the judge wrote. "When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (84)
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, Harford County
        

White supremacist Calvin Lockner, whose nickname is "Hitler," was sentenced this morning to 31 years in prison for attacking a 77-year-old black fisherman at a city park. For more details, read court reporter's Tricia Bishop's story.

The 29-year-old Lockner, a convicted sex offender, did not speak at the hearing but his public defender read a statement into the record in which his client apologized.

The victim, James Privott, described the attack.  Bishop reports:

 "Standing four feet from his attacker, James Privott, 77, outlined the effects of the August 2009 battering, which left him with a fractured eye socket, missing teeth and expensive doctor bills.

"'The situation put my wife and I and my family in a stressful, stressful'" position, Privott said. "'My wife basically had to take over for me… For three weeks I couldn't see.'"

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore
        

The patient at Clifton T. Perkins mental hospital charged with killing another patient had been committed after being found not criminally responsible for killing a woman in Baltimore in 1995 -- and leaving a piece of his tongue behind at the crime scene.

El-Soudani El-Wahhabi, also known as Saladin Ishmael Taylor, had a quarter-sized piece of his tongue bitten off during a struggle with Mona Johnson inside her Laurens Street rowhouse where her body was found.

According to a Baltimore Sun article written by then police reporter David Simon, Taylor showed up to his parole office after the slaying complaining about missing part of his tongue, which police had found at the slaying scene.

Taylor had known Johnson but I wasn't able to immediately discern a motive for the slaying. Taylor was committed to Perkins and now Maryland State Police say that on Sunday he killed patient Susan Sachs who was found with a string around her neck.

A motive for that killing hasn't been revealed. The Washington Post reports that Sachs fatally stabbed her 71-year-old landlord in Chevy Chase in 2004.

Simon reported that Taylor had served three years at Perkins in Jessup before being released in 1993. While there, he was convicted of assaulting a patient. Simon reported he has a history of sex offenses dating back to the 1980s. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Update: two more shootings to add to the list, one of them fatal.

Baltimore police reported four people shot in the city over the weekend, the latest about 10 p.m. Sunday night on Denison Street and Piemont Avenue. Few details have been released but police said an adult male was shot three times in the stomach. There is no immediate word on his condition.

Three others were shot and wounded this weekend -- on Oswego Avenue, Perring Parkway and Chelsea Terrace.

Police also reported seizing several guns. A tip led officers to an armed man in the 5500 block of Frankford Avenue and the recovery of a .22 caliber Beretta. A raid in the 5300 block of Denmore Avenue got police a .22 caliber handgun, heroin and money.

A traffic stop on Annapolis Road netted an arrest the seizure of marijuana and a 9mm handgun, according to police. And detectives arrested a man in the 3500 block of West Belvedere Avenue and got a .45 caliber handgun.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, West Baltimore
        

A patient at the Clifton T. Perkins mental hospital in Jessup is being charged with murder after another patient was found dead in her room Sunday morning with a string tied around her neck, state police investigators said.

Maryland State Police are expected to charge El Soundani El-Wahhabi, also known as Saladin Taylor, in the death of Susan Sachs, 45, also a patient at Perkins.

Sachs was found face down in her bed about 8:30 a.m. by a nurse who went to check on her after she didn't show up for breakfast. Doctors at the hospital determined that she was dead.

El-Wahhabi and Sachs had rooms in the same hallway at the hospital, investigators said. Both had been admitted to the hospital as sentencing for previous murders.

Before she was killed, Hadl had called 911 to complain that Sachs was acting strangely and needed psychiatric help. In 2006, a judge accepted Sachs’s plea of “not criminally responsible."

Sachs, who had paranoid schizophrenia, was ordered to a maximum-security state psychiatric hospital, where she was to remain until mental health experts and a judge decided that she no longer posed a threat to herself or others.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Howard County
        

The Baltimore Sun's Nick Madigan has been covering the trial of the men charged with killing former city councilman Kenneth N. Harris. Here is the latest from the courtroom (complete coverage here):

Under questioning by Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia M. Banks, the witness said the inside of such a mask is where most “probative” evidence would normally reside. “I swabbed the nose and mouth, because that’s where you breathe from, and skin cells can be expelled through breath,” Remy said.

Similarly, he vacuumed the cuffs and collar of a blue-and-black coat that was apparently worn by one of the three robbers “because the cuffs and neck are more likely to come into contact with skin.”

Displaying a black purse stolen from the bar that night, Remy pulled out three bandanas — two of them decorated with dollar signs, the third purple and white — a silver money clip and a wallet, all items taken from the crime scene and apparently stuffed into the purse before it was tossed into a trash can on a nearby street.

Also in the purse was a pair of surgical gloves that prosecutors say had been worn by one of the robbers. Remy said he swabbed the palm area of the gloves for skin cells, “making sure to avoid the fingertips to preserve possible fingerprints.”

One of the bandannas had been tied in a knot — the faces of all three robbers were covered — and Remy said he had paid “special attention to the knot because that’s more likely to hold skin cells.”

Defense lawyers tried before the trial began to have much of the DNA evidence disallowed, but Baltimore Circuit Judge David Ross, who was brought in from retirement to oversee the case, ruled against them.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

The man charged with being the "preppy burglar" because of he was caught on video allegedly breaking into a Howard County house wearing dress clothes and a tie has been charged with a second burglary in Montgomery County.

Court records show that shortly after Jeremy Matthew Hall, 30, of Silver Spring, was released on $15,000 bail in Howard County, he was arrested by Montgomery County police. He was released this morning from that jurisdiction on $7,500 bail.

I'm awaiting details from Montgomery County. Charging documents filed in the Howard County case show that he is charged with breaking into a house on Browns Bridge Road and stealing a Sony boom box, a black stereo receiver and a black safe containing personal documents.

Police released a video of the man breaking into the house and hours later they got a tip from someone who knew the suspect. Hall also has an extensive driving record for speeding and in 2001 was found guilty in an excessive noise complaint.

Here are more details from the Montgomery County Police Department:

Detectives from the Montgomery County Police 4th District received information from Howard County Police detectives in reference to a burglary suspect who Howard County Police had identified with an address in Montgomery County.

Yesterday, detectives from both counties executed a search warrant on the residence in Silver Spring.  While Howard County detectives found evidence to support their case, Montgomery County Police also found evidence relating to an August 30, 2010, burglary that had occurred in Spencerville. He was arrested by Howard County Police yesterday, and released after bond payment.

Late last night after the suspect, Jeremy Hall, age 30, of the 1400 block of Silo Way in Silver Spring, had been released from Howard County, Montgomery County detectives arrested him and charged him with first-degree burglary and theft over $10,000 but under $100,000 for the Spencerville burglary.  Hall was released today after payment of a $7,500 bond.

In the Montgomery County case, 4th District officers responded on August 30 at approximately 6:58 p.m. to the 1300 block of Parrs Ridge Drive in Spencerville for the report of a burglary that had occurred earlier.

The 52-year-old male victim had left his residence at approximately 8:00 a.m. and returned at 6:30 p.m. to find there had been forced entry into his home. Two guitars, and a safe containing jewelry and personal identification documents were stolen.

Hall was described as a white male burglar who wore dress pants, a collared dress shirt and a tie; possibly trying to appear as though he was at a home for some type of professional or official business.  Montgomery County Police are continuing to investigate to determine if there is evidence to tie him to any other burglaries in the county.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

Howard County police just announced they arrested the so-called "preppy burglar" who they caught on video breaking into a house earlier this month. Police said they arrested him at his home after getting a tip from soneone who saw the story on television.

To watch the video.

He's identified as Jeremy Matthew Hall, 30, of Silo Way in Silver Spring. Police said he is facing burglary, theft and destruction of property charges. Police gave him his nickname because he was dressed in a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, gray dress pants and a red tie.

We're doing some background checking to see who this man is what he does for a living.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Howard County
        

[This post has been updated]

Marie Daramy calls it an “underworld war.”

It used to be that her street in East Baltimore was full of drug dealers – they sat on the steps, hung out on the corners. Residents knew this, and when a shooting broke out, she said it was easy to chalk it up to the activity outside.

These days, the street is typically clear, and the overt dealing is largely a memory. But the violence persists.

“This place was full, and every house had a drug dealer,” said Daramy, who has lived in her home for 20 years. “[Now], you don’t know who, you don’t know why. It’s like an underworld war.”

Daramy said she heard about five shots. She was sleeping after getting home from work.

“As soon as I heard them, I was on the ground,” she said. It’s instinctual in Baltimore’s violence-prone neighborhoods.

Two doors down from where Schools was found, “R.I.P. Pooh” is scrawled below the windows of a home. On the street corner, a tattered memorial of teddy bears and deflated balloons for 30-year-old Shawn Wright, who was fatally shot Aug. 10 by a man who jumped out of a minivan.

The Eastern District leads the city in homicides this year, with 33 people slain. That’s down significantly, however, from the mid-1990s, when the district consistently recorded in excess of 70 killings annually.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (52)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore
        

The Sun's Nick Madigan reports that a man who held up a Parkton bank earlier this month wore a Cincinnati Reds cap, and therefore might be a fan.

Maybe.

But that got me thinking of the New York Times article earlier this month that concluded Yankees caps are popular among criminals:

"Gym-locker heists, bank robberies, daylight holdups — these New York City crimes have only one thing in common, and it is not the culprits. It is the Yankees caps they wore. A curious phenomenon has emerged at the intersection of fashion, sports and crime: dozens of men and women who have robbed, beaten, stabbed and shot at their fellow New Yorkers have done so while wearing Yankees caps or clothing."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime humor
        

Howard County police are seeking a bespectacled man dressed in a shirt and tie caught breaking into a house. Be sure to watch the video -- it shows the burglary in progress. The cops have dubbed him the "preppy burglar."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Howard County
        

A man who called himself "Hitler" admitted in Baltimore Circuit Court today to beating a black fisherman at a city park. Here is the start of Sun reporter's Tricia Bishop's story:

Calvin E. Lockner, the self-professed white supremacist who was accused of beating an elderly black fisherman last year then stealing his truck, pleaded guilty to four charges including assault Wednesday, and agreed to a 31-year prison term as part of the deal.

Sentencing is scheduled for Monday morning, to give the victims, including 77-year-old James Privott, who lost two teeth in the South Baltimore attack, a chance to appear. Privott was unavailable Wednesday, according to Baltimore State's Attorney spokesman Joseph Sviatko.

Court documents describe Lockner as a registered sex offender who molested a little girl and raped a woman. He goes by the nickname "Hitler" and has a tattoo of the Nazi leader across his abdomen. After his arrest, he told police the attack "wouldn't have happened if [Privott] was a white man."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore
        

The Baltimore Police Department has scheduled a news conference for 11:15 a.m. to update the public on a series of robberies at Mondawmin Mall. The event will be live-streamed, meaning you can watch it as it happens.

Here is the link the press conference.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

Baltimore police have found a new commander to oversee reforms in the sex offense unit, selecting Dep. Maj. Clifton McWhite, of the Western District, to fill a vacant position overseeing special investigations.

Police thought they had this position filled before in July, when Maj. Scott Bloodsworth, the commander of the Southern District, was asked to move downtown and head the unit. But Bloodsworth instead opted to retire, and police have been searching for a replacement ever since. In the meantime, police have changed protocols for rape investigations, detectives have been sent to re-training, and an extensive review is underway to determine if cases marked as "unfounded" since 2009 were properly classified.

McWhite is a 15-year veteran whose experience includes homicide investigations, such as the killing of a Johns Hopkins student in 2004. In the past year he has jumped from lieutenant to deputy major of the Western District. He doesn't have experience with sex offense investigations, and officials believe that may be a plus given the way the unit has operated for the past several years. In his new role, he'll oversee child abuse, sex offense, missing persons, financial fraud, and the citywide robbery and pawn shop units.

[Picture by Sun photographer Karl Merton Ferron]

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

New technology designed to detect hard-to-see injuries has been successfully used to prosecute a domestic violence suspect in the city. Called an Alternative Light Source, staffers at Mercy Medical Center used it to detect bruises hidden under a victim's skin.

As a result, the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office says a 31-year-old man was found guilty of assault and sentenced to eight years in prison. A Baltimore Circuit Court judge allowed the Mercy nurse to testify about the technology.

Baltimore Sun reporter Kate Smith described the new technology in a story published earlier this month.

A statement from city prosecutors:

While at Mercy Medical Center, the victim was examined by Barbara Boal, R.N., F.N.E. – A, a forensic nurse with the hospital’s SAFE program. She observed and photographed bruising to the victim’s chest, back, and neck.

She then examined the victim using an Alternative Light Source (ALS), a technology that will allow its user to observe bruises underneath the skin and not yet visible to the naked eye.

Using the ALS, Nurse Boal was able to see additional bruising to the victim’s neck consistent with her report of being strangled with one hand. She also observed substantial bruising to the victim’s chest, caused by blood vessels bursting while the victim was deprived of oxygen during the strangulation.

At the June trial, Nurse Boal was called as a witness. She was qualified as an expert in forensic nursing.  Just before she was to start the substantive portion of her testimony, the defense raised a Frye-Reed challenge to the introduction of any testimony based on the use of the Alternative Light Source technology because this type of expert testimony had not been litigated in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

A Frye-Reed hearing was conducted where the forensic nurse was the sole witness. She testified that the use of the ALS was standard at Mercy Medical Center, that it was used in other hospitals around the state and the nation, and that it was considered the best practice for visualizing bruising under the skin.

The judge found that the use of the Alternative Light Source was a generally accepted practice in the forensic nursing community and denied the defense motion to exclude testimony based on the use of the ALS. The assault trial lasted June 1, 2010 – June 7, 2010 and Johnson was found guilty of second-degree assault and sentenced June 15, 2010 to eight years incarceration.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Police agencies throughout Maryland and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is encouraging people to get rid of their old, prescription medicine. Many people have bottles of unused pills crowding medicine cabinets, and authorities say they will take them off your hands and dispose of them properly.

Here is one release from the Baltimore County Police Department:

On Saturday, September 25, the Baltimore County Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will be collecting potentially dangerous prescription drugs from area residents. The DEA National Take Back Initiative is an effort by law enforcement to get unused, and in some cases, dangerous drugs out of the house and disposed of in a safe and secure manner.

The following precincts have been designated as drop off locations, open Saturday, Sept. 25, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.:

    * Precinct 2/Woodlawn, 6424 Windsor Mill Road, Woodlawn 21207
    * Precinct 7/Cockeysville, 111 Wight Avenue, Cockeysville 21030
    * Precinct 12/North Point, 1747 Merritt Boulevard, Baltimore 21222

In Baltimore City:

    * Central District station, 500 East Baltimore St.

    * Eastern District station, 1620 Edison Highway

    * Western District station, 1034 N. Mount St.

    * Southern District station, 10 Cherry Hill Road

Anne Arundel County police will accept old medicine at its Northern District station at 939 Hammonds Lane and at the Eastern District at 3700 Mountain Road. Howard County police will be open at its Northern District on Courthouse Drive in Ellicott City.

