He is, the deputy police chief of Chestertown says, the "town nuisance."

He's also Frosty the Snowman, and he's under arrest, charged with kicking a police dog in a parade while dressed up as the famous character. The story went around the world, and The Sun's Tricia Bishop contributes with a gem of a story detailing the snowman's turbulent history with cops and his past arrests.

He's been banned from public meetings (he stood outside banging pots and pans in protest one day) and called police in April pretending to be part of a CNN crew seeking an interview. Here are some unforgettable holiday lines from Tricia's story:

"Within minutes, two police officers had the so-called jolly, happy soul face down on the sidewalk in front of the Compleat Bookseller, raising a ruckus as his hands were cuffed behind his back. The round, white head lay forlornly at his feet, top hat and carrot nose still in place."

"While the Frosty of holiday lore has only a brief run-in with a traffic cop (who famously hollers "stop"), the Frosty of Chestertown, 52-year-old Kevin Michael Walsh, has a history of tangling with police."

He said he spent three hours in the suit, handcuffed to a wall, before someone made him take it off so it could be returned to the costume shop. He was released on his own recognizance that afternoon. And by Monday, he'd come to a realization: "I've got to get a lawyer, before I melt," he said.

Check out other coverage -- The Cecil Whig: Frosty Iced by Police and The Star Democrat in Easton has Man playing Frosty says he did nothing wrong.

Read The Baltimore Sun's complete story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Crime humor
        

The Sun's Tricia Bishop writes about a man cleared of murder by DNA, and who is now suing the city:

James L. Owens Jr., who spent 20 years behind bars on burglary and murder charges only to be freed in 2008 by a DNA discovery, has filed a $15 million lawsuit claiming Baltimore police and prosecutors intentionally suppressed exculpatory information in his case.

Owens, 46, says investigators pressured a key witness, who was later convicted as an accomplice in the case, into changing stories mid-trial in 1988 and that a jailhouse informant, who claimed Owens confessed, testified in exchange for special favors. The defense team wasn't told of either circumstance, according to the civil suit, which was moved into federal court recently from the city, where it was originally filed.

It's a disturbing case in which the only certainty is that a 24-year-old woman — a phone company employee and community college student — was brutally murdered a quarter century ago, stabbed, strangled and sexually assaulted in her Southeast Baltimore row house.

Read full story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

Anne Arundel County police had been looking for Cornelius Keith Johnson for nearly week in the killing of a man outside a seafood restaurant and Glen Burnie.

Authorities said Johnson unwittingly came to them.

On Nov. 13, the 24-year-old reported to the Baltimore County Detention Center to serve a weekend sentence -- total four days -- for driving on a suspended license. Jail officials discovered there was a warrant out for his arrest.

He was detained and on Monday was taken to Anne Arundel County and charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 13 killing of Andrew Michael Johnson, 25, outside MO's Seafood on Ritchie Highway.

Police have not released a motive or said what led them to the suspect, who is not related to the victim. The shooting occurred about 10:30 p.m. The suspect lives in the 4200 block of Shamrock Ave. in Northeast Baltimore.

Correction: Police said on Tuesday that the suspect and victim are believed to be half-brothers. Read the full story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Maryland State Police have arrested a 25-year-old man in a series of armed robberies of gas stations and convenience stores in Baltimore, Cecil and Harford counties. The attacks include a robbery of a gas station at an I-95 rest stop and several along Pulaski Highway.

The suspect is identified as Michael R. Malpass, 25, of Cecil County. Police said they got tips from photos of the suspect distributed to the news media. Police stopped him Thursday night driving a 2008 Chevrolet Impala on Pulaski Highway in Perryville. 

Police said they found evidence linking him to the robberies, and that the car he was driving when arrested was the getaway vehicle. Here is more from a statement from Maryland State Police:

Continue reading "Man arrested in string of armed robberies" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Harford County
        

A 31-year-old man has been sentenced to four life prison terms for executing a federal witness who fingered a dozen suspected drug dealers in South Baltimore's Westport neighborhood. The victim, Kareem Guest, pleaded for mercy before being shot a dozen times on the street in 2009.

Guest was outed as an informant after an FBI report detailing his cooperation was leaked and posted throughout the neighborhood, where Guest and his killer lived. The shooter, Antonio "Mack" Hall, 30, was found guilty by a jury in U.S. District Court in Baltimore in August.

The Sun's court reporter, Tricia Bishop, recounts the chilling details of the case in her coverage of the trial. Testimony revealed that Hall had a history of retaliating against witnesses and so-called "snitches," and was linked to the killing of a teen-aged drug dealer, shot as he played video games, and to the shooting of a junkie who had helped police arrest one of his friends.

Guest, arrested on heroin distribution charges in 2008, had agreed to cooperate with the FBI to bring down a gang selling heroin branded "Dynasty." His help led to the convictions of eight defendants, including the ring-leader who went away for 22 years.

A defense attorney for one of those suspects was given a copy of Guest's FBI statement so he could prepare his defense. Defense attorneys are allowed to share the information with their clients, but not hand over hard copies. The attorney admitted to giving a copy to his client and to his client's mother.

Once on the street, the document became a virtual wanted poster, prosecutors said, leading to the killing of Guest. The attorney, a former federal prosecutor from Detroit, was not prosecuted, but he was later disbarred for taking on clients and pocketing fees without telling his own law firm.

Lawyers for Hall argued that Guest had many enemies and that their client was the killer, but the jury rejected the arguments. The case highlighted the troubling issue of witness intimidation and showed how dangerous it is to be an informant.

Guest's statement to the FBI was tacked to telephone poles and to a basketball hoop in Westport and a copy was even found in a jail cell in New Jersey. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore, Witness intimidation
        

The Sun's Luke Broadwater and Scott Calvert report today:

"The city's budget office revealed at an investigative hearing Tuesday that it has spent $10.4 million over the past three years — an average of about $3.5 million annually — defending the Baltimore Police Department against lawsuits.

Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke called for the hearing over what she called an "especially troubling" trend of the Police Department paying out millions over brutality claims while other parts of the budget, such as recreation centers, suffer cuts.

"Not only do they siphon off scarce funds that could have been used to address other pressing problems in Baltimore, but each judgment also can represent an instance where citizens were avoidably harmed by the actions of officers whose job it is to protect them," Clarke stated in a resolution that called for the hearing.

Police officials testified Tuesday that they have instituted better training for officers, which has reduced brutality complaints, and City Solicitor George Nilson argued that sometimes the city needs to spend more on legal fees to ensure lower settlements or judgments. About 65 percent of the cases against police allege excessive force, officials said."

Read the complete story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

The Sun's city school reporter Erica L. Green, reports today that weapons are a problem in Baltimore Schools:

After at least three weapons-related incidents in as many months, including one in which a student was stabbed in the abdomen, city school officials acknowledge that they are struggling with a problem that has led to dozens of students being expelled and more than 100 weapons being confiscated last year.

According to discipline data requested by The Baltimore Sun, the system has seen a steady stream of weapons filtering into schools since 2008, ranking among the highest numbers of disciplinary sanctions. Since the school year began in September, school officials have publicly acknowledged that police have retrieved three deadly weapons from students, including two handguns and the knife that was used in the Nov. 3 stabbing.