A complete list of locations is here.

For more information on the program, from Baltimore County police:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime
        

The caretaker of Ark Church, Milton Hill is gone -- killed two months ago, police say, for his scooter -- but on Tuesday the parishioners joined with the cops who joined with the neighbors to spruce up a park near the church that had become an open-air drug market.

At left, Monica Lopossay captures Carolyn Jasper cleaning up the park.

It's one of those stories we've seen time and time again. Even the residents are a bit skeptical -- Carolyn Pitt told reporter Jessica Anderson, "They are doing a great job, but we don't know how long it's going to last."

Just Monday on East Preston Street, a man and woman were shot, and the Eastern District now leads the city with 32 slayings so far this year. And so the community joined forces as part of "Operation Good Faith" to clean up Aiken Playground.

The question remains, as always, what happens next. Hours later in West and Northeast Baltimore, three more people were shot.

As Jessica wrote:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore, Neighborhoods
        

Two years ago, Mondawmin Mall underwent a multi-million dollar makeover that included bringing an anchor Target store to the troubled shopping complex. The idea was to spruce up the stores, and the neighborhood, and attract customers from across the city who otherwise shopped in the suburbs.

But now police are hunting three separate groups of robbers who have held up merchants in a wave of attacks since this summer. Shopkeepers at Mondawmin have been robbed 17 times since 2007, seven of those attacks coming this year alone.

The most recent occurred Sunday afternoon when a gunman made off with $100,000 in jewelry and watches from Elite Gold & Diamond. Merchants complained that mall managers told them not to talk publicly, but one manager at a shoe store told me how scared she was to have a gun pressed to her side.

Today's story also notes violence at suburban malls in Annapolis, Columbia and Towson. And in January, the victim of a shooting outside Mondawmin ran through the mall, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The mall is pictured above in a photo by The Sun's Glenn Fawcett after it's upgrade.

Still, the number of armed robberies in an enclosed shopping center is a bit unnerving, especially since most are occurring in the middle of the afternoon. Here are some others culled from police reports:  

The latest robbery at Elite Gold occurred Sunday few minutes after 2 p.m. The gunman was described as a male between 19 and 23 years old, wearing a green hat.

Police said the same store was robbed Aug. 12 about 2:40 p.m. with one watch valued about $7,000 reported stolen. In that case, the gunman was described as 18 to 20 years old with cornrows in his hair and wearing a black shirt with white stripes, dark sunglasses and a hat.

On Aug. 14, shortly before 2 p.m., police said two men walked into RK Jewelers, asked to look at a watch and then pulled out a handgun and said, "Give me everything." Police said they took watches worth about $25,000.

On Aug. 2, police said a man put a tube of lip gloss on the counter and pulled out a gun as the clerk at Perfumania rang up the sale. Police said that man, described as in his 30s, and an accomplice robbed the store of $280 and two containers of lip gloss.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, West Baltimore
        

Pathologists and technicians who investigate Maryland's 4,000 unexpected deaths each year are said to be "giddy" about the opening of the state's new, $54 million Forensic Medical Center in Baltimore.

The state-of-the-art facility, which fills a city block at West Baltimore and Poppleton streets, will replace the 41-year-old building at Pratt and Penn streets that presently houses the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. It is designed to improve working conditions and speed the autopsy process for families and law enforcement.

The new, six-story building, formally opening today, triples the state agency's floor space, providing state-of-the-art technology to boost efficiency. The old facility was built for 2,000 autopsies a year and now has 16 examiners doing 4,000 annually in a basement room. The new building has enlarged, brightly lit space for up to 23 medical examiners to perform up to 6,000 autopsies a year as the demand grows. The first autopsies in the new space are expected by mid-October.

[Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum]

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

From Sun reporter Nick Madigan at the downtown courthouse:

As the Ken Harris murder trial reconvened today after a three-day break, defense attorneys resumed their verbal sparring with the state's witnesses and their questioning of virtually every iota of testimony and evidence, whether relevant to the actual crime or not.

Without saying it outright, the lawyers, who represent three men charged with the murder of the former Baltimore councilman, seem deeply immersed in the tried-and-true legal tactic of undermining the prosecution’s case at every turn, even when the questions might at first glance seem entirely innocuous.

One of this morning’s witnesses, for instance, was twice asked whether, as a forensic examiner for the Baltimore police, he had tried to find out the identity of a young woman seen in an ATM surveillance video captured near the scene of the crime shortly before it took place on Sept. 20, 2008, outside the New Haven Lounge, a jazz club in Northeast Baltimore.

The witness, Staccato Butler, conceded that he had not looked into her identity, explaining that he was not asked to do by detectives. “They told me they wanted stills from a certain time frame, and that’s what I gave them,” Butler said, referring to his having made a series of still pictures from surveillance tapes both inside and outside the club at the time of the fatal hold-up.

His reply was pounced on by Jerome Bivens, who represents Jerome Williams, the youngest of the defendants. “We have no idea who she is?” Bivens asked. “Whether she saw anything? Name? Address? We don’t know who she is, right?”

Bivens and his colleagues have repeatedly tried to leave the impression with the jury that someone other than one of the defendants could have been the person who shot Harris as he tried to flee in his car from the hold-up. At one point this morning, after the jury had been shown fuzzy images of three men robbing the New Haven at gunpoint, Bivens attempted to persuade Butler to admit that photos “distort the truth.” An objection from the prosecution was sustained.

The attorney pressed ahead regardless. “We’re all very excited” by the images, Bivens exclaimed with unmistakable sarcasm. But, he suggested to the witness, “we have no way of knowing whether what was depicted in the video was fiction.”

Butler, who appeared flummoxed by much of Bivens’ repartee, did not have an answer.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" premiered Sunday, a fictionalized period drama depicting mobsters in Prohibition-era Atlantic City. It's based on true stories and features some real characters, including a young Al Capone.

Capone has ties to Baltimore -  here's a quick history lesson, courtesy of The Sun's archives (this article was written by novelist and Sun alum Laura Lippman, whose husband David Simon is no stranger to stellar HBO fare):

When Al Capone kept the books Mobster tried to go straight in Highlandtown
February 11, 1996

By Laura Lippman

He coulda been an accountant.

Before the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, before the conviction for tax evasion, before Alcatraz -- before all these milestones in his life, Alphonse Capone (you can call him Al) did time as a legitimate bookkeeper. In Highlandtown.

We know, we know: Most people think Capone's crooked path followed a straight line from his native Brooklyn to his adopted town, Chicago. But this early Baltimore interlude of Public Enemy No. 1 came to light with the 1994 publication of "Capone: The Man and the Era" (Simon & Schuster).

The gangster's biographer, Laurence Bergreen, first heard about Capone's flirtation with respectability from Capone family members. The then 20-year-old man, recently married, was trying to break away from the rackets and his patron, Johnny Torrio.

Mr. Bergreen writes: "When Capone left home, he went first to Baltimore, where he worked not as a hit man, racketeer, bartender, or pimp, but as a bookkeeper for a legitimate construction firm run by Peter Aiello. Capone's position was purely clerical. Each morning, soberly attired in a suit and tie, Al went to the Aiello offices in the Highland Town [sic] section of Baltimore."

Although the whereabouts of the Capone household at this time are not known, it was a family of three: Capone, Mae and their young son, Albert Francis, known as Sonny. A grade school drop-out, Capone set out to find a job doing what he did best: arithmetic.

"He had learned some of the rudiments [of bookkeeping] from Johnny Torrio, because that's the way Johnny Torrio administered his vice and gambling rackets," Mr. Bergreen explained by telephone from New York. "He had a good head for figures.

"For him, this job was a way out. A way out of his environment and an attempt to be legitimate and respectable and to pull away from any racketeering," he said, adding: "I want to stress that Aiello Construction Co. was and is a completely legitimate company, with no ties to organized crime."

Peter Aiello has died, but his stories live on, through his son, Mike, and grandchildren. Although Mike Aiello spoke to Mr. Bergreen about his father's most famous employee, the Aiello family passed on the opportunity to discuss the subject with The Sun.

But the book tells readers what they need to know. "Evidently he was a good employee, and evidently my father liked him," Mike Aiello says. Evidently indeed, for when Johnny Torrio asked Capone to come to Chicago in early 1921, Peter Aiello lent him $500.

"He said he was cut out to do bigger and better things, and he needed money to go to Chicago because he had some opportunities there," Mr. Aiello told Mr. Bergreen.

Capone never forgot the debt. A few years later, the up-and-coming crime boss threw his former legit boss a parade in Cicero. Whatever the event meant to Peter Aiello, it was a seminal day for Capone, according to the biography.

"More than any racket, it was a sign he had arrived," Mr. Bergreen writes. "Never again would his enjoyment of la mala vita be so innocent, carefree and childlike as it was on this day."

Not long after that happy day in Cicero, Johnny Torrio fled Chicago in fear for his life and Capone became king of the rackets. It was a bloody reign, best remembered for the seven slayings on Feb. 14, 1929.

Capone ruled until 1931, when he was convicted for income tax evasion. He served eight years of his 11-year sentence in a string of federal prisons, including Alcatraz.

Upon his release, Capone returned to Baltimore in 1939, taking up residence in Mount Washington while being treated for syphilis at Union Memorial Hospital. (He was to have been admitted to Johns Hopkins, according to some accounts, but the board of trustees objected. And he tried to find a place to live in Guilford, but had no luck.)

The local papers dutifully chronicled his movements for the next four months: "U.S. Guard Put Over Capone In Hospital Here." "Al Capone Moves To Residence Here." "Capone Reported As Resting Quietly." "Capone Quits Residence On Pimlico Road." (None of these quite match perhaps the most intriguing Capone headline of all time: "Capone Plays Banjo And Writes At Alcatraz.")

At the time, the most factual reporting about Capone may have been in H.L. Mencken's diary. According to Mr. Bergreen, Mencken got the story right, in part, because he was "an eminent hypochondriac [who] happened to be a good friend of the physician who treated Capone."

"An extremely docile patient," Mencken wrote. "His mental disturbance takes the form of delusions of grandeur. He believes that he is an owner of a factory in Florida, employing 25,000 men."

On March 1940, Capone left Baltimore and retired to his Florida home, where he died Jan. 25, 1947. A heart attack was reported as the official cause, although his health had been in a long decline. In his final days, there was a stroke, followed by pneumonia and a fever.

Upon his death, the Associated Press invoked the usual descriptions: "Scarface Al Public Enemy No. 1 underworld king, big-shot gambler, free spender."

Now add to that list, Highlandtown bookkeeper.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

An assistant coach with the Baltimore Ravens was arrested Saturday on the Beltway and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

Crime reporter Justin Fenton wrote:

Andy Moeller, 46, an assistant offensive line coach, was stopped by a trooper for speeding just before 1 a.m. Saturday on the outer loop of the beltway at Greenspring Ave., according to state police spokesman Greg Shipley.

Moeller showed signs of being impaired and was charged with seven traffic violations, including driving while under the influence. Shipley said Moeller signed the citations and was released to a sober driver.

It's not the first time for Moeller. Fenton reports that he was charged with the same offense back in May and acquitted in August. There was no comment from the Ravens.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Breaking news, Confronting crime
        

The Johns Hopkins doctor who was shot during last week's standoff in a hospital building is improving, according to officials. David B. Cohen has been upgraded to good condition. This picture is at left from a Johns Hopkins Hospital website screen shot.

He was shot by Paul Warren Pardus, who apparently was upset that his mother might have to go into a hospice. Police said Pardus shot Cohen, then killed his mother and himself. Police, believing Pardus was holding his mother hostage, locked down part of the campus for hours.

Baltimore Sun reporter Yeganeh June Torbati reports today that the doctor's wife issued a statement:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, East Baltimore
        

Baltimore police are continuing to investigate two multiple shootings that occurred Monday night -- three men shot and wounded in Brooklyn and two others shot in East Baltimore.

One victim was listed in critical condition from the South Baltimore shootings; homicide detectives are investigating the shootings near Greenmount Cemetery but there's been no word on their conditions.

For more details, police reporter Justin Fenton has a fuller account.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore, South Baltimore
        

UPDATE: The jury deliberated less than two hours before finding Seamus Coyle guilty of the March 1 murder. Coyle, the first of six defendants to appear before a jury, faces a life sentence.  

Karla Porter had been talking for a year or more about wanting someone to kill her husband, according to testimony in the trial of one of the men accused of his murder.

"She wants him dead," Roger Harris, an attorney for defendant Seamus Coyle, said in Baltimore Circuit Court today, referring to testimony about the woman's stated desire to have her husband murdered. William Raymond Porter, 49, who along with his wife owned a Hess gas station on E. Joppa Road in Towson, was fatally shot on March 1. His wife told police the crime had been committed by a man who had held up the business.

Acting on a tip, detectives focused instead on the widow, and the police chief said later that Karla Porter had "arranged for the death of her husband" for a $9,000 fee, split between several men. One of them, police said, was her nephew, Coyle, who was the first defendant appear before a jury. His trial began last week.

Coyle's attorney, in his closing arguments today, emphasized that the prosecution had not placed his client at the scene of the crime. Instead, the state's case against Coyle rests largely on an interview he gave detectives in which he acknowledged introducing his aunt to Walter Bishop, who police and prosecutors believe was the hit man. He later set up and attended a second meeting between his aunt and Bishop at a diner.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Courts and the justice system
        

A 34-year-old woman was charged with fatally beating her aunt Friday, after telling 911 dispatchers that she “hurt my aunt and I don’t know why.”

When police arrived at the scene, they found D’lana Simmons with her hands, face and clothes covered in the blood of aunt Cecelia Mitchell, 66. The murder weapon was believed to be “The Club,” the device used to lock the steering wheel of a vehicle, police said.

Police and medic units responded to the 1500 block of N. Stricker St. on Friday at about 7:50 p.m. for a call of an injured person. Mitchell was in the living room when officers arrived, with Simmons in the dining room. When an officer asked what happened, she did not respond and was placed in handcuffs.

According to charging documents, Detective Joseph Landsman reviewed a report of the 911 call, in which a female voice could be heard saying, “My aunt is lying on the floor dying because I hit her with The Club.” She identified herself as “D’lana.”

A relative told detectives that Simmons was her daughter and that Mitchell was her sister.

Simmons, of the 200 block of E. 33rd St., does not appear to have a prior criminal record. On what appeared to be her Facebook page, she said she had attended Villa Julie college and was pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: West Baltimore
        

A week after Baltimore voters ditched an incumbent prosecutor, who stressed "intervention, prevention and treatment," in favor of the get-tough-on-crime slogan of her challenger, the new top prosecutor in Prince George's County says one of her most ambitious goals will be introducing programs to help prevent repeat offenses by offering intervention.