In the 2010-2011 school year, the district noted slight increases in the number of weapons incidents referred to school police and weapons-related expulsions. Last school year, there were 122 incidents of weapons possession reported to city school police, compared with 109 the year before, and 82 students were expelled for possessing weapons.

Read Erica's full story here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Either we at the paper write too much about crime or not enough. Either we're complicit in covering up the violence to help the mayor or we're out to scare everyone away from the city and leave it to ruin.

Two readers shared their opinions on crime coverage. One was upset that we referenced Morgan State University in a short story on a fatal shooting. Another was unhappy with crime coverage in Charles Village, which he thought excessive for one neighborhood.

The Morgan man writes:

Every other day people are murdered or assaulted near a John Hopkins building, dorm, or establishment and never are these issues linked together as such. Either it is ineptitude, racism, or bad judgement? Either way, I just don't get how or why this is a story about Morgan State?

I grew up in an impoverished neighborhood near one of the wealthiest universities in the world and although a ton of crime occurred, the local news never connected it with this ivy league institution. Morgan State is a safe place that girds that entire community and Baltimore. Without it, it things in some of those neighborhoods would be tragically worse.

First, it's just wrong that a person a day is murdered or assaulted near any university in the city. There isn't even a person murdered a day in the entire city. The killing occurred Wednesday night in front of a dorm located off campus. The story mentioned location, and said that the university was trying to determine if a student was the victim. We later learned the shooting wasn't connected to the school and the story was update accordingly. But the institution as a locator for the shooting remains valid.

The gentleman complaining about Charles Village owns property there, and I've learned, and I understand, that property owners get upset when we cover crime in their neighborhoods. Many people also get upset when they see a police car speeding by their home and wonder why it wasn't reported in the morning paper.

Charles Village is an important neighborhood in the city, home to a major university, and crime is a problem. It's where Johns Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn was killed, and where another man was shot in a robbery just a few weeks ago. A Hopkins student was sexually assaulted in an alley last month, and break-ins are routine fodder for the university's crime log.

The story to which the writer objects was how a Hopkins student pointed out a suspicious man crouching on a rowhouse rooftop. Police arrested the man, who it turned out was wanted by police on charges that he broke into a house full of Hopkins lacrosse players. It was both a story on a suspect sought in a series of burglaries, and an alert citizen (and student) who helped police do exactly what they ask of us each day -- be alert and report suspicious activity.

It's true that Charles Village is one of the more active neighborhoods, and they report crime and other goings-on with great frequency to us and to each other. That in turns gets them more attention than other communities. But I also received several emails from Charles Village residents thanking me for the coverage.

Here are the emails from the resident, Shaun Carrick. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks: 

Continue reading "Too much crime? Or not enough? Readers weigh in" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

In 2009, Michael Voorhis used a baseball bat to beat a man attacking his girlfriend as he held up the Fells Point store where she worked.

"I don't regret it at all," Voorhis told me today, after the suspect was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. His girlfriend, Brittany Byers, called the ordeal "absolutely terrifying" but still works at the store, Killer Trash, on Broadway.

Federal prosecutors said the suspect Mark Lomax, 41, was sentenced to prison on Tuesday. He was convicted by a federal jury in June at a trial during which both Byers and Voorhis testified. Lomax committed 14 other holdups in a month during the summer of 2009 at shops in Mount Vernon, Fells Point and downtown.

Lomax held up Killer Trash three times in eight days. On the final time, Voorhis, worried about his girlfriend, was waiting. When Lomax came in, he hit him over the head with a baseball bat, bragging later that he had gotten "three or four clean shots at his head."

The suspect got away, but dropped the $4 he managed to get from the register and his baseball cap. Both items had DNA that matched Lomax, prosecutors said. Police said he used a collapsible wooden yard-stick covered in tape and wrapped in a plastic bag to resemble a firearm.

Byers, who joined her boyfriend in going after Lomax, hitting him with a jewelry bag, said: 

“It was absolutely terrifying. It was intimidating to see him again in the courtroom. But there’s a part of you that says, you have to stick up for yourself. I couldn’t back down out of fear. This store is my livelihood. I’m not going to let somebody bully me out of my life.”

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, North Baltimore, Southeast Baltimore
        

A report released today blames Baltimore police commanders for poorly supervising a chaotic response to the shooting outside Select Lounge in which four officers fatally shot a plainclothes officer they mistook for a gunman.

The long awaited report by an independent commission into the shooting of Officer William H. Torbit Jr., and of a man who was fighting him, recommends police better train officers and supervisors in how to handle crowds. The report says Torbit inflamed tensions that led up to the shooting.

The Baltimore State's Attorney's Office cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing. At left, The Sun's Kim Hairston captures Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III holding the report.

Read a summary of the report.

Read the full report.

Watch video of the shooting.

Look at crime scene pictures.

Read account of the shooting by officers involved.    

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown, Police shootings, Top brass
        

It was a busy day on Tuesday's crime front. The picture by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam is from Occupy Baltimore, which is embroiled in security issues (see blurb below).

Catch up on the latest headlines:

Today: Attorneys are scheduled to make closing arguments in the bribery trial of state Sen. Ulysses Currie in federal court. Currie, a Prince George's Democrat, is accused of selling his influence as chairman of the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee to do political favors for Shoppers Food Warehouse. Read how the state's power brokers are rallying around Currie, and other stories.

* The man convicted of killing a Towson gas station owner for money apologized Tuesday in Harford County Circuit Court to the victim's family and friends, saying "I'm sorry to the last fiber of my being." The apology came shortly before a jury was to begin deliberating whether Walter P. Bishop Jr. will be sentenced to death or life in prison.

* The Occupy Baltimore protest is now entrenched at the Inner Harbor, but its members are questioning whether they can sustain the movement amid a dwindling number of core leaders and allegations of crime and drug use. Reports that a woman was sexually assaulted in a tent, deemed unfounded by city police, have nevertheless put public safety at the forefront.

* A 52-year-old man died after being shot during a robbery at a carryout restaurant in Better Waverly on Monday night, renewing concerns in the community about the crime connected to the beleaguered business. The Yau Brothers carryout, in the 2900 block of Greenmount Ave., was closed Tuesday, as it was after similar shooting incidents in the past two years: In 2010, 72-year-old security guard Charles Bowman was fatally shot in a robbery there, a year after three men were shot following a fight that broke out inside.

* A former professional basketball player pleaded guilty Tuesday in the pistol whipping of his girlfriend's brother after a dispute at a cookout in Arnold.

* Towson University students and employees were briefly alerted to stay inside Tuesday afternoon, because police were looking for a man with a gun on campus. But the man turned out to be carrying a prop gun for an acting class, said Towson spokeswoman Gay Pinder.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Downtown, North Baltimore
        

The shooting of Maryland State Trooper Michael S. Nickerson a decade ago still resonates on the Eastern Shore. Michael, killed along with a sheriff's deputy trying to get Frank Zito to turn down his stereo, was a member of the small Centreville police force.