According to the Washington Post, new Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks says she wants to replicate the "Back on Track" program used in California for non-violent, first time offenders:

In its attempt to prevent repeat offenses, the "Back on Track" program gives young offenders between 18 and 24 the opportunity to channel their energy into learning skills instead of schemes, according to California media reports. After pleading guilty, the offenders attend an 18-month intensive apprenticeship program with a city college and can graduate only by staying crime-free and staying in school or keeping a job.

Although critics have questioned its effectiveness, Harris has said fewer than 10 percent of its participants have re-offended.

Alsobrooks said she believes the California approach could help break the cycle of recidivism in the District's third-largest jurisdiction by helping offenders return to their community - whose support Alsobrooks also plans to court.

"We need their engagement," said Alsobrooks, 39. Alsobrooks, a single mother who heads the county's Revenue Authority, won Tuesday's primary with 42.3 percent of the vote and the endorsements of State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, the county's police union and others.

New Baltimore state's attorney Gregg Bernstein, whose terms begins in January, has said that he supports treatment programs but that the office's first priority must be focusing on locking up violent, repeat criminals. During the campaign, some interpreted that as a "lock everyone up" viewpoint, which Bernstein sought to clarify in the waning days of the campaign.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Baltimore is indeed a small town.

Just read Justin Fenton's story today on how a shooting victim met the man who shot him as they both recovered in a rehab center. Cops never learned of the confession from suspect to victim until after both had died from their injuries.

The result -- a shooting case cleared but another name from the past to add to this years murder count.

Here's Justin's enticing opening:

It took 21 years for a bullet to kill Michael Chase.

It took 14 years for a bullet to kill Franklin Spencer.

And it took both of their deaths — six years apart — for investigators to figure out what one had to do with the other.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Neighborhoods
        

Baltimore police have begun a post-mortem on Thursday’s standoff at Johns Hopkins Hospital to determine whether police or hospital employees missed any signals that might have prevented a man from shooting a doctor and then killing his mother and himself (photo at left by The Sun's police reporter, Justin Fenton).

“Was there a clue we could have picked up?” Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “It’s important that we go back and critique this for the safety of all Baltimoreans.”

One question Bealefeld said he would like answered is whether Paul Warren Pardus always carried his small .38 caliber Kel-Tec handgun, so small the chief said it could be “concealed in the palm of your hand”  — when he visited is ailing mother, 84-year-old Jean Davis, at the hospital.

Police said that Pardus, speaking with a doctor and believing he had failed to help his cancer-stricken mother, pulled out the gun, shot the doctor and then retreated into Room 873 at the Nelson Building where he shot her and then himself.

Bealefeld said the first responding officers had no idea that the two were already dead and believed they might have a hostage situation. The commissioner also said that the police also had to assume that the man had gotten out “and was at large in the Nelson building or he had made his escape into the general area. We were working through all those contingencies.”

Bealefeld said Pardus had a gun permit from Virginia for at least three years and had purchased the handgun about two years ago. He said officers have replayed video taken from cameras before the standoff but haven’t seen anything that was missed. He said his officers have been working closely with the FBI, who arrived at standoff in its first minutes, to background the suspect.

The commissioner said that perhaps relatives or doctors at Hopkins might have known something or had a clue to unusual behavior that might have prompted authorities or security staff to scrutinize Pardus further.

But Bealefeld said its next to impossible to fully protect the mini-city that is Hopkins and the tens of thousands of people that are on its sprawling East Baltimore campus every day.

“The frustrations we have in protecting Baltimore, not just at Hopkins but across the city, is that police officers arent’ equipped with X-ray vision. … It speaks to the vigilance of all of us. I would like to think there is some communication between a family member that we missed. Was there some communication between staff?”

Hopkins officials have said that putting metal detectors at every hospital entrance would be an impossible task and an impediment to effectively treating patients. Bealefeld agreed.

“But this is America, and I would not be in favor of sacrificing people’s civil liberties to the extent that it would require us to assure that no one has a pen knife in their pockets,” the commissioner said.

Asked if Hopkins, one of the nation’s premier hospitals, is safe, Bealefeld offered some rare insight into his personal life. “My mother suffered a stroke over a year ago,” he said, “and she’s received care in a number of area hospitals. She gets treatment two days a week and this morning she’s at Hopkins Hospital getting her physical therapy, and I have zero concerns about her safety.”

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, East Baltimore
        

"No one could have better support from a family than I have had from mine," she said.

As The Sun's Tricia Bishop works on a story for tomorrow's paper, here's some reaction:

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake issued a statement:

"Throughout the primary campaign season, I have always said that I’m deeply committed to working with the State’s Attorney’s Office to reduce violent crime.  I congratulate Mr. Gregg Bernstein and look forward to working with the State’s Attorney’s Office and our partners in law enforcement to improve public safety for the citizens of Baltimore. I thank State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy for her many years of public service and for her dedication and hard work in the community."

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III:

"The city has a debt of gratitude for Mrs. Jessamy's long service. It's been an incredible service to the city of Baltimore. There is no doubt that she dedicated her soul to her job. There is no doubt. With that being said, I'm excited now to move forward and do the work of the people of Baltimore, and that's figure out how to leverage these partnerships to make everybody safer.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Join Justin Fenton at 12:30 p.m. for a live chat. Topics we'll cover include yesterday's shootings at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the hotly contested race for city state's attorney between Patricia C. Jessamy and Gregg Bernstein. Though the chat doesn't begin until 12:30 p.m., you can ask questions now by clicking on our chat interface below.

Posted by Carla Correa at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore, State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy will concede her race this afternoon to her primary opponent Gregg Bernstein, according to a source with direct knowledge of her plans. Jessamy has scheduled a news conference for 1 p.m. at her campaign headquarters.

Up until this morning, it appeared that Jessamy was getting ready to challenge the voting process even as absentee ballots are being counted. Thursday night, the elections board had counted about 75 percent of those votes.

Bernstein was ahead by 1,363 votes, with more than 2,000 ballots still to be counted.

Jessamy's spokeswoman had alleged that thousands of votes might be missing and her legal team appeared to be gearing up for a challenge. We'll what happens in 90 minutes. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Breaking news, Courts and the justice system, State's Attorney Campaign
        

Kurt L. Schmoke, the former Baltimore mayor and state's attorney, has suggested in a newspaper article that Gregg Bernstein enlisted little-known Sheryl Lansey as a candidate to divide the African-American vote.

"At the beginning of the campaign what I saw was a white male challenger and then, oops, the last day of filing, they find a black woman," Schmoke was quoted as saying in the Gazette newspapers.

That's laughable to Lansey, who told Sun reporter Yeganeh June Torbati "if someone was paying me, I never got the check." In fact, she said Jessamy supporters suggested that if she would drop out, they would help her in a future run for City Council. Lansey said she had no interest in that position, and rejected the idea.

Others came, offering her nothing but asking her to give up nonetheless. She shrugged them off, too.

"These folks just say — get out, and see ya!" Lansey said, laughing.

Lansey, 63, said she ran for the office because she believes the Baltimore criminal justice system is "kind of broken," and thought her 10 years as a District Court administrator equipped her to make improvements. Her campaign slogan, printed on the blue brochure summarizing her experience and qualifications, is "The system CAN work again."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, behind in the ballot count to challenger Gregg Bernstein by 1,350 votes, is scrutinizing the voting process and demanding lists of machines and copies of written procedures for transporting information from polling places to the elections board.

At the moment, one of her legal teams members, Larry Gibson, is careful to say that Jessamy is not making any accusations but merely wants to cover all her bases as absentee ballots are counted. The day before, Jessamy's spokeswoman, Margaret T. Burns, questioned whether thousands of votes had been turned in.

The vote for state's attorney is indeed close and Jessamy has not yet conceded, which is understandable given she's still mathematically in the race. And it appears she's at least laying the ground-work to mount a challenge if problems are uncovered.

But Gibson's comments on Thursday were toned down compared to what Burns said on Wednesday, and that brings up another problem. Burns is the spokeswoman for the city State's Attorney's office. She is not the spokesperson for the campaign.

Taxpayers pay Burns to speak on behalf of a public office, on matters of public import, such as trials, the actions of prosecutors and public safety. Her campaign is another matter entirely. Jessamy gets this. She had a Facebook page and Internet site that were whole different from the sites used by her office.

But on Wednesday, there was Burns speaking on behalf of candidate Jessamy instead of prosecutor Jessamy. Her defense that the "campaign is over" because the votes had been cast is questionable, especially since the entire purpose of Burns' statement was to question whether all the votes had been cast.

For more: 

Here's what Michael Runnels, a professor of law and public responsibility at Loyola University, had to say: "She should be doing the people's work of justice, not engaging in the political machinations of one public official's questionably failing campaign."

Here's what University of Maryland journalism professor Christopher T. Hanson, an expert on politics, ethics and news reporting, had to say: The public "should care because if there aren't any rules and regulations to differentiate public service jobs from election jobs, you would have a revision to the old spoils system where the people who are supposed to be doing the public's work are electioneering during office hours."

Here's what the law says: A state employee "may not engage in political activity while on the job during work hours."

Burns has been a strong advocate for Jessamy and her office but she's also drawn fire from city cops and from Bernstein for repeatedly blaming police for failures to prosecute. Bernstein has questioned her six-figure salary.

We'll have to await all the absentee and provisional ballots to be counted before we know Jessamy's next step. It might be a while before we know whether Jessamy or Bernstein will occupy the top prosecutor's chair.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, State's Attorney Campaign
        

The man who shot a doctor and took his mother hostage in a Johns Hopkins building killed his mother and then fatally shot himself, a city police source told The Sun's police reporter Justin Fenton.

Police put out a Twitter alert just a moment ago saying the situation had ended and was a "possible murder suicide." No other details were given. They said the gunman was not shot by a police officer.

Details are still coming in. Early reports were that the man was angry over the treatment of his mother and that he threatened to jump out of an 8th floor window. Initial reports also had him holding his mother hostage.

An officer at the scene early in the confrontation was heard over the police radio saying that the man wanted to kill his mother. Here are full reports and on scene accounts from reporters who are at the scene. Live twitter feeds from reporter Justin Fenton are here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore
        

Baltimore police remain at Johns Hopkins Hospital after a gunman shot and critically wounded a doctor and is now contained to a room on the 8th floor of a building on the sprawling East Baltimore medical campus.

Police SWAT members and dozens of officers are inside and around the hospital and the CNN is reporting live from the scene. The television network has already put The Sun's Justin Fenton on air to describe events. Fenton's picture from the scene is at left; follow his Twitter updates here.

Police had blocked off many streets in the area, but they just sent out a Twitter alert noting that the situation "is isolated to one relatively small part of the hospital. Persons who have business are encouraged to come."

Details remain slim at this hour but police have confirmed that a doctor was shot but apparently did not suffer life-threatening injuries. A nurse told reporters that the gunman was upset at the treatment of his mother and threatened to jump out of a window. Police just Twittered that "motive unclear at present."

A police officer had reported early in the confrontation that the man was holding his mother hostage, but police have not confirmed that there is any hostage involved. The name of the doctor has not been released.

For more details, see The Baltimore Sun's full coverage of this unfolding event.

Here is one report:

Portions of the Nelson Building, which includes a thoracic center on Hopkins' sprawling East Baltimore campus, were placed on lockdown and other sections evacuated. Police have shut down numerous roads in the area of Broadway, East Monument and North Wolfe streets. South of Monument and Wolfe was sealed off with trucks, cars and tape. Many units are on the scene, including police, fire and SWAT teams. Snipers are set up outside the building, and Guglielmi said that police are enacting a "tactical operation."

At 11:15 a.m., Hopkins sent out emergency e-mail and text advisories to staff that said "shooter on Nelson 8." An employee at the Hopkins School of Public Health, which is across Wolfe Street from the complex containing the Nelson building, said that employees were told to stay in their offices.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore
        

Update: Justin Fenton reporting from the scene that police are confirming a doctor has been shot and is critical condition.

Update: We've obtained the alert text Hopkins sent out to employees:  "Shooter incident on Nelson 8 at JHH. Stay in your office or room and lock doors until an all clear is announced. Stay away from windows. Wait for further instruction."

Baltimore police are swarming John Hopkins Hospital where there are reports a person has been shot and that a man has taken a hostage on the 8th floor of one of the buildings, according to authorities and traffic over the police radio.

Hopkins sounded an emergency alert about 11:15 a.m. at Nelson 8, a Thoracic Center on its sprawling East Baltimore campus. Police have shut down numerous roads in the area of Broadway, East Monument and North Wolf Streets.

Baltimore police did not offer any immediate comment. One officer on the radio asked, “Do we have a description of this guy?”

Another officer said the Quick Response Team, or SWAT, is at the hospital. The officer said on the radio that a man is “inside the building with his mother and he wants to kill his mom.”

Baltimore police just confirmed that an adult male has been shot at the hospital. No other details have been released.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore
        

An attempted murder suspect who escaped from police custody on Friday in downtown Baltimore was captured along with his pregnant girlfriend Wednesday evening in Washington state, city police said this morning.

The arrests end a five-day manhunt for 32-year-old Paul Bryan Palmer and 29-year-old Gina Christina Distefano. Police also said they recovered the couple's silver four-door Kia Spectra with a bent frame; it was not immediately clear if the couple used the car to drive across country.

Police did not say how they found the couple in Washington, but said members of the Warrant Apprehension Task Force and the U.S. Marshal's Service arrested Palmer and Distefano in Yelm, Washington about 5:40 p.m.

Police have said Palmer escaped Friday about 1 p.m. from the Central District police station on East Baltimore Street. He had been arrested and charged with attempted murder in connection with an attack on a man last month in a dispute over a girl. The victim had been stabbed seven times.

While in custody, he complained of a hand injury and was taken to the police station lobby, where he managed to wriggle free of his plastic handcuffs and ran away.

Here is a statement from police:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Breaking news, Downtown
        

Okay, so the election is over -- though ironically the fight for the city's top prosecutor trudges along -- but isn't soon time to pick up the campaign signs? I know it's only two days since we (well, less than a third of us) went to the polls, but these signs are already feeling like the lawn chairs that guarded spaces long after the snow storms pulled away.

Trouble is, unlike the lawn chairs, which are technically illegal, there is nothing to prevent a trounced candidate from keeping his sign up, well, forever. Counties and other local jurisdictions tried with a variety of laws to force candidates to remove their signs within a week of elections or not put them up more than two months before.

At left is a scene on York Road just north of Northern Parkway where a day after the election campaign signs were already in disrepair.

But a federal judge ruled three years that's a violation of free speech. Zoning laws can restrict the sign and somewhat the placement of signs, but it can't single campaign signs out for special treatment. Government can't regulate the speech, and that includes how long the speech can be posted.

Many jurisdictions, including Baltimore City and Baltimore County, have the restrictive laws on the books, but the Attorney General's Office warns the local governments that they can't be enforced. I checked with both the city and the county, and indeed, they're aware of the ruling.

So if you want to complain about signs, call your local candidate.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Neighborhoods
        

About 100 afternoon shoppers were stuck in a shopping center parking lot Wednesday as police investigated a thwarted robbery in which a security officer fired shots at two men with guns, officials said.