He had wanted to become a state trooper, and five years after his death, his brother Phillip became a trooper to fulfill the dream. Last month, Phillip's son, Tanner, also became a trooper, bringing the family together on the force. Read the full story here.

I followed Tanner for a day. The young trooper, in his first few days of field training, had just started driving and pulling over cars. His family talked about the tragedy, and their commitment to law enforcement.

The story was big news at the time. Zito, known as "Crazy Frank," was an oddity in the small town and a frequently had issues with police and neighbors. A jury rejected his insanity defense and he was sentenced to death, but died of lung cancer a year after the incident.

Nickerson's death raised questions about how to best treat the mentally ill and told of a tragedy involving two police officers and their families. It's a story that continues to this day, with father and son now colleagues, in adjacent barracks, serving to honor a brother and an uncle.

The photo by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam shows young Tanner Nickerson on just his sixth car stop of his career. With him is Cpl. Frank J. Stanco. The video is of Phillip Nickerson talking about his brother's death at a fallen hero ceremony in May.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

The Baltimore Police Department's Mounted Unit needs two horses. Jason Curtis, head of the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association, is helping to raise the $5,000 needed to buy Vernon, which is already training for his new job, and is in the picture.

Curtis says the police had to retire two horses and needs to replace them. The Mount Vernon board is offering to match any contribution made by an association member and will match a contribution from $100 up to $2,500 from a non-member.

Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that one horse, on loan, was elderly and had to be put down, and that another horse retired.

You can donate by visiting the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association.

Says Jason: "I'm working on getting the Mounted Patrols to tour Mt. Vernon one day next week so everyone in the neighborhood can come out and meet all the horses!"

You might remember that two years ago, the Mounted Unit, one of the oldest in the country, was on the chopping block, threatened by budget cuts. Donations poured in to save the cops on horses.

And private sponsorship is not unusual in the world of Mounted Police. Last year, city cops changed the name of Blackie to Slurpie when 7-Eleven donated $5,000 to the unit. Here's that story from January, 2010:

Continue reading "City police need horses" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

We no longer have yokings in Baltimore, and this newspaper has never liked perpetrators, and the New York term "perp" even less. I recall an editor once told me never to use the word "heist." Maybe too high-brow for a town like Baltimore.

Terms change over time, and by the whims of reporters and editors. When New Yorker Ed Norris took over the top police job, the joke around town was that he'd add pin-stripes to police uniforms. Not quite, but the word "perp" seeped into the language of Baltimore police.

The word "cop" had for a long time been banned from print, though that has eased in recent years. In Baltimore, you are "A PO-lice" -- the word cop, unlike in New York, is considered a derogatory term here in Charm City (another term that should probably be retired. We still have Espantoons, and some police still carry them.

My colleague over in the Paragraph Factory (a term he coined and I love), wrote today that maybe Molotov cocktail should be retired from print. I wrote it several times (to avoid repeatedly writing firebombing) in today's story on a series of attacks in the city.

Here is what John McIntyre had to say in his blog, You Don't Say: 

It may be all right to use the term without any historical resonance. We don’t need to know who Captain Boycott and Dr. Alzheimer were to understand the words derived from their names. But Molotov cocktail seems different somehow in its sardonic allusion to the deservedly defunct Soviet imperium. Musty.

Continue reading "Language of police reporting -- retire Molotov cocktail?" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore police say that eight Molotov cocktails have been thrown at residences in the past month. Authorities plan to discuss the incidents in more detail at a 1 p.m. news conference.

For now, police will only say that there's been no major property damage and no one has been injured. The areas targeted are "throughout the city" and appear to be randomly chosen. Police said they are concerned because of the number of attacks.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

The Sun's Justin Fenton reports today:

The Baltimore Police Department is taking part in a program to develop and test new technology that could significantly cut DNA analysis time.

The National Institute of Justice is putting $1 million toward the project. Police will partner with researchers from Yale University and a North Carolina-based company to develop technology that would enable crime lab workers to identify and test smaller samples in a much shorter time.

The technology is at least a year away from being usable and won't be implemented for cases during the pilot phase, but officials hope it will be cleared for use if successful.

Above is the Baltimore Police Department's crime lab director, Francis Chiafari, in a picture taken by The Sun's Amy Davis.

Details about the company.

Read the full story here.

Read the statement from Baltimore Police:

Continue reading "It's not quite CSI, but city police trying faster DNA testing" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Officials say the mayor misspoke while giving her remarks. Gun seizures are actually slightly down from this point last year.

City police have seized nearly as many guns so far this year than they did last year, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said at a news conference Monday where she reiterated a desire to strengthen criminal penalties for people caught with illegal guns.

Officials laid out about a dozen handguns (right) that they said were similar to those seized over the weekend by police officers conducting car stops, drug surveillance and search warrants. Among those charged was 20-year-old Haymond Burton Jr., who in 2009 was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and got five years in prison for conspiracy to commit second-degree assault.

Burton was found Friday afternoon in a house in the 700 block of Richwood Ave. with a 12-gauge shotgun and 43 baggies of cocaine, said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III.

"We know there's a culture that exists in our city - drugs and guns," said Rawlings-Blake. "We're doing everything we can to break up that culture."

"We know who's committing these crimes - the same people committing the shootings last year and the year before," she continued. "It's repeat violent offenders, and we're determined to make sure we're making it very difficult for them to continue to pursue those dangerous activities in Baltimore." 

Officials said city police have made 850 gun arrests so far this year, and have taken 1,500 guns off the street.  Rawlings-Blake said she will return to Annapolis for next year's legislative session pushing tougher penalties for illegal gun possession.

"It's not a cause for celebration, it's a call to action. We know more needs to be done," Rawlings-Blake said. 

Posted by Justin Fenton at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime
        

Crime is the best reason to leave Baltimore, the topic we're most sick of reading about and the most overlooked story in the city. Huh?

The alternative weekly City Paper, with its annual Best Of awards, dings the city twice over for crime and grime. Lexington Market, the paper concludes, is the city's best place to be offered drugs. And crime, the authors say, is the best reason to leave Baltimore.

The Sun's Justin Fenton wrote about last years crime stats and how the city fared -- crime dropped, but per capita, we're still among the top murder destinations. Full disclosure -- the City Paper named Fenton's must read  Twitter feed Best in Baltimore: "Care about crime in Baltimore? You’re missing out by not following this guy."

But readers, while deciding in their own poll that Fenton is the city's best journalist, put crime in the top three topics they're sick of reading about. And to confuse matters more, the readers chose crime as one of best overlooked stories in the city.

Go figure.

The City Paper's own words:

Continue reading "Crime and grime make City Paper's Best Of ... " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore police are saying that in recent weeks several people trying to sell dirt bikes and other items on Craigslist have been robbed and assaulted. From a statement:

Many of the victims are from out of state and were unfamiliar with the area. On September 6, 2011, an unknown suspect fired several shots at a man from New Jersey, in the 1500 block of Ellamont Street. The victim was not injured during this incident.

Police are offering these safety tips:

• Meet in a public spot preferably where there are surveillance cameras or a larger number of witnesses around
• Do not bring cash with you
• Do not allow the seller into your vehicle
• Tell a friend or family member where you are going and consider having them accompany you

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Quote of the day from federal prosecutor Leo J. Wise, at Tuesday's sentencing of a man who duped law enforcement agencies into thinking they were hiring a retired special ops commander instead got a fraud (read full story here):

“They thought they were getting Black Hawk Down,” Wise said during the hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. “Instead, they got Rambo. They got fiction.”

William G. Hillar, a 66-year-old Millersville man, was sentenced today to 21 months in prison for perpetuating the fraud, which includes lying about his educational background, lying about being in the Army Special Forces and lying about his daughter being kidnapped, enslaved in a sex ring and killed. He claimed his experience to be the basis for the 2008 movie “Taken” starring Liam Neeson.

Here are some more quotes from today's hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore:

Continue reading "Man who faked Black Ops credentials sentenced to 21 months" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

First, Tandon Doss says he broke up a fight at Five Guys at the Inner Harbor

Then, a few hours, he hit the field at M&T Bank Stadium and caught two passes for 28 yards. The picture at right, by The Sun's Barbara Haddock Taylor, was taken this year at training camp.

The Ravens wide-out, a fourth-round pick from Indiana University, got a good taste of Baltimore Thursday night. After the fight, he posted on his Twitter account: "Jus had to break up a fight at five guys. Baltimore is too ratchet!!!"

When someone asked why he intervened on game-day, the 21-year-old responded: "wat day it is I'm not gonna sit there and let someone get jumped. idk where ur from but we don't do that in Indy."

It wasn't just a scuffle. Police said one of the men had a knife and cut the manager of the restaurant. Read here for full details. And here's a profile on Doss by The Sun's Chris Korman.

Before the fight, Doss said he had been at the National Aquarium, but left because it was too crowded.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown
        

In case you missed it:

John Wagner was found guilty of murder in last year's killing of Johns Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn, stabbed in Charles Village as he walked home from Penn Station. His killing jolted a campaign for state's attorney and once again cast focus on violent repeat offenders who so often escape justice. Read Tricia Bishop's story on the verdict.

The Sun's Justin Fenton writes about Maryland crime rate has hit a record low:

Maryland's crime rate decreased 6.3 percent last year, reaching a new low in the state's per-capita incidence of violent and property offenses and mirroring a national trend.

The figures released by state officials Wednesday and reported to the FBI are the lowest since modern crime tracking began in 1975. That continues a pattern of the state notching record lows for most of the past 14 years, though as crime rates dropped more sharply in other states, Maryland has remained one of the most violent.

The numbers run counter to the public's perception about crime and safety and even surprise some experts who expected the rates to rise amid a recession — a pattern that's been borne out in previous economic downturns, according to criminologists. Some experts said they are hard pressed to pinpoint an explanation for the declines.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

Baltimore Police Commissioner went on the Marc Steiner show on Morgan State University's WEAA-Radio and confronted his critics. Listen to show here.

On police protecting their own: "One of things I've tried to do is avoid all these blanket indictments and over-generalizations. We should be constantly testing and challenging ourselves in the community. What kind of service do we provide or don't we provide? What kind of professionalism do we have?"

He noted the arrests of officers in a towing scandal and reminded people that the department lured them to the training academy under a ruse that their guns needed to be checked and then busted them. He said that despite rumors the arrest plan had been compromised, all but two officers showed, proving to him that the rumors were false. The other two had been out of town.

But he said he felt there were legitimate concerns about what sergeants and lieutenants were doing while officers were directing unsuspecting motorists to a towing company not approved by the city, but one that was paying off cops for the extra business. "If they were really paying attention to their people, why wouldn't they know?" he asked.

Continue reading "Bealefeld defends department on Steiner" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, Neighborhoods, Police shootings, Top brass
        

The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports breaking news from the federal courthouse:

After five hours of deliberation, a federal jury on Thursday convicted Antonio "Mack" Hall in the retaliation killing of an FBI informant, who told investigators that Hall liked to "bang the gun" and was connected to several drug-related murders in the city.

He was also found guilty of weapons violations and participating in a seven-year conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine in the tiny South Baltimore community of Westport, where both he and his victim lived. Hall, 30, shot Kareem Kelly Guest a half dozen times in September 2009 as the man pleaded for mercy.

This is the case in which the victim's written statement to the FBI, which helped put numerous South Baltimore drug dealers in federal prison, was leaked by a defense attorney and posted around the neighborhood.

Read full story here.

Read background story.

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

Continue reading "Man guilty in killing police informant in Westport" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore
        

In case you missed out on today's paper, here are some police stories to ponder:

Video of Select Lounge shooting released. This is the January shooting where police officers mistook a colleague for a suspect and fatally shot him outside a nightclub. Watch the shooting.

Roommate testifies that the suspect in the killing of Johns Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn confessed to robbing him in Charles Village.

Annapolis teenager pleads guilty to killing toddler.

Nathan Krasnopoler, the Johns Hopkins University student who was struck and critically injured by a car while riding his bicycle along University Parkway in February, died Wednesday morning. A lawyer for the family said the 83-year-old driver who struck Krasnopoler has agreed to forfeit her license. Read Michael Dresser's Getting There blog.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating this morning in the case of a man charged with killing an informant in a federal drug case. The victim's statement to the FBI was leaked and posted around his Westport neighborhood.

A series of mall robberies in the city, Anne Arundel and Howard Counties are linked, and also connected to a murder in Baltimore.

A Baltimore drug dealer is sentenced to 15 years in prison for his involvement in a fatal hit and run crash.

A Glen Burnie man was fatally stabbed and his female companion is being held in her death.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, Howard County, North Baltimore, Police shootings
        

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had some strong words about an elderly woman who was stabbed to death in her Northeast Baltimore home on Wednesday. She talked to The Sun's Justin Fenton at an event to tout more surveillance cameras.

The mayor knows the victim's son, a community activist. Read the story on the slaying here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

In addition to the 91-year-old woman who stabbed to death in her Northeast Baltimore house Wednesday evening, city police are investigating several shootings.

The latest shooting occurred this morning at Monastery and Frederick avenues in Southwest Baltimore. Police said an adult male was shot in the side. Shorlty after midnight, an adult male was shot multiple times in the 2300 block Allendale Road in Northwest Baltimore.

About 10 p.m., police reported a man shot in the back in the 1700 block of Presstman St., in West Baltimore. in Sandtown-Winchester.

Details were slim on these cases this morning. We'll have more as information develops.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Neighborhoods, Northeast Baltimore, Northwest Baltimore, Southwest Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

It was a transcript of his interview with the FBI. In it, Kareem Kelly Guest had named named, outed a drug organization in Westport and helped put away a slew of dangerous felons. But one of their defense attorneys, who got the document as part of the discovery process, gave it to his client.

The document ended up posted all over Westport, which federal prosecutors say was akin to a death sentence. Guest was executed, shot twice in the back and four times in the head. And now his suspected killers are on trial in federal court.