The incident unfolded around 3:15 p.m., police said, in the Loch Raven Shopping Center in the 1700 block of E. Northern Parkway. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said two men brandishing handgun attempted to rob the Lime Tree liquor store a pharmacy, and a special police officer working there pulled out a weapon and fired. It did not appear as though anyone was struck.

Special police are security officers commissioned by the city or state to arrest people within certain areas, and police were working to verify the officer's status.

One man was apprehended by a city police detective who was in the area, and police were searching for a second man.

The crime scene stretched from the supermarket parking lot, through a gas station, and to the busy intersection of E. Northern Parkway and Loch Raven Boulevard. Shoppers, who were potential witnesses, were blocked from leaving the shopping center as more than a dozen detectives investigated. Many grumbled that they had picked a bad time to run errands.

"How long does a chicken keep in a hot car?" one asked.

A woman, who did not want to give her name because she witnessed part of the incident, said she saw a "pudgy" white man with a heavy knit mask over his face run from the liquor store, as what looked like an undercover police officer gave chase. She said he pulled the mask off as a car squealed out of the parking lot.

Another woman who was inside the Mars supermarket said he store employees rushed to the front of the store and yelled, "Don't kill him, don't kill him."

Police said nearby Mercy High School was placed on lockdown as a precaution but has since reopened.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Northeast Baltimore
        

State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy's camp is claiming that as many as 10,000 of Baltimore’s primary votes could still be missing, according to The Sun's Tricia Bishop on the Maryland Politics blog. Jessamy's staff says that memory cards from 27 machines in six districts were unaccounted for.

If accurate, it could leave room for the election to sway back toward Jessamy, the incumbent, who’s narrowly trailing challenger Gregg Bernstein.

But city Board of Elections Director Armstead B.C. Jones Sr. said the figures sounded high to him, and that none of it would matter by the end of the day.

“We are going to get to 100 percent” of the votes cast at polling places, he said. Jones did not know how many votes were left to be counted, or when the results could be expected, but he said the office usually shuts down around 4:30 p.m.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Violent crime is down for the third straight year. Property crime for the seventh. But why? Experts are hard-pressed to come up with an explanation.

Violent crimes reported to police dropped 5.3 percent last year, the FBI said Monday, and reported property crimes fell 4.6 percent. That's as police budgets have been shrinking amid a down economy, when crime is typically expected to rise.

The trend is "one of these welcome puzzles," says Richard Rosenfeld, president of the American Society of Criminology. "This is forcing us to think more seriously under what conditions economic activity influences crime."

Among the theories: As overall economic activity slows, more people who otherwise would be at work are unemployed and at home, and when they do travel they are not as likely to carry items of value, so burglaries and street robberies decline.

In Baltimore, violent crime declined 4 percent in 2009, according to police statistics. There were increases in murder and rape, but robberies dropped nearly 8 percent and aggravated assault, the category that constitutes more than half of the total violent crime incidents, declined 2 percent.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Crime elsewhere
        

The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services sent out this alert a few hours ago:

Fifteen correctional officers have been placed on administrative leave while the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) conducts an administrative investigation into alleged misconduct relating to the use of excessive force.

The alleged misconduct stems from an incident involving a detainee at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) in late August of this year. No life threatening injuries were sustained by any detainees or officers during the incident.

Working with the Division of Pretrial Detention and Services (DPDS) and Detention Center administration, the DPSCS Internal Investigative Unit is heading up the investigation. If necessary, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken upon the completion of the administrative investigation.

Those placed on administrative leave may not necessarily face any disciplinary action, but are placed under this status because they may be material witnesses to the alleged incident.

“The Division of Pretrial Detention and Services has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to excessive use of force,” said DPDS Commissioner Wendell France today.

“The vast majority of our correctional officers are unsung heroes who are firm, fair, and impartial. Our mission is to protect the public, our employees and our offenders. Any activity not consistent with the DPSCS standards of conduct and professional accountability will result in swift consequences for those responsible.”

At this point, the Department cannot issue any further comment regarding the specific nature of the allegations because the investigation is ongoing.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Prisons
        

From Sun reporter Nick Madigan, who is at the city courthouse:

On the third day of testimony in the trial of three men accused of killing a former Baltimore councilman, defense attorneys seemed confident that none of the half-dozen witnesses who have testified so far has managed to pinpoint the defendants at the scene of the crime.

As the session broke for lunch today, two of the lawyers told reporters that some witnesses seemed  unsure of what they had seen on the night Kenneth N. Harris died, and that in some cases they contradicted each other.

"No one can identify anyone - even less than I thought," Jason Silverstein, an attorney for defendant Charles McGaney, said outside the courtroom. "And so far no one has identified any of the evidence that they got DNA from, except for the mask."

Silverstein was referring to a Halloween mask of a skull that was shown to the jury on Tuesday and which was also plainly visible on one of the robbers' faces in a surveillance video captured inside the New Haven Lounge on Sept. 20, 2008, when the fatal hold-up took place.

Even the mask introduced as evidence has problems, according to Silverstein. "It's gray, and in the video it looks white, and everyone says it was white," he said.

One of the witnesses to testify this morning, Sidney Matthews, who was bartending at the New Haven that night, said it was the masked man who had jumped over the bar, gun in hand, and yet the video shows another man doing so and the masked man running around the end of the bar.

"He kept contradicting what the video showed," Silverstein said. He conceded, however, that people under severe stress -- as they might be during an armed hold-up - could have hazy recollections of some details, especially two years after the events being described.

"You understand why people might be scared," he said. "It's the middle of a robbery."

Another defense lawyer, Jerome Bivens, who represents Jerome Williams, said much the same thing. "We have to agree that these people are traumatized," he said, even as he questioned why Matthews had been uncertain as to which of the assailants did what.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

The hearing before the Crime and Drugs subcommittee was spurred in part by The Sun's reporting on the widespread dismissal of rape cases in Baltimore, where for years police have discarded reports at a higher percentage than in any other city in the country or failed to take reports on the streets. Since police instituted new policies in early July, the number of reported rapes has gone from down 15 percent to up nearly 20 percent.

"[In Baltimore] The Baltimore Sun put a spotlight on this. As a result, there was action, attention was paid, and all of a sudden the number of cases has gone up dramatically," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. "But I'm concerned that in other areas of this nation, they may not be hitting the radar screen."

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey announced at the hearing that the Police Executive Research Foundation will convene an executive session in early 2011 for police leaders, medical and mental health professionals and advocacy groups to discuss the current state of sexual assault reporting and investigations. Ramsey said the goal is to advise police agencies on best practices and how to partner with their local social service and advocacy organizations.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

With votes from all the city's precincts tallied, challenger Gregg Bernstein appears to have edged out incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy in the race for Baltimore City State's Attorney, her campaign acknowledged Wednesday morning, though Jessamy has not conceded the race.

“I just don’t know how this happened,” said Jessamy’s spokeswoman  Marilyn Harris-Davis, questioning the integrity of Bernstein’s campaign, which Jessamy has said was made up of “lies” and misrepresentations about her record. Harris-Davis said Jessamy was home resting Wednesday after a long night and would make decisions about talking to media later today.

“We are not conceding,” Harris-Davis said.

The narrow margin raises the significance of absentee ballots, which are to be counted beginning on Thursday. Requests for absentee ballots came from more than 3,600 Baltimore Democrats, and 1,678 had been returned as of Tuesday, according to state officials.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

My new colleague over at the Midnight Sun blog, Erik Maza, reports that the owners of a bar where a city cop was busted early Sunday during a fight in the parking lot has been complaining about what they call police harassment.

Kind of ironic in a way that the owners of Club Reality on Washington Boulevard think the cops are singling them out for scrutiny and the one time police wade in to break up a fight it involves one of their own. It's the police who ended up more shamed than the bar.

In this case, police were directing traffic outside the venue when they heard a commotion and then saw a woman hit a man. That man, it turns out, was a city police officer who had been suspended last year after getting arrested for allegedly driving drunk off a police station parking lot.

Anyway, here is some of what Maza found while researching the bar-end of this bar fight:

Owners of Club Reality, which has been open since January of last year, say the club has a "friendly and cozy atmosphere" for the "best homemade food this side of town." But they've also had brush-ins with city police, who they accused of "harassment" on their MySpace page.

In April, club owners wrote the venue was charged with disorderly conduct, and took to their Web site to complain about what they called "bogus complaints" that  resulted in "police loitering on the premises and many unscheduled visits from the fire chief and liquor board."

"We do not understand the harassment and disrespectful behavior by several police officers to the staff and patrons," promotions manager Melissa Carter wrote then. "It is intimidating and embarrassing."

But police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said there are no pending padlock hearings scheduled for Club Reality, and that he didn't see the point of the club's contention. Club owners couldn't be reached for comment - will update when they do - but the Baltimore City Liquor License Board also doesn't show any pending action against the venue.

Guglielmi said that they don't monitor Club Reality any more than they do other nightclubs. "The bottom line on any business is that we're not going to tolerate any violence," he said.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Neighborhoods, West Baltimore
        

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, it appears that challenger Gregg Bernstein has enough votes to defeat State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.

Bernstein has a 1,400 vote edge, but there are 1,678 absentee ballots left. Though as of this writing neither candidate has claimed victor of conceded defeat, Jessamy would have to nearly nearly all the absentee votes to serve another term. Those ballots will start being counted on Thursday.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore State's Attorney hopeful Gregg Bernstein is leading 15-year incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy by a margin of 29,121 to 27,700. It's 1,421, or about 2.5 percent. Election officials provided the results on a spreadsheet showing that 96 percent of the precincts are reporting, and there is some confusion at this hour as to whether data from a handful of polling places did not make it over into the final tally. There's also the issue of absentee ballots - more than 3,600 were mailed out in Baltimore, and less than half had been returned as of Tuesday.

[Read a Sun reporter Tricia Bishop's recap of the day and reaction from the candidates at their respective campaign parties here]

Bernstein's camp was concerned about election officials' apparent inability to provide details on which polling places hadn't reported - in fact, it became unclear whether that was an issue at all, with Board of Elections president Lawrence Cager refusing to answer any questions.

Here's what I know: Jessamy supporters Rep. Elijah Cummings and Larry S. Gibson, who visited the elections office to view the data firsthand, appeared disappointed at the results, and Bernstein's camp, including wife Sheryl Goldstein and defense attorney Warren Brown, seemed cautiously confident that the lead was insurmountable.

Officials will begin counting the absentees on Thursday, and at this stage its probably prudent to label this one "too close to call."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Sun reporter Nick Madigan's latest installment on the Harris trial (for full trial coverage and more stories on the Harris shooting):

A forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Kenneth N. Harris, the 45-year-old former Baltimore City Council member who was shot during a holdup two years ago, testified in court today that a single bullet had entered the victim’s back below his left shoulder, traversed his left lung and his windpipe, and ruptured the subclavian artery, a major blood vessel under his right collar bone, causing “significant bleeding in his chest cavity.”

Ling Li, an assistant medical examiner in the state coroner’s office in Baltimore, said that, as a result of the damage to the windpipe, or trachea, Harris had aspirated blood into his lungs.

The bullet that killed him was recovered from tissue under Harris’ right shoulder and shown Tuesday to the jury that is to decide the fate of three men accused of the former official’s murder.

As Li spoke, Harris’ sister, sitting in the courtroom’s third row, became upset and buried her face in her hands. 

Posted by Maryann James at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

A man who worked for a Baltimore nonprofit designed to help stem the city's violence plead pleaded guilty today to racketeering charges linked to his participation in the Black Guerilla Family gang, federal prosecutors announced.

Todd Duncan, 36, had worked for Communities Organized to Improve Life Inc., even as prosecutors with the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said he ran much of BGF's activities. Several indictments related to this case have implicated prison guards, highlighted a luxurious lifestyle led by gang members in prison and underscored how deep gang connections reach.

The Sun will have more on this plea deal later today on the Internet and in the print edition. Here are some details from federal prosecutors:

BALTIMORE BGF COMMANDER PLEADS GUILTY TO RACKETEERING

Baltimore, Maryland - Todd Duncan, a/k/a Donnie, age 36, of Baltimore, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to conduct and participate in the activities of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF), a racketeering enterprise.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Ava Cooper-Davis of the Drug Enforcement Administration - Washington Field Division; Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III; Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy; and Secretary Gary D. Maynard and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
        
“Due to his activities as the ‘street commander’ of the BGF in Baltimore, Mr. Duncan faces many years in a federal prison,”  stated Ava A. Cooper-Davis, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “The ‘Commander’ will now have a serious reduction in rank and will wear a prison uniform thanks to the efforts of many law enforcement agencies and prosecutors working together to make Baltimore a safer place.”

According to the plea agreement, the Black Guerilla Family (BGF), is a nationwide gang operating in prison facilities and major cities throughout the United States.  Founded in California in the 1960s and introduced into the Maryland correctional system in the mid 1990s, BGF in Maryland is increasingly active on the streets of Baltimore City, as well as in various prison facilities in Maryland.

According to the plea agreement, BGF conducts its affairs through a pattern of criminal activity, including: narcotics trafficking, robbery; extortion; bribery; retaliation against a witness or informant; money laundering; and commercial robbery.  BGF members arrange to have drugs, tobacco, cell phones, food and other contraband smuggled into Maryland prison facilities, sometimes recruiting and paying employees of prison facilities, including corrections officers, to assist BGF and its members in the smuggling of contraband, the collection of intelligence and in the concealment of BGF's criminal activities.  BGF members use violence and threats of violence to coerce incarcerated persons to pay protection money to BGF, to enforce the BGF code of conduct, and to increase their control of the Baltimore City drug trade and the underground "prison economy" in Maryland correctional facilities.

According to Duncan’s plea agreement, from 2006 through June 2010, Duncan was a member of BGF and participated in the drug trafficking activities of the gang.  Specifically, Duncan was the overall city-wide commander of the BGF and at times acted as a source of supply of heroin to members of the BGF; operated street level heroin shops; utilized individuals to store, process and sell heroin for his enrichment and for the enrichment of BGF; and arranged for the sale of bulk quantities of heroin to various wholesale customers.

Duncan admits that as the city-wide commander of the BGF he attended meetings of high-ranking members of the BGF at locations in and around Baltimore City.  During these meetings, gang activities, including drug trafficking, money laundering, commercial robberies and retaliation against rival gangs and BGF members, who broke protocol, were discussed.  As the city-wide commander, Duncan had ultimate authority to authorize the actions discussed during these meetings.

Duncan faces a  maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.  As part of the plea agreement, Duncan and the government have agreed that Duncan should be sentenced to 15 years in prison.   U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles, Jr. has scheduled sentencing for January 20, 2011.