The Sun's Tricia Bishop walks us through the openings of this trial, which included an admission by the now disbarred defense attorney about how he gave up the document, a violation of rules set down by prosecutors.

Here is the story.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore, Witness intimidation
        

National Night Out has become a big community event, getting residents and cops together to take back the streets. Below is a list of events in the city and the counties, scheduled for today, Aug. 2

National Night outs:

Baltimore City

Baltimore County

Harford County

Anne Arundel County

Howard County

I could only find one in Carroll County, in Eldersburg. Here is a link to details. If anyone knows of more here, please let me know and I'll post.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Carroll County, City Hall, Confronting crime, East Baltimore, Howard County, Neighborhoods, North Baltimore, Northeast Baltimore, Northwest Baltimore, South Baltimore, Southeast Baltimore, Southwest Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

With 43 days left to the mayoral campaign, one usually hot topic appears to be strangely in the background -- crime.

Reporters Julie Scharper and Justin Fenton visited the Erdman Shopping Center, where a delivery man was killed in a robbery earlier this year, to hear people's thoughts. One man showed off his knife wound and complained that his prison record kept him from finding a job. Another woman said, "All you hear, all day is ambulances and police cars, ambulances and police cars. Somebody got hurt. Somebody got killed."

Northeast Baltimore has become one of the violent police districts, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake visited this very shopping center just before assuming office. The area hasn't improved much.

Plans to curtail vary among the candidates -- one wants to tax bullets and reduce penalties for marijuhana; another doesn't believe the stats from the the cops and wants an audit; a third wants more drug treatment beds; a fourth wants says more jobs are the key; the mayor wants to hire another 350 officers.

Read Julie's and Justin's full story here.

Read Justin's report on crime in Northeast Baltimore

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

Baltimore City Councilman Robert W. Curran stood by his controversial remarks advising residents in need of police to tell 911 operators that a gun is involved, even if it isn't, to get quicker police response.

His comments to a community meeting, and repeated in an article published today, sparked a furor and a debate over how quickly cops respond to calls. He said he didn't mean to imply that people lie to police when they call. Here is Curran at a news conference today at City Hall.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

The number of drug overdose deaths in Baltimore rose from 2008 to 2009, but dropped when compared to 2007, according to a new study released this morning by the Baltimore City Health Department.

Since 2000, the number of deaths from alcohol and other drugs has dropped about 10 per year, according the study. The reasons are not fully understood, health officials say. Among the conclusions:

• Deaths associated with heroin decreased in 2009 compared to 2008 by 3 percent. Heroin
remains the most common substance associated with intoxication deaths, though
compared to 2008, the proportion of deaths associated with heroin in 2009 decreased by
about 19 percent among city residents.

• The number of methadone-associated deaths for both city residents (46) and overall (51)
remained unchanged from 2008.

• Alcohol-associated deaths among city residents climbed by 26%, the largest increase of
any substance (44 deaths in 2009 vs. 35 deaths in 2008).

• No buprenorphine-associated death were reported in 2009; the last noted death was in
2007.

Read the full report:

Continue reading "Death from drugs in Baltimore drops since 2000" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

A note to readers: I messed up.

I was deleting a bunch of spam and accidentally deleted a bunch of reader messages instead. Many were about the city councilman advising residents to tell police 911 operators a gun is involved to get a quicker response. The messages were perfectly OK. They should've been posted.

Please post again if you can, and I'll go easy on the delete key!

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

In an earlier post here I lashed out at readers who complain that we fail when we choose not to report every detail from court records that are readily available on the Internet. I tried to explain how we choose what we report carefully, and try to check and verify all information before repeating it in print.

We are reporters, not stenographers, as my colleague over at the Paragraph Factory nicely points out in his own posting on the subject. John McIntyre, on his You Don't Say blog, gives me far too much credit for being eloquent. Mr. McIntyre writes:

A proper reporter does not merely record and publish uncritically the contents of police charging documents or court proceedings or other files, because they may contain irrelevant information or factual accuracies. A reporter judges what is germane and reliable, insofar as his abilities and access to information and officials permit.

Take a look at his post and take the test he provides. It might help you understand how and why we differ from armchair journalists who think they're practicing the trade.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

A frequent poster to the crime blog and comments section on stories, Chamgreen102, takes exception to our disabling comments section on some stories -- the latest the boy who was abducted:

"You guys make great journalists, and you play right by the book. But when all citizens have access to the Judiciary Case Search it becomes apparent that the average citizen is sometimes able to see the rest of the story that you don't report."

She is talking about people who commented on a criminal history of a person who appeared in a story, and wondered why we didn't. "This is the kind of history that I want to know about, it makes a bit of sense out of the crime. The commenter's are the ones that often tell the rest of the story, the story that the Sun won't tell, yet is perfectly legal to report."

We turned off the comments on this story, as we do sometimes on others, because they had turned nasty and spiteful, with unsubstantiated personal attacks and filled with racist, demeaning statements. Some newspapers ban comments on crime stories altogether, realizing that it is seemingly impossible to have civil discourse on such a passionate subject. It's too bad that people cannot have a rational discussion on such an important topic.

For more:

Continue reading "Disabling comments, and journalistic responsibility" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore police have issued this warning:

Baltimore Police detectives are investigating three incidents where suspects go on Craigslist searching for individuals who are selling dirt bikes. Once a perspective seller has been located, the suspect makes arrangements for the seller to bring the dirt bike here to Baltimore where the sale can take place. Once here, the suspect then robs the seller of the dirt bike. In one case, the suspect implied that he was armed and assaulted the victim.
 
We want to make the public aware that this is going on and to take every necessary precaution before agreeing to such a transaction. Such precautions may include meeting in a well-traveled public place and/or with additional companions. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

The resounding question after the July 4 violence at the harbor is whether it's safe. Various city officials, politicians, residents and pundits contributed to our coverage today.

At left, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake holds a picture of a potential suspect police are searching for in the fatal stabbing. A 4-year-old boy was also hit by a stray bullet. She's flanked by Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III on the left and Fire Chief James S. Clack. The picture was taken by The Sun's Barbara Haddock Taylor.

Here is a sampling of what they said. We'd love to he hear from you:

"What goes on in these neighborhoods, it's basically hell on earth," said Ed Burns, the former city police officer who, with David Simon, wrote and produced such Baltimore-defining works as "The Corner" and "The Wire."

"We're very happy if it's confined to these neighborhoods because these people aren't us. But we can't expect it to stay in the neigbhorhoods," He said. "I'm all for people going to the harbor and having a good time. But I think people should pay more attention to their society. Consider the harbor [like] a gated community, like where the rich go to hide behind gates. When you put 600 police there, these people are relatively safe. That's a good thing. But to think that we don't pay attention to those people who aren't safe, that's another thing. It's us living in two separate worlds."

More observations:

Continue reading "Is the Inner Harbor safe?" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown, Top brass
        

The technology has been around for a while but now just about every police jurisdiction uses it -- license plate readers that scan numbers and can quickly tell a cop whether the car is stolen, or has backed up tickets.

Police can simply drive along a street and check every car almost instantaneously. Privacy groups worry about police collecting and saving information from people not implicated in crimes -- such as keeping a record of where your car is -- but for law enforcement it's a critical tool.