Mr. Rosenstein praised the DEA; Baltimore City Police Department; Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office; and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for their work in this investigation and prosecution; as well as the Baltimore County Police Department; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation, Washington D.C. Field Office, for their assistance.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked Baltimore City Assistant State’s Attorneys Antonio Gioia, Miabeth Marosy and Rebecca Cox, for their work in the investigation and prosecution, and Assistant United States Attorneys James T. Wallner and Clinton J. Fuchs, who are prosecuting this Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force case.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Nick Madigan's latest installment on the Harris trial (for full trial coverage and more stories on the Harris shooting):

A jazz club owner who was with Kenneth N. Harris moments before the former Baltimore City Council member was shot to death said in court today that a gunman shouting profanities and threats approached them outside the club and that Harris immediately left the club owner’s side and headed for his car.

Keith A. Covington, who has run the New Haven Lounge in Northeast Baltimore since 1987 and became friendly with Harris about a decade ago, was the fourth witness to testify in the trial of three men accused of Harris’ murder on Sept. 20, 2008.

Covington told the jury that Harris had stopped by the club at about 1 a.m., after it had closed, to borrow a corkscrew for a bottle of wine and to use the restroom. Covington let Harris into the bar and opened the bottle for him. Then, he said, Harris told him he had a woman in his car he wanted Covington to meet and the two stepped outside.

At that moment, a gunman appeared from behind a column, his weapon pointed “directly at my forehead,” Covington said.

“ ‘You know what this is,’ ” the man with the gun shouted, according to the witness. “ ‘Get the **** back in the building before I kill you.’ ”

Harris, standing on Covington’s left, “broke off to get back to his car” as two other men approached. “One is running toward me,” Covington said, “and the other is running toward Ken.”
As he reached the door of the club, a gun pointed at the back of his head, “I hear a shot,” said Covington, who did not see anyone being hit. “I’m frightened for my life at this point like at no other time… I’m realizing this is no joke. This is nothing to be played with. I can only pay attention to the gunman’s demands. I can only feel that if my employees panic and run, they may be shot as well.”

Covington went on to describe the robbery inside the club, where six employees had been holding a staff meeting. Some were robbed, and about $2,000, the night’s proceeds, were taken from a safe that Covington was forced to open, he said.

As the three men ran out the building’s rear door, Covington grabbed a gun he kept in a drawer and fired three shots, prompting another expletive from one of the robbers.

Covington said he did not find out that Harris had been shot and killed until later, after police had been summoned. The former councilman was found in his car a short distance away. His companion, Monica Foreman-Robinson, testified on Monday, the trial’s first day.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Kenneth Harris trial
        

The Baltimore police officer arrested early Sunday in a fight outside a bar on Washington Boulevard had already been suspended last year after he was arrested during an altercation on a police parking lot, according to court documents.

Everett Walker, a six-year veteran of the force, was in plain clothes while walking across the lot of the Southwestern District station in April 2009. Two other officers questioned him, not knowing he was a police officer, and an argument ensued.

Police said in charging documents that the officer thought Walker had been drinking and waited until he got into his personal car and backed out of his space. The officers then boxed him in and arrested him.

Court documents say he declined to take a breath test and that officers did not know he was on the force until they reached into his pants pocket and found his badge. They then removed his handgun from his waist. Walker's trial on a charge of disturbing the public peace is scheduled for October.

The officer now faces additional charges stemming from Sunday's altercation outside Club Reality on Washington Boulevard. Police said it was near closing when they walked behind the bar because of a loud dispute. They said they saw a woman punch Walker and then Walker later charged the woman and hit a bystander.

Both the woman and Walker were charged with assault. Walker was not armed at the time, as his gun had been confiscated after the April incident.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

A man accused of running the Baltimore operation of the notorious Black Guerrilla Family prison gang plans to plead guilty Tuesday to a drug conspiracy charge, the AP reports.

Todd Duncan is scheduled for a rearraignment Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court. Duncan's attorney, Robert Waldman, says his client will enter a guilty plea.

Waldman says he and prosecutors will request a 15-year sentence as part of the plea deal.

Duncan was one of 14 alleged BGF members indicted on a racketeering charge, which carries a possible life sentence. The plea deal allows him to avoid trial on that charge.

Court documents show Duncan was dealing drugs and recruiting gang members while working for a city-funded nonprofit intended to steer young people away from gangs and violence.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Gangs
        

A bar fight in the parking lot of Club Reality in Southwest Baltimore turned ugly for cops, and they ended up arresting one of their own. The officer clearly picked a bad time to get in trouble -- one of the officers he encountered was his boss, Maj. Anthony Brown, the commander of the Southwestern District.

The officer has been suspended without pay and faces charges of assault and disorderly conduct stemming from a fight with a woman and fellow officers outside the bar on Washington Boulevard early Sunday.

A department spokesman identified him as Officer Everett Walker, 29, who has been on the force nearly six years. Police said they also arrested the woman, Takira Thompson, 20, and charged her with assault.

Police describe a raucous altercation in the back parking lot of the bar shortly before 2 a.m. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Everett appeared intoxicated and belligerent, but he did not have his weapon with him at the time.

Here are the details: 

Police say officers were directing traffic outside the nightclub to ensure an orderly departure of patrons. An officer reported hearing an argument in the rear parking lot and saw a large group of people who had just come out of the bar.

According to charging documents, officers including Brown saw Thompson punch Walker in the left side of his mouth with a closed right fist. Security officers from the club stepped in to separate the two people.

The officer wrote in the court documents that he ordered Walker to back up. "Everett Walker appeared clearly intoxicated with a glazed stare and was unresponsive to our loud verbal commands to 'Back up and sit down,'" the documents say.

"Everett Walker was non compliant and forced his way free of us attempting to hold him back and charged toward Takira Thompson," the court documents say. Police said Walker then hit a woman standing between him and his girlfriend, hitting Keyona Fonce in the left side of her face.

Police said Walker, even while in handcuffs, was unresponsive and complained of chest pains. He was treated at St. Agnes Hospital before being processed at Central Booking and Intake Center. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

Rapes investigated by Baltimore police are up nearly 20 percent this year, a sharp increase since new procedures were sparked by a Baltimore Sun investigation showing the city leading the nation in rape reports dismissed by police.

As of Aug. 28, city police report 112 rape cases this year, compared with 94 at this time last year.

In June, two weeks before The Sun report, rape cases were down 15 percent for the year. After the story was published, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake ordered an audit and police immediately implemented new protocols prohibiting patrol officers from declining to take a rape report on the streets.

Anthony Guglielmi, the Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesman, said the recent uptick is not due to a rash of new sexual assaults, but rather is the result of "counting them better."

"There's been a really clear change in some of the protocols for these things, and the Police Department is really trying to be responsive to the issue," said Gail Reid, the emergency room program manager for TurnAround Inc., a Towson-based resource for victims of sexual assault that is reviewing cases with Baltimore police.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Baltimore’s more than 200 Baptist ministers endorsed incumbent State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy for the city’s top prosecutor position Monday afternoon, calling her a ”tireless worker” who balances conviction with prevention, Tricia Bishop reports on The Sun's Maryland Politics blog.

“Patricia Jessamy understands that we cannot arrest and convict our way” out of crime in the city, said Bishop Douglas I. Miles, pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore and a member of Baltimore’s Baptist Ministers Conference, which announced the endorsement.

Jessamy, who’s been Baltimore’s state’s attorney for 15 years, has long espoused a three-pronged approach to law enforcement that involves crime-prevention programs, offender treatment and prosecution. Her chief opponent for the position in Tuesday’s primary race, fellow-Democrat Gregg Bernstein, is running on a campaign of fighting crime first and foremost.

WJZ has video of the ministers' endorsement, along with a press conference held by prominent criminal defense attorney William H. "Billy" Murphy Jr., who called Jessamy a failure. 

Jump to the Maryland Politics blog to read more. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

The Sun's Nick Madigan reports from the afternoon proceedings in the Ken Harris trial:

A 20-year-old former Morgan State University student testified today that blood was “flowing like water” from Kenneth N. Harris on the night the ex-Baltimore City Council member was shot two years ago.

“Where his feet were, it was like a puddle,” Jeron Whaley said as he described opening Harris’ car door and seeing the injured man sitting in the driver’s seat. The woman with Harris, he said, was “hysterical, screaming, crying, asking for help.”

Whaley was the second witness for the prosecution in the trial of Charles Y. McGaney, Gary A. Collins and Jerome Williams, who face first-degree murder charges and other counts in the death of the former city official, who was shot during a holdup at a jazz club in the Northwood Shopping Center on Sept. 20, 2008.

The witness described being nearby with a group of friends from the university and hearing a gunshot, followed almost immediately by the sound of screeching tires. Jurors had heard earlier during opening arguments that as Harris and his companion — Monica Foreman-Robinson, who was the state’s first witness — tried to flee the scene of the robbery, he had been shot as he switched on his engine, although he still managed to speed off. The car crashed a short distance away.

Whaley told the jury that when he heard the shot and then the squealing tires he “thought it was a drive-by” shooting. He and his friends took cover for a moment, he said, and then ran over to Harris’ Toyota after they saw it crash and heard Foreman-Robinson screaming for help.

“He had a seat belt on,” Whaley said, describing the scene in the car after the woman had unlocked the doors from inside. “I didn’t touch him.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

Usually we tell you what happened over the weekend. Today, the story is what didn't happen - for what appears to be the first time since early April, there were no killings over the weekend in Baltimore.

I consider the weekend to be, generally, Friday afternoon through early Monday morning (that being essentially late Sunday night). Since the homicide-free weekend of April 2-5, there's been at least one and as many as seven killings per weekend in the city. In fact, the bursts of weekend violence became so severe that police started tailoring new strategies to curb them and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III demanded "more urgency" from officers.

Did the strategies work? Is it an anomaly, or just the change in weather? Time will tell, and there were still at least two non-fatal shootings. But a weekend without death is a positive worth noting.

For the year, killings are at 151, compared to 161 at this time last year - about 6 percent. In the past two years, there have been big upticks in November and December (November was the deadliest month of the year for 2009 and 2008), and if that can be avoided, Baltimore has a chance to turn in solid declines.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Top brass
        

From Sun reporter Nick Madigan:

The woman who was with Kenneth N. Harris on the night he was killed said in court today that she was “terrified” when a man in a white Halloween mask walked up to the car they were sitting in and fired a shot at the former Baltimore City Councilman, showering them both with glass.

Monica Foreman-Robinson, whose identity was not publicly known until she took the stand at the start of the trial of three men accused of his murder, said the car shook as the bullet shattered the driver’s side window.

The witness, who said under questioning from a prosecutor that she had met the former city official a few months earlier at the bank they both used, said the gunman had been “really excited and really exaggerated” and was “screaming and yelling” at Harris to remain where he was and not leave in the car.

Foreman-Robinson, dressed entirely in black, said in a halting voice that she did not get a good look at the three men at the scene. Police later charged Charles McGaney, Gary Collins and Jerome Williams with the murder and hold-up of the New Haven Lounge, a jazz club in Northeast Baltimore on Sept. 20, 2008.

“I was terrified,” she said to the jury, describing the moment she heard the shot. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was screaming and yelling and telling Kenny to drive.” 

The car began to move but Harris remained “silent the whole time,” she said, and she did not realize that Harris had been shot until the Toyota Corolla he was driving came to rest against a tree and he slumped against the steering wheel. She said she got out, went around to his side of the car and tried to get him into an upright position.

“He was bleeding, and I couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from,” Foreman-Robinson said. “As it got worse, he started making a gurgling sound. I was calling his name and screaming for him to come back.”

Foreman-Robinson said she and the former official – who was married to another woman – were “good friends,” and she was close to tears as she described learning later that night that he had died.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

Defense attorneys for the three men accused of killing former City Councilman Ken Harris got their first chance to question the state's case, saying pressure to solve the high-profile shooting led police to overlook gaps in evidence.

"It was a grave tragedy when Mr. Harris was killed. We were all hurt," said defense attorney Jerome Bivens, who represents defendant Jerome Williams. "That hurt turned to anger... and that anger turned to contempt. Deep, deep contempt. Somebody had to pay - somebody had to be arrested whether they were guilty or not."

Bivens said police treated the case differently than they would the average killing, and that "when the government wants to charge you with a crime, they can charge you with a crime." He said he also plans to question the veracity of results from the city crime lab.

"Mr. Harris, who was a voice for youth, would not want you to convict the wrong person," Bivens said.

Jason Silverstein, an attorney for defendant Charles McGaney, spoke about specific evidence gaps: he said that police recovered a black bandana with McGaney's DNA, but the man who prosecutors say is McGaney is shown on surveillance footage holding a white towel to his face. Prosecutors also say he wore latex gloves, but a separate video shows him without gloves, Silverstein said.

In his opening, prosecutor Donald Giblin acknowledged that no one can specifically identify the shooters because of the masks they wore. But he said the totality of the evidence is strong. Two big breaks helped police solve the case, he said:

-A woman who lives in the nearby neighborhood dropped her garbage in her trash can and noticed that the bag appeared to land on something. Inside was a woman's purse, taken during the robbery at the New Haven Lounge jazz club. Inside were latex gloves containing the suspect DNA.

-But police didn't have a suspect to match the DNA to. A security guard who worked the shopping center where the robbery took place called police to say that he recognized from security footage released via the media the distinctive walk of a man he knew to frequent the shopping center. He said that man's name was Gary Collins.

Giblin also promised that prosecutors would respond to all questions raised by the defense. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Kenneth Harris trial
        

Baltimore police have now charged an escapee's pregnant girlfriend with harboring a fugitive for allegedly helping a 32-year-old man elude authorities. The man, Paul Bryan Palmer, is charged with attempted murder in connection with a stabbing in August.

Palmer escaped from a downtown police building about 1 p.m. Friday on Gay Street, near City Hall. He was being driven to Central Booking when he complained of a hand injury. He was returned to the Central District station where police said he managed to get free of plastic handcuffs and run away.

He is described as a white male, bald, standing about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 185 pounds. Palmer was last seen wearing a black ball cap, sleeveless white "muscle" t-shirt, blue jeans, and brown work boots. 

He is wanted in a Aug. 31 assault in the 200 block of Davis St. in which a man was stabbed seven times in an argument over a woman.

Over the weekend, police said Palmer could be driving a silver four-door Kia Spectra with a bent frame and "donut" spare tire, with Maryland license plate number 1EWB10. Now, police say they believe Palmer is with his girlfriend, identified as Gina Christina Distefano, 29, who is pregnant. She is described as white, standing 5 feet all and weighing 100 pounds. She has light brown hair and blue eyes.

Anyone with information is urged to call 911.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Downtown
        

Praise for the retiring police reporter Dick Irwin, whose 44-year career spanned three of this city's newspapers, keeps piling up. The accolades come in equal number from cops and scribes, a true testament to the respect he earned from both his colleagues and from those he held accountable.

Dick is at left in a photo by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam. Here's a sampling of the comments:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Best of the Blotter, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Billy Murphy, the longtime criminal defense attorney, says he gave incumbent State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy "a 15-year pass just because she was a black woman" and is speaking out in support of her challenger Gregg Bernstein.