The Sun's Don Markus provides a behind-the-scenes look at the technology and how it's being used in Maryland, and how state police tried to use it to find a motorcyclist a trooper was chasing moment before he was killed on I-95 when his cruiser collided with a truck. 

From Don's story:

Continue reading "How cops read your plates " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

The second of 17 Baltimore police officers charged with extortion in an alleged kickback scheme involving a towing company pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Officer Jermaine Rice, 28, of Woodstock, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Sept. 23. His colleague, Officer David Reeping, 41, pleaded guilty to the same charge on June 8.

Continue reading "Second Baltimore officer pleads guilty in towing scandal" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Northeast Baltimore
        

An officer at a prison in Jessup suffered a broken jaw and cheekbone during an attack by an inmate, and another officer at the Baltimore City jail was sexually assaulted by a detainee, according to state prison officials.

The first assault occurred Monday at the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup. Authorities said the officer was trying to move an inmate from one housing unit to another about 2:20 p.m. when he was hit. It took six to eight other officers using Mace to subdue the inmate, officials said.

On Saturday, prison officials said a correctional officer at the Baltimore City Detention Center reported being sexually assaulted by a detainee. Authorities said an investigation is underway and a person of interest is being questioned. No further details were released.

The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services reports that serious assaults by inmates on officer has fallen over the past few years, with down 50 percent since 2007. Attacks involving sexual offenses are down 35 percent during that same period.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Downtown, Prisons
        

Federal prosecutors are cracking down on people who sell drugs that lead to overdose deaths. For the third time in Maryland, the U.S. Attorney's Office has gone after the sellers and secured prison time.

In the latest case that wrapped up Monday, a federal judge sentenced April Lynn Baker, 30, to three years in prison. A nursing home worker in Western Maryland sold Methadone and morphine and gave it to Baker who then traded it to another man in exchange for marijuana.

On March 1, 2008, that man sold a $40 wafer of Methadone and $20 worth of morphine to Brandon Sgaggero, who was found dead in his apartment five days later. An autopsy concluded that he died of an overdose of the two drugs. Prosecutors said they found two text messages from the seller to Sgaggero asking whether he wanted more "shampoo," described as a code word for morphine.

More details here:

Continue reading "Woman sentenced for supplying drugs that led to overdose" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

From Sun reporter Julie Baughman:

Baltimore police are asking for the public’s help in identifying a man suspected of holding up several convenience stores in the city.

At least four robberies have occurred over the past two weeks in the north, northwest and northeast parts of Baltimore — all targeting 7-Eleven and Royal Farms stores.

According to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the gunman is considered “armed and dangerous.” Guglielmi said that the man typically enters the store during off-peak hours and approaches the cash register under the guise of buying an item.

Once he reaches the register, he draws a semi-automatic gun from his waistband or pocket and then points it at customers and store clerks until he is able to empty the register of cash and checks, Guglielmi said.

Police described the man as a black male between 25 and 30 years old, standing between 5 feet 11 and 6 feet tall and weighing 160 to 200 pounds. He was last seen wearing a tan or black baseball cap with a green or blue polo shirt, dark jeans, black tennis shoes, sunglasses and a watch on his left wrist.

Police would not disclose the exact locations of the targeted stores to avoid interfering with the police tactics during their investigation. Anyone with information is urged to call the police robbery unit at 410-366-6341.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, North Baltimore, Northeast Baltimore, Northwest Baltimore
        

He's trading his gun for a Havard Law book.

Adam Braskich wants to become a lawyer. And this three-year veteran of the Baltimore Police force has gotten into one of the nation's most prestigious universities, Harvard Law School. And when he's done, he promises to return to the city's crime fight -- as a prosecutor.

"I realized fairly early on that I'd probably make a better prosecutor than a police officer," he told The Sun's Justin Fenton, who caught up with the 26-year-old guarding a body in a sweltering South Baltmore rowhouse. "I'm better at spotting logical faillacies than guns concealed in waistbands."

Well, he's pretty good spotting guns too.

While on a study break for his law school entrance exam, Braskich took a stroll around Hampden and stumbled on an armed robbery. He shot one of the suspects and chased down the other. He's one of 466 officers, out of 2,947, who hold four-year degrees. He's pictured here in photo by The Sun's Amy Davis.

Read more about Braskich here. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore
        

It seems an odd deal — plead guilty to gun possession, agree to be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary for up to 25 years, and then admit to killing a man on East Pratt Street in Upper Fells Point back in 2009.

But that’s what Antonio “Dollar” Edwards did last week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. As part of his agreement with federal prosecutors, the 28-year-old will have to plead guilty to first-degree murder in state court. Once he does that, he will get to serve his time for both crimes in the federal system.

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office described this unusual plea deal in a statement and in court documents filed Friday. Federal authorities get a conviction on a gun case for a three-time felon, and state officials can avoid a trial in the slaying case.

The benefit for Edwards?

Continue reading "Unusual plea puts killer in prison" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

A corrections officer who was associated with the Black Guerrilla Family gang has been sentenced to 37 months in prison. Alicia Simmons was accused of helping to smuggle heroin and cell phones into the downtown Baltimore prison through the laundry.

Prosecutors also said she allowed gang members to fight and tried to identify police informants. The Sun's Justin Fenton wrote in July that evidence seized from a raid on her Pikesville apartment linked her to a who's who of Baltimore criminals.

That included a letter from a Bloods member with a signature tinted red contact lenses, another man linked to several killings and the producer of the infamouse Stop Snitching videos. She got caught up in a sweeping take-down of the BGF gang.

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

Continue reading "Corrections officer who doubled as gang member sentenced to prison " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Gangs
        

In case you missed it over the weekend, Friday was community policing day for the Baltimore Police Department. Residents got a chance to ride with cops throughout the city, as well as meet the commanders at an open house.

The Sun's Nick Madigan and photographer Gene Sweeney Jr. went along for the ride (read full story here):

Two years ago, John T. Bullock was walking his dog near his home on Baltimore's West Lafayette Avenue when three pit bulls escaped from a nearby yard, charged over to Bullock and his dog and attacked them both.

"The police showed up right away and took care of it," Bullock recalled. "One officer even came to the emergency room — I was having my hands stitched up — to ask me how I was doing. He followed up."

Carrollton Bullock, 32, an assistant professor in political science at Towson University, was impressed — and he wanted to know more about how the police do their jobs and how to establish a working relationship with the officers in his neighborhood.

Bullock was one of hundreds of people who took advantage Friday of the Baltimore Police Department's Community Partnership program, which gave citizens the opportunity to ride along with officers on their rounds, sit in on roll calls and briefings, and challenge commanders with questions in face-to-face meetings.

"That's something people in the community say they want — more interaction with the police," Bullock said from the passenger seat of a Ford Explorer patrol vehicle as a 30-year veteran of the force.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

Former Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson pleaded guilty today to federal charges related to a widespread corruption case. The most sensational allegation was the executive caught on FBI tape telling his wife to flush a $100,000 check down the toilet.

The plea came this morning in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, and included several others connected to the scheme that roiled Prince George's County and exposed corruption at the highest levels, even reaching into the county's police force.

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

Continue reading "Ex Prince George's County Executive pleads guilty" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

The Sun's Frank Roylance reports:

A reporting system set up to provide Maryland lawmakers with data on crime scene DNA testing by state and local law enforcement agencies has major flaws, a state auditor’s review has found (read full report here).

The report by the state Office of Legislative Audits said that a “lack of clear guidance” in the legislation, in implementing regulations and in the report forms provided to police, led to “inconsistencies” in the reporting that have rendered any conclusions drawn from the numbers “unreliable.”

The numbers for 2009 found, for example, that police collected 11,359 samples of crime scene DNA (as distinct from personal DNA) from 4,836 crimes. More than 1,800 of those crimes were committed in Baltimore City.

The average “turnaround” time for test results varied from 28 days in Howard County to 240 days for the National Capital Park Police.

But the review revealed that police agencies differed in how they defined and counted crimes and samples for the reports. Some provided estimates rather than counts. They also had different ideas on when to start counting the days it took to get DNA test results back. Three local police departments didn’t report at all on samples they sent to private labs — between 14 percent and 17 percent of their crime scene DNA evidence.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

A former Montgomery County police officer pleaded guilty today to using a law enforcement database to conducted wanted checks on her boyfriend and others involved in personal disputes, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Delores Culmer, 37, of Silver Spring, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when she is sentenced June 13. She admitted to using her police powers to access databases at least 20 times between August 2008 and April 2010. Those databases included information about unserved arrest warrants and and motor vehicle information.

Prosecutors said she did unauthorized checks on her boyfriend, a person with whom her sister was having a dispute, a friend of her boyfriend and her boyfriend's brother.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

A man who saw kids beating a young puppy last year on the Carroll Park golf course has been given a $3,000 reward for helping police. Robert Widerman's tips help prosecute three juvenile offenders.

Two 10-year-old boys and a 13-year-old boy were arrested in the May attack in which they tied up a young pit bull, beat it with a belt and pelted it with rocks. The attack came as a City Hall Anti-Animal Abuse Task Force concluded its yearlong look at animal cruelty in Baltimore.

Widerman got his reward from the task force, the Snyder Foundation for Animals and the city's animal control office. He was among several golfers who witnessed the attack and tried to save the dog, which later died.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, South Baltimore
        

Support crime vicitms and run at the same time.

The Baltimore State's Attorney's Office is raising money for crime victims with it's 11th annual Victim's Fund Run & Walk, being held this Saturday at Patterson Park. The run starts at 9 a.m. It is timed to commemorate National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein called it a "great way to spend a Saturday morning. We're going to have people from throughout the Baltimore area coming together to show our support for crime victims and to enjoy some exercise and coversation in Patterson Park."

The first 400 people to register will get a T-shirt. There will be cash awards for the top three male and female finishers in a 5K race. There also will be raffle drawings with gifts that include airline tickets and gift cards to area hotels and restaurants.

You can register at here at Charm City Run or call 410-396-1897. It costs $20 to register ahead of the race, and $25 to register the same day. Same-day registeration can be done between 7:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. at the Virginia S. Baker Recreation Center in Patterson Park.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

Baltimore's mayor and police commissioner announced this morning the Hometown Heroes Project, an effort to recruit community members to find people who want to be police officers. It's a renewed attempt to attract more city residents to the 3,000-member force.

"It's a way for someone to give back to their community while making Baltimore a safer place," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told reporters at a news conference this morning. Residents who sign up will be trained in the recruiting process and procedures.

Last year, despite budget shortfalls exceeding $120 million, the mayor promised to hire up to 400 new police officers. The department had been losing officers to attrition at a faster pace than hiring.

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said that he began his career as a cadet when he was 19 years old. He said part of the program is also to attract cadets who could become future police officers.

Bealefeld started as a cadet in May 1981 on the midnight shift -- he attended community college during the day -- on what was called the "hot desk." His job was handle warrants. He also compared fingerprints of newly arrested suspects to prints on file. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said he used a magnifying glass "It's now what could be considered CSI-like, minus the technology," the spokesman said.

At the news conference, Bealefeld said: "We need to fill 300 positions over the next several months," Bealefeld said. "I've worked my way through the ranks. None of that I think would have been possible without the grounding, experience and start I got here when I was 19 years old." He said that being an officer "is not about car chases. ... What you do every day is help people to be safe, and help people across the city make their lives better. You can't get that experience through a recruitment poster. You really have to live that. ... What we really need are people who are dedicated to service."

Anyone interested in the program is urged to call the Baltimore Police Department recruitment section at 410-396-2340 or visit the department's web site.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Breaking news, City Hall, Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Baltimore police on Saturday closed part of Patapsco Valley State Park as they launched a new, intensive search for a teenage girl who went missing in December and whose disappearance has baffled detectives who have worked for months without finding any clues.

Authorities cautioned that they do not have any specific tips as to the whereabouts of Phylicia Barnes that led them to this sprawling, 16,000-acre park located in both Howard and Baltimore counties north of Ellicott City.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said only that their “investigation led them to the park,” a woodland and nature preserve that includes 32 miles of river and 170 miles of trails, attracting hikers, fishermen, nature enthusiasts and picnickers.

While a task force of six homicide detectives continues to work the case exclusively, Saturday’s search is the biggest public show of force since January, when police searched a well in a shed behind a Southwest Baltimore apartment building.

Continue reading "Police begin search for missing teen in Patapsco State Park " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Howard County, Northwest Baltimore
        

Three people were shot in Baltimore Thursday night and early today. All the victims survived their wounds.

The shooting occurred between 6:25 p.m. and 2:25 a.m. and were in three different parts of the city -- south, east and northeast. In two cases, the victims got themselves to a hospital before police arrived at the scenes.

Thus far, 48 people have been killed in Baltimore, five more than the 43 slain at this time last year. Here are details on the latest violence from Detective Kevin Brown, a police spokesman:

Continue reading "Baltimore police investigate overnight shootings" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore, North Baltimore, South Baltimore
        

From The Sun's Andrea Siegel:

Maryland's highest court is scheduled to take its first look at the state's new death penalty law today, when lawyers for a prisoner accused of murdering a correctional officer argue that prosecutors should have to convince a judge that they have the evidence now required for a capital case.

The controversial 2009 changes to the death penalty law restrict prosecutors' authority to seek execution for first-degree murder convictions only in crimes in which there is DNA or other biological evidence, a videotaped confession or a video recording of the crime.

Lawyers for Lee Edward Stephens, 31, said Anne Arundel County prosecutors indicated that biological or DNA evidence ties Stephens to the July 2006 fatal stabbing of David McGuinn.

McGuinn was a 42-year-old correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction, where Stephens and co-defendant Lamar Cornelius Harris, 41, were then serving life sentences. The prison has since been closed.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Baltimore police are urging city residents to be wary of a series of confidence schemes that have bilked several people out of thousands of dollars and are leading some to be “duped” into participating in illegal enterprises.