Calling his silence until now a "failure of leadership" on his part, Murphy, a civil rights attorney and former judge who once ran for mayor, said he has a strong preference for black leadership but that Bernstein is simply more qualified than Jessamy.

"We believe, with justification, that a really excellent black lawyer should have that job," Murphy said Saturday. "Gregg Bernstein meets the bill to a 'T', except for the color of his skin. Baltimoreans, black and white, deserve more than what they're getting. He will provide enormously better service to the community."

Speaking along with partner Ken Ravenell, Murphy dismissed the notion that Bernstein supports a "lock 'em up" strategy or will encourage a "police state," as Jessamy and her supporters are charging. Murphy was a vocal critic of past zero tolerance strategies, once coming under fire for linking the tactics of Baltimore police officers with Nazis. He also comes from a distinguished family - his father was one of the first black judges in Maryland, and his great grandfather founded the Afro newspaper.

"This notion of a police state [under Bernstein] is one of the grossest distortions, and I hope everybody can see through that," Murphy said. "This notion that he will set us back 60 years is an appeal to bigotry, and not a fair comment on his life, his history, his professionalism. It's an appeal on race appeal rather than dealing with the issues."

"The suggestion that the only thing that Gregg cares about is being tough on crime - well, he is tough on crime, but he's also a very compassionate guy," Ravenell said. "No one can incarcerate all defendants for all crimes. That's crazy."

Many observers have said the campaign has taken on deep racial under- and sometimes over - tones. Murphy said he believes former Mayor Martin O'Malley's infamous slams on Jessamy polarized the community and marked a moment where she "gained the loyalty of the black community without having earned it because of performance."

"We have a hard time introspectively as well as publicly criticizing black leadership," Murphy said. "When that leadership is attacked from the white community, black people get very defensive and close the wagons. But the attacks on Pat have nothing to do with race.

"Her record has been one disaster after another, and it's plain to see. The statistics on her office have been accurately quoted, and they're awful. It's time for a change."

Ravenell added: "If the voters looked at Pat's record, and did not consider race, the choice would be easy."

Murphy's support of Bernstein is not a total surprise, as he had donated money to Bernstein's campaign. And Jessamy supporters have already noted that Bernstein is supported by the most of the defense community, which Jessamy has implied as meaning that they see an opportunity to weaken her office (though that would contrast with the "police state" contention). Murphy and Ravenell laughed that statement off, saying that she would have gladly accepted their support and noting that many attorneys move between prosecution and defense work, including Milton Allen, the city's first black state's attorney.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

He said police need to make good arrests, "because if you give us good arrests, with the right kind of evidence, its easier for her to go and make the prosecutions that stick." Judges need to "understand that discretion is also about common sense - it's not about letting people on the streets so they can do the same thing all over again" or "not caring at all" and allowing the people she prosecutes back on the street. And probation officers need to violate people when they've "clearly violated their probation."

Bernstein, who was endorsed by The Sun's editorial board Friday, has chastised Jessamy for casting a wide net with her office's limited resources and letting violent criminals slip through the system. He has said he will focus on targeting repeat offenders, but the message has been viewed by many in the black community as too narrowly focused, and for some conjures up zero tolerance strategies of past regimes.

Bernstein was not mentioned by name, but there were several references to his campaign.

Del. Talmadge Branch, who praised Jessamy's work pushing tough anti-crime legislation in Annapolis, said Baltimore doesn't need a state's attorney who is "buddy-buddy with a police commissioner," a reference to Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's support for Bernstein.

"We need somebody with a voice, somebody that's going to be fair, that's not going to agree to the police officers every time they want to prosecute a case," Branch said. "We want somebody who promotes the law and makes sure we get our fair shake. Not just blacks, not just white, but everybody."

Most of the speakers mentioned how race should not be a factor in the safety of the city, perhaps in part a response to today's story in The Sun. At their core, experts say, Jessamy and Bernstein's principles are rooted in different perspectives on how to fight crime, each which resonate differently with the white and black community.

"All of us want our streets to be safe," Cummings said. "We are one Baltimore."

Cummings said he and Jessamy were both targeted in the infamous "Stop Snitching" video, but said she didn't back down and pushed harder for protection for witnesses. He said a bill is stuck in the Senate that would give millions to states for witness protection programs, and that Jessamy played a key role.

"She is far more than a nice lady. She is a bold lady, and a strong state's attorney," he said.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

John Richard "Dick" Irwin, 74, retires from the Baltimore Sun Monday after having spent 44 years reporting on the city's enduring crime industry and distilling and cataloging a never-ending litany of murders, shootings and robberies to his signature "police blotter."

He began the popular feature -- which treated the theft of a tomato plant with as much reverence and importance as bank heist -- in 1979 at the now-defunct News American, then to the now-defunct Evening Sun, and finally to the still-being-printed morning Baltimore Sun.

Dick has been absent since February recovering from medical problems and hardly a night went by when a desk sergeant in some far flung police outpost didn't ask the reporter making cop rounds, "Where's Dick?"

Dick Irwin got information out of cops that no other reporter could, and he demanded perfection from not only himself but from the officers who answered the phone. Whatever information he got was going to be accurate in the next day's paper.

Maryland State Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley called Irwin "an icon in the news business in Baltimore. He has the stamina and the tenacity to get every detail in every story that he pursues. Most policemen want to get off the midnight shift as quickly as possible. Not Dick Irwin. I can't count the number of times I've been awakened from a sound sleep from Dick. I will miss him, but I hope I get some sleep now."

Dick's humor was understated, to say the least. He could talk crass with cops but demanded civility when addressing others. Between stints as a newspaper man, he worked as a clerk in the Social Security Administration, pumped gas and patrolled the streets of North Baltimore for a year as a city police officer.

In the Sun newsroom, he left a reporter who sat next to him this note: "Dick Irwin is off until July 5. He says behave yourself!" In 1995, he stood at a window overlooking Centre Street and watched Pope John Paul II depart on a helicopter after a daylong, hectic visit to the city. "In another 10 minutes, he'll be the Anne Arundel bureau's problem," he said in perfect deadpan, a quip that earned him a spot on "The Wall," reserved for the best quotes heard around the newsroom.

For more:

Dick's police blotter, a list of daily crime both mundane and horrific, was a fixture in the Evening and morning Sun for years, so much so that when it occasionally got crowded out for space or omitted because Dick was on vacation and cops would only talk to him, angry people flooded the newsroom with calls.

Dick might have been one of the last full-time night police reporters in the industry, and his blotter, at least in the form it was when Dick went on leave in February, will most likely not return.

And Dick, distraught over his departure, did not return to the newsroom for a final farewell, which typically involves cake, speeches and a ceremonial clapping during the final walk out the door. Instead, Dick, in keeping with his night-time hours, quietly slipping into the newsroom after midnight to retrieve some personal items from his desk.

He left behind frayed maps, tattered clippings and lists of people killed in the city in the past several years, which he meticulously kept on legal pads. He only discovered e-mail recently. "I still wrestle with whether this is the right thing to do," Dick told me. "I will of course be missing tremendously the people I've worked with."

Dick's first job in newspapers was in 1955 as a copy boy for the News American, when he was still in high school. He was promoted to reporter and covered the police beat until he got laid off in 1958. He went to work for the city police, the Sears regional headquarters in advertising and running a gas station in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the Grand Teton National Park.

He returned to Baltimore in 1960 and took a job at the Social Security Administration where he met his wife, Gwen, to whom he has been married 46 years. Five years later he landed a job back at the News American. He went to the Evening Sun when that paper folded in 1986 and then to the morning Sun when the Evening edition stopped publishing in 1995.

I last wrote about Dick in February 2009 on the 30th anniversary of the blotter, noting that even in a struggling industry, the basic concept of listing crimes has survived in both print and on the Internet. The police blotter constantly ranked as one of the best read features no matter the format:

The blotter is popular because it tells a story, small tales woven to form a portrait of our neighborhoods and of our streets. Even if it's not comprehensive, it's reassuring to know that the missing trash cans and petty thefts, the break-ins and the burglaries, the crimes that most aggravate but often get crowded out by murder and mayhem, still matter. We laugh at the stolen hot tub and shake our heads at the stolen assault weapon.

It's neighborhood gossip in print, or fodder for gossip yet to come. You learn not only that the woman down the street got held up at gunpoint, but that she had $300 in her purse, or that the man shot on Charles Street hailed a cab instead of taking an ambulance to the hospital.

Perhaps most amazing is that the Police Blotter has survived the test of the computer age. Despite electronic feeds in which thousands of crimes can be downloaded from police 911 centers directly to detailed mapping programs, Irwin's feature remains popular, whether it is read at the coffee table, viewed on the computer screen or downloaded to an iPhone (which, by the way, is among the leading items listed in the blotter as stolen).

The computer gives us: "Incident number: 090055470; Report number: n/a; Date/Time: February 07th, 2009 03:10 pm; Description: Assault; Nearby address: 3300 Laurel Fort Meade Rd."

Irwin gives us: "Someone entered the rear yard of a house in the 5900 block of Johnson St. on Saturday morning and removed a tomato from a tomato plant. The tomato was valued at $3, police said."

Here is one last favorite sent to me by a colleague:

North Point Precinct
    Burglary/arrest: A woman reported someone had entered her apartment in the 200 block of Baltimore Ave. on Sunday night and stole a 13-inch television that she would recognize because it was infested with roaches. Near the woman's home that night, police arrested a man in connection with the burglary and recovered the TV - which police confirmed had the insects. Charged with the Baltimore Avenue burglary and another in the 2400 block of Keyway later that evening was Edward S. Renick Jr., 22, of no fixed address.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (31)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

UPDATE: Police say Palmer may be driving a silver Kia with a "donut" spare tire, Maryland tag 1EWB10. If seen, call 911.

Baltimore authorities were searching for a man who was arrested for attempted murder but escaped from a downtown police building after wriggling free of his plastic handcuffs.

Police said Paul Bryan Palmer, 32, was taken into custody on a warrant charging him with attacking a man last month near City Hall. At about 1 p.m. Friday, Palmer was to be transported to Central Booking and Intake Center when he complained of a hand injury and was taken back into the lobby of the department’s Central District building on Baltimore Street, said Anthony Guglielmi, the department’s chief spokesman.

Palmer was able to get free of the plastic handcuffs and ran off, Guglielmi said. Police searched for him for about an hour and are now asking for the public’s help.

Palmer is described as white, bald, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 185 pounds.

Angela Johnese, juvenile justice director for Advocates for Children and Youth, said that at about 1:15 p.m. she saw police cars “coming and going in all directions around Gay, Lombard, Pratt and South.” Officers on foot were posted on numerous corners, and walking in and out of parking garages.

“Makes for an interesting Friday afternoon at the Inner Harbor,” Johnese said in an e-mail.
Guglielmi said Palmer has been charged in connection with an Aug. 31 incident in the 200 block of Davis St. in which a man was attacked and stabbed seven times.

Guglielmi said the victim had just gotten out of jail and went to his girlfriend’s house, where he discovered she was living with another man – Palmer. The men got into an argument and police were called to the home, defusing the situation.

Later, the victim was getting off a bus and walking toward a homeless shelter when he was jumped by Palmer and two men. He was knocked to the ground and punched, then stabbed seven times.
Anyone with information about Palmer’s whereabouts was asked to call 911.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Downtown
        

Those child stars are always getting in trouble.

A state police representative said teen singing sensation Justin Bieber was "horsing around with members of his staff" before a sold-out concert Sunday at the Maryland State Fair when he threw water balloons at two state troopers present for crowd control, the Associated Press reported. One of the balloons apparently hit a trooper's gun belt and burst, while the other brushed a trooper on the chest but did not burst.

No incident report was written by police and a representative said no further action would be taken.

Now watch this video of Bieber hitting his head on a door. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The Midnight Sun blog (now helmed by Sun newcomer Erik Maza) is reporting that a 22-year-old male was stabbed last night at Power Plant Live shortly after the Ravens Kickoff Party ended. Officials are calling the incident "isolated," the result of an apparent fight inside the venue. According to police, a good deal of time passed before the victim even realized he had been stabbed:

Victim was inside Power Plant Live! when he became engaged in an altercation with suspect. During the course of the altercation suspect stabbed victim multiple times in the torso. Suspect was escorted from the plaza through a side hallway leading to S. Frederick Street. Witnesses noticed they had blood on them and went to wash off the blood. Victim, still not knowing he had been stabbed walked out the same hallway onto S. Frederick Street. When witnesses went out to meet the victim he advised them that his abdomen hurt. Witnesses then noticed the victim's shirt covered in blood. Medic #10 responded to the scene and transported victim to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was taken onto surgery.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Downtown
        

It happened one day last year, as more than a dozen board members of a Baltimore substance abuse center had gathered around a conference room. The CEO was giving a PowerPoint presentation on his accomplishments.

Suddenly, his computer shut down, then restarted, replacing the latest slide with an image of a naked woman onto a 64-inch screen. The board members include city officials and foundation heads and is chaired by Baltimore's health commissioner.

Today, Baltimore's State's Attorney's Office announced a grand jury had indicted Walter Powell, 51, with hacking into the computer system. They described him as a disgruntled worker who allegedly used his home computer to access the system, distribute confidential emails from his boss and break into the presentation.

The CEO of the Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc., which distributes public funds to more than 50 substance abuse programs helping thousands of people, told me the attack cost $80,000 -- mostly to rebuild the system, replace software and upgrade security measures.

The CEO, Greg Warren, said no confidential information leaked out.

Here is a statement from prosecutors with more information:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, Downtown
        

Northeast Baltimore’s Four-by-Four neighborhood is tiny, named for its four north-south streets and four east-west streets. But authorities say it has long been a hub of violence and drug activity, taken over by a “clandestine operation” that moved thousands of dollars in drugs at a time.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms led at least 150 law enforcement officers on raids at eight locations as 10 people were federally indicted for being part of a drug organization operating out of the neighborhood from at least June 2009 through August.

Authorities allege that the leader, 22-year-old Dearius Forrester, is the primary suspect in three unsolved killings and a fourth allegedly committed while he was a juvenile, an ATF agent wrote in an affidavit supporting a “no-knock” warrant of his apartment on Leatherwood Place in Rosedale.

Forrester, who they say is known as “Little D,” “Muffler,” and “Chicken,” was captured on an intercepted telephone call talking about how he was hiding on an unlit porch and waiting to shoot someone if they walked around a corner.

“If he comes around the corner, I’m gonna take his top off,” Forrester said, according to the agent.

In state court, Forrester has received suspended sentences for drug dealing and assault. Federal prosecutors thanked city police and prosecutors, with State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy saying the case “demonstrates the strength of our local, state and federal partnership and coordination.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Northeast Baltimore
        

An Anne Arundel County murder suspect who a judge released on bail without the knowledge of prosecutors is back behind bars. That move comes just a day after relatives of the victim expressed outrage.

The Baltimore Sun's Jessica Anderson reported on Wednesday that Hida Chan, the victim's sister, said, "We're scared — he's still out there. To us, [the suspect] is a very dangerous person. He is not afraid to kill."

Police had arrested James William King, 26, of Severn, on Aug. 17 in the shooting of Calvin Chi Man Yeung, 40, who suffered a bullet wound in the upper body while sitting in his car at a traffic signal on Telegraph Road and Route 100. When King was arrested, police said he may have been motivated by road rage.

The suspect was being held in jail but his lawyer filed for bail review. The paperwork never made it to prosecutor, and the judge freed the suspect. "This guy was on the streets by the time we found out," Kristin Fleckenstein, a spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel County State's Attorney's Office, told Anderson.

The suspect's bail was rescinded during another hearing Thursday and police took him back into custody.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Breaking news, Courts and the justice system
        

Baltimore police are starting to use Internet video conferencing to get its message out to the media and to the public. The police already use Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to distribute information about crime and the department.

This new endeavor will allow the police to actually broadcast new conferences to your computer. Here is their statement:

the Baltimore Police Department will begin utilizing programs such as Google Video Chat and Skype to communicate directly with members of the public and news media. The new video conferencing capabilities will allow for increased interaction between citizens, journalists and police public information officers so that vital information on crime and police issues can be disseminated in a timely manner.
 
Since March of 2009, the BPD has embraced the use of social networking to foster better relationships with the community. Crime alerts, notable arrests, and even wanted suspects are broadcast in real-time on the department’s Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.  Videos on police and community happenings are posted weekly on YouTube and residents can even subscribe to free text-message alerts about crime in their community through Nixle.  Collectively, the agency reaches more than 25,000 people through its social media applications.
 
“The intelligence detectives receive from the community is vital in our efforts to keep Baltimore safe”, said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld, III.   “In order to be an effective partner in the crime fight, the BPD has an obligation to keep residents informed of what’s happening in their neighborhoods so that they can actively share information with police.”
 
The motivation behind the department’s move to social media came after Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake challenged city agency heads to use technology to provide a better level of public service to the community.

And here is what it will look like:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Police in several jurisdictions around Maryland are warning residents not to point laser pointers at helicopters, saying their pilots are getting blinded as they track criminals and patrol from the area. There has been numerous such attacks on aircraft this summer at Ocean City and in the Baltimore area.

Baltimore County police recently arrested two men from Essex in separate pointing incidents in Essex -- in one case the pilot of police helicopter was able to turn and shine a spotlight on a house were a resident was playing with a pointer from his front porch.

Earlier today, police held a news conference at Martin State Airport in Middle River to call attention to the problem. Representatives from Maryland State Police were joined by pilots from Baltimore City, Baltimore County, the U.S. Park Police and the University of Maryland Medical Center.

The laser pointers, which can be bought for around $65 at office supply stores and in shops along the Boardwalk in Ocean City, have become popular play-things for youths and young adults. But police warn that shining the pointers -- particularly the green ones, which are more powerful than the red -- can blind pilots for up to 30 seconds.

"It's not fun and games," said Maryland State Police Lt. Walter A. Kerr of the aviation unit (at the podium above). "It could be potentially lethal."

Police helicopters are particularly vulnerable because they fly low -- at 500 to 1,500 feet -- and circle, and Kerr said people "have fun playing with us. Our helicopters are primary targets."

Baltimore County Sgt. Ron Wines, who has flown police helicopters since 1984, said he has been "lasered" two times, once just a few months ago while chasing an armed robbery suspect in the western part of the county. He said he was temporarily blinded and had to delay his response.

"It's very disorienting," Wines said. "Our flight crews are defenseless."

Here's a history of Baltimore Police Department's Foxtrot helicopter.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Breaking news, Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Gregg Bernstein gets the CityPaper's endorsement in the race for Baltimore State's Attorney. Whereas the Afro last week praised incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy's focus on intervention and treatment, the alternative weekly says that and her contention that conviction rates are "smoke and mirrors" "confirmed for us that Jessamy may have lost touch with what it is she and her office are supposed to be doing amid the community appeals and dust-ups with the Police Department." They knock Bernstein on his campaign ads, which they say added more "ugly undertones" to the race, but call him a "smart, passionate attorney ... running on the need to get serious about making good cases against violent offenders and making them stick."

Meanwhile, Jessamy reportedly told a group of local ministers last night that Bernstein's policies "will be taking us back 60 years," (skip to the 1:30 mark of the video) which the author wrote is "a message that resonates well within the American Afrikan community of Baltimore." A citizen journalist who was at the meeting also noted the remark in a Twitter message.

Though O'Malley has voiced his support for Jessamy, the report about the meeting with ministers links Bernstein to O'Malley's "zero-tolerance" approach. It's a correlation Bernstein has been trying to dispute with radio ads saying "he knows you can't lock everyone up." In his public remarks, he's emphasized an approach focusing on violent offenders but also has said that Jessamy's intervention programs take her focus off locking up criminals, which he says should be the office's core mission.

The race will be decided next Tuesday.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

The first thing that struck me was how young these juvenile suspects appeared in their adult mugshots. I'm used to seeing teens charged as adults, but the two 14-year-old boys and the 16-year-old girl charged with stabbing a man on on Maryland Avenue Monday afternoon looked liked they belonged in elementary school.

The daylight attack near Penn Station and the University of Baltimore Law School once again raised questions about the safety of the swath of real estate between Mid-Town Belvedere south of North Avenue and Charles Village to the north. The area is targeted for revitalization, with the Station North arts district and all, but the stretch still seems a no-mans land that could link two vibrant city neighborhoods.

Today's story on the stabbings repeats some of these concerns raised earlier when Stephen Pitcairn was fatally stabbed on St. Paul Street in Charles Village while walking home from a bus at Penn Station. The latest victim on Monday was walking south.

The suspects charged in his case are charged with attempted first-degree murder and several other crimes. Police identified them as Keith Omar Anderson, 14, of Glen Burnie (at left in photos); Lawrence Antonio Horton Jr., 14, of East Baltimore (in the middle); and Daysha Wilson, 16, of East Baltimore.

Here is some chilling accounts from the police report and court charging documents:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
Categories: Neighborhoods, North Baltimore
        

Concerned that police departments nationwide fail to investigate rapes fully, a congressional committee will examine the issue next week at a hearing spurred partly by a Baltimore Sun examination of the systemic underreporting of sex crimes.

The Senate Crime and Drugs subcommittee has asked representatives of the Office of Violence Against Women and a Pennsylvania woman who was jailed by police who erroneously accused her of making a false rape report to appear in Washington to discuss the problem.

The Sun reported in July that Baltimore led the nation for at least five years in the percentage of rape cases in which police concluded that the victim was lying, with more than 3 in 10 cases determined to be “unfounded.” Other cities have seen disturbingly high percentages of uninvestigated or dropped race cases in past years, and a women’s advocate in Philadelphia pushed for the congressional hearing after the Sun’s story reignited her concerns.

The newspaper’s report “made me believe that all of the issues [in other cities] were not just idiosyncratic problems, but that there is likely a chronic and systemic failure in police departments,” said Carol E. Tracy, head of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia. “I think it’s important to expose it, and to encourage the federal government, which has very little jurisdiction around this, to nevertheless exercise greater accountability on the data that it does receive.”

Follow the link for more.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

A leader of the Rollin' 20s Bloods gang, Kevin Chambers, "BK", 29, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin. In the press release, federal prosecutors highlighted the work of state prosecutors, who play a crucial role with wiretap investigations. Chambers' gang operated on Fayette Street in Patterson Park and other areas of Baltimore, selling large quantities of crack cocaine and heroin. Chambers faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison at sentencing in January.

"Today's guilty plea involving a violent gang member demonstrates the significant investigative expertise the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office provides to long-term law enforcement investigations," said State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy in a statement. "Narcotics prosecutors in the State's Attorney's Office pursued leads that led to the Rollin 20's Bloods, and our cross-designated prosecutor worked with federal prosecutors who helped to put them out of business."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Courts and the justice system, East Baltimore
        

In the most recent incident, a university student was walking on Hartwick Road at Princeton Avenue around 2 a.m. Saturday when he was approached by four suspects, who tackled him, removed the cash from his wallet and fled. The victim suffered minor abrasions from the assault.

University of Maryland Police Capt. Marc Limansky is urging students to be careful walking alone at night and to take extra precautions such as programming emergency numbers into cellphones.

"We want to make sure students are aware of when to take precautions," he said. “It’s typically in the early morning hours -- 2 to 4 a.m. is the most likely time a person is going to become victimized."

Limansky said the Saturday mugging was similar to two other recent incidents.

About 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 29, three students were waiting at an off-campus bus stop on Berwyn House Road when they were approached by men who demanded their belongings, police said.

Two of the students were able to escape and ran to a nearby fire station, police said. They said the third student was punched several times. The assailants stole cash from him then fled.

In the third incident, three students leaving EJ’s Landing Restaurant around 12:45 Aug. 27 were mugged in the parking lot of a nearby hotel.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

It appears three juveniles arrested in the mid-afternoon stabbing of a man on Labor Day have been charged as adults, but we're awaiting final word from city police. Then we'll be able to release the names and other details.

Meanwhile, police released the offense report on the attack, which they had originally said occurred in the 1500 block of St. Paul St. That would put it adjacent to Penn Station, near a transit hub for the MTA, the Bolt Bus, the Hopkins shuttle and dozens of taxis. Police had said the victim was stabbed there and ran to Maryland Avenue.

But the police report shows the man was actually stabbed on Maryland Avenue, just north of the University of Baltimore campus, near the Jones Falls Expressway. The suspects were arrested in the 1700 block of St. Paul St.

Here is the report:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, North Baltimore
        

The Afro newspaper has endorsed Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy for a fourth elected term. The endorsement, which you can read here along with the paper's other picks, praises Jessamy's focus on community programs and says challenger Gregg Bernstein's assertion that the office's primary role should be to focus on prosecutions is "too narrow."

The Investigative Voice also hit the streets with Bernstein in the Perkins Homes housing project in Southeast Baltimore, asking residents how race will factor into their decision on a candidate. The Sun will be running features about the candidates in the coming days. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

UPDATE, 11:05 a.m.: At the scene, the intersection of West North and North Fulton avenues, a silver sedan was heavily damaged and a bike with a milk crate lay twisted on the median, as a pile of newspapers were pushed around the intersection by the wind. Witnesses said the injured man appeared to be in his 50s and was taken away in an ambulance; the driver of the stolen vehicle was said to be a woman. Police could not immediately confirm those details.

Jeanelle Hinton, 36, said she was sitting in her car as her cousin got a bottled water from a nearby convenience store, when suddenly the Foxtrot police helicopter swooped down and a number of vehicles converged at the intersection. 

"When they blocked the car in, I heard all this crashing and noises," she said of the several cars that were damaged. "The guy was on the ground, and his body was twisted. It was like something out of a movie."

--

Baltimore police just sent out a Twitter alert saying a stolen car jumped a median strip and hit a pedestrian at West North and Fulton avenues in West Baltimore. There are no other details available, including the condition of the man who was hit.

It's also unclear whether police were chasing or following the stolen car at the time. We'll provide updates as the morning progresses.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, West Baltimore
        

Three men in their 20s were shot on a West Baltimore street corner shortly before 9 p.m. Monday night. All three made it on their own to a nearby hospital and are expected to survive. One was grazed on the hip, another shot in the leg and the third was wounded several times.

Meanwhile we're awaiting charges on the three juveniles who police say stabbed a 37-year-old man on St. Paul Street Monday afternoon. The brazen daylight attack occurred about 3:30 p.m. near Penn Station, an area we wrote about extensively after the Johns Hopkins researcher was killed as he walked back home from a bus stop a few weeks ago.

It's an area in transition, splitting a neighborhood called Station North where the city is trying to transform into a viable, livable area, and Lower Charles Village on the north side of North Avenue.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Breaking news, North Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

Baltimore police arrested three juveniles within minutes of a daylight stabbing that occurred on St. Paul Street near Penn Station. Police tell me that a 37-year-old man was attacked as he walked along the street, at the northern tip of Mid-Town Belvedere.

The man, who ran four blocks to Maryland Avenue, where he collapsed near a bridge, is expected to survive. The attack occurred about 3:35 p.m.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, North Baltimore
        

Baltimore police are investigating a body that was found this afternoon at the Baltimore Renaissance Harborplace Hotel on East Pratt Street. Few details are available but police say at this point they don't suspect foul play.

A hotel staff member foundt the body of the adult male in his room. No guests were told to leave the 622-room hotel, but the sight of police cars outfront were unnerving. A cause of death will be made by the Medical Examiner's Office, most likely on Tuesday.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Downtown
        

A Baltimore County police officer shot and critically wounded a man outside a Randallstown shopping center this morning.

Details remain sketchy but police said an officer responded to a call for a suspicious man and was attacked as soon as the pulled into the parking lot ofthe Kings Point Square center on Liberty Road near Marriottsville Road.

A police spokesman said a struggle broke out during which the man tried to grab the officer's weapon. A back-up officer then fired twice into the man's chest. He was listed in critical but stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

A letter recently placed in the file of a man charged in a drug conspiracy at the Gilmor Homes housing project in West Baltimore outlines how federal prosecutors put the squeeze on those charged in U.S. District Court, and offers the promise of a "superceding indictment" in a case in which very few details have been disclosed.  Here's the text of the letter, which it says is intended "to assist you and your client in reaching a plea agreement with the United States":

Dear Counsel:

You have entered your appearance as counsel for one of the 22 defendants in the above case. As you know, this case involves an alleged multi-year drug conspiracy by individual associated with the Gilmor Homes Housing Project. The current indictment charges Conspiracy to Distribute and Possess with Intent to Distribute Controlled Substances, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846.

The evidence in this case includes several months of electronic surveillance of cellular telephones. The evidence also involves the purchase of narcotics by informants and undercover law enforcement officers.

To assist you and your client in reaching a plea agreement with the United States, we will offer each defendant one “reverse proffer,” where the agents will play limited and selected phone calls implicating your client in this criminal activity. The proffer will not include all of the evidence against your client; rather, we will present only highlights to assist your client in deciding whether to enter into a plea or cooperation agreement with the government.

DEA agents have already conducted proffers with some defendants in this case. We will continue to conduct proffers in the months of September and October, 2010. We will not conduct any reverse proffers after October 31, 2010. After that date, we plan to file mandatory enhancements pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 851. We will also seek a Superseding Indictment, charging additional acts against the remaining defendants.

If you and your client are interested in having a reverse proffer with the government, please contact me or co-counsel Christopher Romano via e-mail within the next couple of weeks. Include in your e-mail three proposed dates (Monday through Friday) in September or early October. Unless otherwise noted, all proffers will take place at the United States Case 1:10-cr-00336-BEL Document 209 Filed 09/02/10 Page 1 of 2 Courthouse - Fifth Floor. Either the U.S. Marshals or the DEA agents may perform the transport. We will likely have the proffer session and the arraignment before the magistrate judge on the same day. As in previous cases, defendants may want to proffer with the
government in hopes of receiving 5K1.1 credit on their sentence. We are open and willing to meet with your client if he/she has interests in cooperating with the government. Please indicate that in your email.

Again, our hope is to develop an efficient process that will encourage your client to enter into a plea and/or cooperation agreement with the United States. There is, of course, no obligation for your client to participate in any proffer session with the government. If your client desires to proceed to trial, we will move forward in accordance with the Court’s instruction and trial schedule.

Please e-mail me or Christopher Romano as soon as possible to schedule the proffer session with your client.

Very truly yours,
Rod J. Rosenstein
United States Attorney

Posted by Justin Fenton at 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

At the end of "An Omar Broadway Film," a documentary shot on a contraband video camera from within a New Jersey prison that aired on HBO in July, words flash on the screen that say Broadway is finishing his sentence for carjacking in Maryland. It took only a few clicks through the state's online court records to find out Broadway was at it again.

The Bloods member smuggled a camera into the gang unit of the Northern State Prison in Newark, and filmed for six months to show what he claimed was inmate abuse and deplorable living conditions. It was an incredible security lapse, and Broadway was shipped out of state so he could be someone else's problem. 

Court records showed Broadway was busted with a thumb-sized camera in early 2009 - prison officials downplayed the breach and said he hadn't recorded much. But that's only the camera they know about, Broadway told me in a phone call from the MCTC prison in Hagerstown. He's got hours of other footage showing how inmates in Maryland live the good life, from items approved by the Division of Correction such as video game systems and street clothes, to the things they smuggle in with the help of corrupt corrections officers. 

Read more about Broadway in today's story.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Prisons
        

Citing a 2,000-year-old Roman quote, "Who will watch the watchers?" a Harford County judge skeptically questioned prosecutors Friday pressing criminal charges against a motorcyclist for recording his traffic stop and posting the video on the Internet, The Sun's Peter Hermann reported.

Circuit Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. said he would issue a written ruling shortly as to whether the case against Anthony Graber can proceed to trial Oct. 12, but he acknowledged that appeals courts have not ruled on the issue and that "we are on unplowed ground."

The judge referenced the videotaped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the proliferation of surveillance cameras and the ease with which virtually anybody can quickly snap pictures and record events and self-publish with a click of a button.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Harford County
        

Update: The deceased victim of the triple shooting referenced below in Southwest Baltimore's Mill Hill neighborhood has been identified as a 30-year-old woman. A 14-year-old boy was shot in the hand and a 22-year-old man was shot in the neck.

At least three people were shot in one incident shortly before midnight in Southwest Baltimore. Police released few details (we'll have more as the morning progresses), but what we do know is that it occurred in the 500 block of East Lynne Ave., a small street that runs between Frederick and Wilkens avenues just west of the Gwynns Falls Recreation Center.

Police said in a Twitter alert that one victim was shot several times in the back, another was hit in the neck and a third in the hand. As of this writing, there is no update on conditions or suspects. About 20 minutes after that shooting, police said a man was shot in the foot on East Federal Street in East Baltimore.

Police also said that the seized a .45 caliber handgun during a traffic stop on Echodale Avenue in Northeast Baltimore and got another .25 caliber handgun during another car stop on Chesterfield Avenue, also in Northeast. Arrests were made in both cases.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Breaking news
        

Here's State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy's campaign commercial that began airing today, featuring U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings. The ad has a sunny tone, particularly in contrast to the pieces run by challenger Gregg Bernstein that say people are "getting away with murder" in Baltimore due to Jessamy's ineffectiveness. Her commercial hits on her major campaign theme: that since she took over in 1995, crime is down substantially.  "Pat Jessamy is focused, and she's got Baltimore on the right track," Cummings says in the ad. A number of prosecutors appear in the commercial, and the campaign denied that it was filmed during work hours. WBAL reported yesterday that Jessamy spent $176,000 to get it on the airwaves, money that came in the form of a loan from herself after she reported just $38,000 cash on hand in her last campaign finance report.

The city has pursued different crime-fighting strategies as mayors and police commissioners have come and gone, and Jessamy says she's the only constant. The commercial doesn't cite conviction rates - Jessamy doesn't track them, and believes they are "smoke and mirrors." Continue reading to see the raw crime numbers referenced in the ad:

Year    Murder Rape  Robbery  Agg Assault
1995    325    684    11,397    9,172       
1996    333    643    10,429    8,216       
1997    313    480    8,665    8,072       
1998    315    470    7,718    7,605       
1999    305    374    7,462    10,536       
2000    261    366    6,634    8,774       
2001    256    299    5,762    8,520       
2002    253    179    4,764    8,667       
2003    270    208    4,364    6,385       
2004    276    182    4,085    7,199       
2005    269    162    3,935    6,943       
2006    276    139    4,260    6,196       
2007    282    146    3,926    5,875       
2008    234    137    4,058    5,703       
2009    238    158    3,726    5,579

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

According to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search database, 20-year-old Wayne Black, charged with first-degree murder this week for pushing Ankush Gupta into the Inner Harbor in 2008, has been ordered held without bond. Black had apparently gone into shock yesterday at his first bail review hearing, slumping over and not responding to a judge's questions, prompting the hearing to be delayed until today.

I did not attend today's bail review, and I'm working to track down what exactly happened. Black has no prior criminal record beyond a marijuana possession charge, and I've seen (though rarely) defendants with long records charged with gun violence who were allowed to post bail.

Police say Black confessed to pushing Gupta into the harbor in August 2008; Gupta drowned, and with few leads the investigation into his death went cold until police received a tip recently.

Posted by Justin Fenton at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy is about to start a media blitz with $176,000 worth of commercials airing on Baltimore's four television stations, paid for at least in part out of her own pocket.

The ads will start running today, featuring U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings and focusing on her record, WBAL reported Wednesday night. Last week, we confirmed with a campaign aide that commercials involving her staff were filmed last month (during the work day), so expect that to be a component of the pieces that air as well.

The $176,000 ad buy represents a huge influx of cash to the Jessamy campaign, which reported just $38,000 cash on hand as of the last campaign finance report a few weeks ago. WBAL reported that Jessamy is using a personal loan, "evidence of how tight the race might be." Challenger Gregg Bernstein had raised nearly $220,000 as of the last report.

Asked for comment by The Sun on Wednesday about when the commercials would air and where Jessamy found the cash, campaign spokeswoman Marilyn Harris-Davis declined to answer a reporter's questions.

Here's how the Bernstein campaign spun Jessamy's ad buy in an e-mail to supporters: "[Jessamy] has the highest salary of any elected official in the state, which presumably has enabled her to make this personal expenditure. It appears that after fifteen years on the job, she has not garnered enough support from the community to run an effective campaign and now must make this attempt to buy the election."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore police are this morning investigating two shootings -- both non-fatal. A 19-year-old man was shot in the shoulder on McHenry Street in Carrollton Ridge and a 46-year-old man was shot in the buttucks, legs and arm on West North Avenue.

Both shootings occurred after midnight.

Also, city police announced several more gun seizures. Police searched a house on Woodbine Avenue in Northwest Baltimore and found a handgun and arrested one person. In West Baltimore, police stopped a car and found a 9mm handgun inside. One person was arrested.

And also in West Baltimore, police said they arrested one person with 118 gel caps of heroin and a .38 caliber revolver.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, East Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

A federal grand jury in Maryland has charged the chairman of the Senate's powerful budget panel and two former supermarket executives with bribery, extortion and other criminal offenses in an 18-count indictment, The Sun's Annie Linskey is reporting.

In announcing the charges Wednesday, prosecutors said Sen. Ulysses Currie, a Democrat, had misused his influence for personal gain while helping Shoppers Food Warehouse expand in Maryland.

"Government officials cross a bright line when they accept payments in return for using the authority of their office, whether they take cash in envelopes or checks labeled as consulting payments," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. "When businesses can obtain valuable government benefits by putting a senator on the payroll, it diminishes public confidence and disadvantages companies that refuse to go along with the pay-to-play approach."

Governor Martin O'Malley just sent out the following statement:

“This is a sad day for the people of Prince George’s County and Senator Currie personally.  People have the right to expect the highest ethical service from their public servants. This is now a matter for our courts to resolve.”

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The Baltimore city lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed defense attorney Gregg Bernstein, saying he will "fight crime first and build partnerships to ensure no violent crime goes unpunished." The endorsement is not a surprise, considering the FOP donated $2,000 to Bernstein's campaign, and the union has sparred with Jessamy over issues such as a "do not call list" that  prohibits officers from testifying.

The endorsement is the latest in the state's attorney's race, following most of the political establishment rallying around incumbent State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III openly supporting Bernstein with a lawn sign that raised Jessamy's ire. Gov. Martin O'Malley gave Jessamy a vote of confidence in July but stopped short of an endorsement, and now there's a controversy brewing over a letter to the Afro-American newspaper from the city's senators backing Jessamy; Sen. George Della was not listed among the co-signers of the actual letter, but his name was on the letterhead and ended up in the endorsement that appeared in print. Della is trying to distance himself from the endorsement. Peter Hermann will have more on that later.

The CityPaper featured the race in today's edition, saying that "in an ordinary city, a political handicapper would give Bernstein the edge. ... But Baltimore is not an ordinary city."

Here's the statement from the FOP, sent via Bernstein's campaign:

"Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 is pleased to announce our endorsement of Gregg Bernstein for State's Attorney for Baltimore City.  As the association representing close to 5,000 active and retired police officers of Baltimore City, our members recognize the importance of fighting crime first and building partnerships to ensure no violent crime goes unpunished. Mr. Bernstein is committed to working alongside the men and women on the front lines of law enforcement and will bring a fresh perspective and approach to the State's Attorney's Office that in the long run will make our City a safer place to live and work in." --Robert F. Cherry Jr., President.
 
“I am honored to receive the endorsement of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police,” said Bernstein. “I look forward to working with law enforcement to help take the worst of the worst off our streets and to remove Baltimore from the list of America’s most dangerous cities.  I am thankful for their support.”
 
Bernstein has pledged to develop a solid working relationship with the Baltimore Police Department as a key part of his plan to “Fight Crime First,” by which he will focus the resources of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office on prosecuting and convicting violent repeat offenders.
 
Bernstein has also received the endorsement of the Latino Police Officers Association."

Posted by Justin Fenton at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore County police have used a computer an an artist to reconstruct the face of body thaat was found in 2007 on Botavia Farm Road in White Marsh. Here is their statement:

Baltimore County Police have created a facial reconstruction of what they believe a woman may have looked like from the severely decomposed remains police discovered in 2007. Last week, a forensic artist created the model using the found skull.

Police were called to the 1000-block of Botavia Farm Road, 21237 on August 31, 2007 at approximately 5:24 p.m. A resident found the woman’s body in a wooded area to the rear of his vegetable garden. Forensic experts determined that the body had been in the woods for at least a week and the cause of death remains undetermined.

The victim is described as a white or Hispanic female, approximately 5' 2" tall, weighing approximately 102 pounds at the time of her death. She had black hair, and was found wearing brown pants, a white shirt with gray stripes, and blue and white size 7 Reebok tennis shoes.

Anyone with information about the identity of the victim, or circumstances of her death is asked to call Baltimore County Police at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7-LOCKUP (1-866-756-2587). To text a message to Metro Crime Stoppers, send to "CRIMES" (274637), then enter the message starting with "MCS," or e-mail a tip to www.metrocrimestoppers.org. Those contacting Metro Crime Stoppers can remain anonymous and might be eligible for a cash reward of up to $2,000.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Breaking news, Confronting crime
        

Update from Midnight Sun blog: Power Plant Live spokesman Christ Furst: this night has nothing to do with Power Plant Live, and none of Power Plant Live's staff is promoting it as a college night. "We don't permit buses," he said. "If it's a matter of that event being canceled, absolutely. ... Mosaic does not hold a college night. Power Plant Live does not hold a college night."

After a fews years break, College Night could be returning to Power Plant Live. The Baltimore Sun's nightlife guru Sam Sessa talked to a promoter who is promoting bussing college students to the enterntainment district.

Only problem is that the owners of Power Plant Live imposed a no-bussing policy in 2006, after thousands of college students, many too young to drink, crowded the downtown and cause problems with drinking and crime. Market Place at times was out of control.

So we'll see what the promoter says after hearing from the Power Plant's spokesman who said they're trying to get away from the college atmosphere. If it does happen, both the center's owenrs and the police are in for some very long weekends.

Here's what GoodLife Boys co-owner Nino Sylvia told Sam Sessa about Thursday Night Banger: "We take a bunch of college kids and bring them out there. Towson, Loyola, Hopkins -- we've got all the students coming out there. ... The ratio of girls to guys is ridiculous."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Downtown, Top brass
        

A Harford County man was found guilty of assaulting an off-duty Baltimore police officer but acquitted of charges that the attack was racially motivated. The Aegis reported the verdict Tuesday evening, saying the jury convicted James Aaron Kimble of assault.

As crime beat reporter Justin Fenton reported back in May:

A Baltimore police officer could lose sight in an eye after being hit with a beer mug during an off-duty altercation near his Joppa home, an incident the Harford County Sheriff's Office is calling a hate crime. Detective Jermaine Cook was struck in the face after, police say, a man approached Cook's car at a stop sign early Thursday, and yelled at him about his driving.

Sheriff's deputies who arrived at the scene said the officer, who is black, had a large cut near his left eye and was bleeding profusely, said Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office. Cook called 911 after the 2:20 a.m. attack, which occurred as he drove home from work.

Worrell said a man can be heard on a recording of the call yelling racial epithets and threatening to "hang him." When police arrived, Kimble, who is white, appeared intoxicated and repeatedly referred to the city officer by a racial slur, Worrell said.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Just days after Baltimore's police commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III fired a cop for berating and pushing a teenaged skateboarder at the Inner Harbor, homicide detectives busted a Curtis Bay man and charged him with pushing a man into the water in the summer of 2008.

The police union president, Robert F. Cherry, who has been angry over the firing of Salvatore Rivieri, immediately pounced the irony. He told The Sun's crime beat reporter Justin Fenton:

"This is a perfect example of why we need officers down there who aren't afraid to enforce the laws. Good police work involves being proactive on the smaller level as well, and the business community has said it had an issue with skateboarders who trespass and deface property. … Lo and behold, three years later the homicide unit locks up a skateboarder."

Wayne Black, 20, (seen at right) was arrested Tuesday and charged in the death of Ankush Gupta, who lived in Germantown and was days away from starting his junior year at the University of Maryland, College Park. His friends told Justin he wanted to work for NASA.

Gupta and his friends had just returned from New York and stopped off in Baltimore. The victim took a walk and a short time later his friends heard a splash. They saw a young man running away right after that. Police said the suspect, carrying a skateboard, had asked Gupta for a cigarette and then pushed him in the harbor.

The Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death a drowning and suspicious. It's a good example of even when a death isn't classified outright as a homicide, detectives still work the cases. Here's a killing that didn't even show up on the murder count until police investigated.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Downtown