Detectives Robert Elkner and Sarah Connelly of the fraud unit described several variations of the scheme and urged people to not divulge personal information such as bank account and social security numbers and dates of birth on the Internet.

One scheme is called “re-mailing,” in which unsuspecting victims become “middlemen” in a shipping enterprise. They answer ads on the Internet and agree to receive packages at home, and then repackage them and send them overseas.

For more details:

Continue reading "Police warn about confidence schemes" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore police are planning what they describe as a “mass search” on Saturday for Phylicia Barnes, the North Carolina teenager and track star who vanished while visiting Baltimore in December. The new search will involve more than 200 law enforcement officials.

In addition, city police are seeking volunteers to help distribute fliers in the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood where Barnes had been staying with her half-sister. Anyone interested in helping out should call the Public Affairs unit at 410-396-2012.

Anthony Guglielmi, the chief spokesman for the city Police Department, would not identify the precise area to be searched or what is prompting detectives to concentrate there.

He said only that they linked a person associated with Barnes to the area.

More details will be released Saturday morning when police begin the dawn-to-dusk search. “It will be an extensive effort,” Guglielmi said.

Continue reading "Police to search for missing teen" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Three Baltimore police officers and a Baltimore County firefighter will be honored next month at the annual Fallen Heroes Day ceremony at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. The event is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday, May 6.

A procession of 25 honor guards will open the ceremony at the Timonium cemetery, which is to include an address by Gov. Martin O'Malley.

At left is a photo from Fallen Heroes day in 2009, taken by The Sun's Lloyd Fox.

Here is a list of police and firefighters being honored, from a statement issued by organizers:

Continue reading "Dulaney Valley honors fallen police, firefighters" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Police shootings
        

When three men attacked and punched and robbed a man of his cell phone near downtown this weekend, the muggers apparently forgot about the hundreds of surveillance cameras watching over many of Baltimore’s street corners. At left, The Sun's Lloyd Fox captures officers monitoring surveillance cameras

One of the cameras captured the mugging, and police quickly arrested two men and recovered the stolen cell phone from one of the suspect’s pants pocket. Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told this story at a budget presentation on Monday, in part to showcase the necessity of the program.

The attack occurred shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday on Park Avenue, near Liberty Street, about two blocks west of Charles Street and near a major city hotel. The victim and friends had just left an apartment on West Fayette Street when a man approached and said, “Give me everything in your pockets.”

For more details:

Continue reading "Mugging captured on camera" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime humor, Downtown, Top brass
        

Many city transportation workers arrested on Friday and charged with gambling and drinking while on the clock have extensive criminal records. Just how they got hired or whether background checks were done will have to be determined after the weekend is over.

A review of electronic court records shows that six of the employees have been convicted of serious criminal offenses, and one person is on probation in a gun possession case. Six workers have clean records, and a seventh has been arrested twice on assault charges but not convicted.

Three workers have extensive records, including one who has been convicted seven times between 1995 and 2009 on drug possession or drug distribution charges. He has served prison or jail time ranging from one day to four years, the records show.

Another worker has been convicted six times of drug offenses and twice of possessing a handgun, all between 2002 and 2009, according to the records. That worker served between two years and four years in prison. Yet another employee has been convicted five times of drug offenses between 1997 and 2004, serving between one year and five years in prison.

One employee has one conviction and was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2001 for drug distribution.

Continue reading "City workers arrested in gambling probe have extensive records" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore, Top brass
        

A 53-year-old woman will spend 30 years in prison for participating in a home invasion robbery in December 2009 that left a Northeast Baltimore homeowner dead, the city State’s Attorney’s Office announced on Friday.

Bonnie Lee Lizor had pleaded guilty to a first-degree murder charge and was sentenced this week. Her accomplice, Austin Lassiter, 28, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit robbery and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Police said the two suspects broke into a house in the 4700 block of Glenarm Ave., the same block on which Lizor lived at the time.

A friend of the victim’s who was walking by heard “unusual noises” from the house and went inside, prosecutors said. Police said that the friend took out a 9mm handgun he had been carrying and detained Lizor until officers arrived. The other suspect escaped but was arrested a short time later.

Authorities said they found 64-year-old David Monath tied up and unresponsive. Prosecutors said the victim had been beaten and then suffered a heart attack during the break-in. Lizor told police that she and her friend knew that Monath was “known to possess valuable items.”

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

Lured in by attractive ads in neighborhood newspapers and on the Internet, as many as 1,500 people may have been tricked into paying money to a man who told them they could rent-to-own a car despite having poor or no credit.

Federal authorities called the opportunity a scam and arrested the man and an alleged accomplice, and now they're looking for more victims. "It's a devastating scheme," said U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Daniel Bongino, one of the lead investigators in the case. He said one victim lost his life savings to rent a 2010 Ford Focus.

Read the full criminal complaint.

One of the suspects had tried this before. In 2005, he was convicted of running a similar scheme, only this time with apartments instead of cars. Anyone who thinks they're a victim is urged to call 443-263-1000. Here's how the scheme worked:

Continue reading "Car rental scheme lures hundreds" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

The Baltimore City Paper's Van Smith made a unique disclosure in a Mobtown Beat story on Wednesday titled "Sweet Deal." Ten years ago, the author had bought small quantities of marijuana from the subject of the story.

The "subject" was a record company owner who had pleaded guilty to drug charges.

Is this a conflict that needed to be disclosed? Smith told Jim Romenesko, who runs a popular media blog, that he had no choice. As most reporters know, the cover-up is often worse than the crime, and it would be embarrassing for it to come out from someone else that you had once bought drugs from the drug dealer you're writing about.

Here is what Van Smith told Romenesko: 

Continue reading "City Paper reporter admits buying pot from story subject" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

In addition to the shooting of a Baltimore police officer Friday night, and the wounding of the gunman [read complete coverage and watch video from Jessica Anderson, Justin Fenton and Jerry Jackson], city police reported a spate of other shootings, injuring 11 people total from Friday afternoon to early Saturday. Here is a list from Baltimore police spokesman Jeremy Silbert:

On 3/18 at 8:35pm, two men were shot in the 2300 block of E Hoffman Street. A 20 year old man was shot in the foot and another man was shot in the wrist. I don't have any additional info at this time on suspect/motive.

On 3/18 at 10:50pm, two 18 year old men walked into a downtown hospital after being shot.  The victims told Detectives that they were walking in the 2200 block of Orem Avenue and heard gunshots. They began to run and were shot. 1st victim shot in the arm and shoulder. 2nd victim shot in the leg. The victims obtained a ride to the hospital to be treated.

On 3/19 at 1:55am, officers responded to a call for a shooting in the 300 block of McMechen Street. Officers found a 21 year old man suffering from multiple gun shot wounds. He was transported to Shock Trauma where he died from his injuries at 2:30am.

Officers also found two other men suffering from gun shot wounds in the block. The 2nd victim was shot in the torso and the 3rd victim was shot in the leg. They were both transported to local hospitals for treatment. Preliminary info is that all three victims were in the block when 2 unknown suspects began to shoot at them. No suspect/motive at this time.

Earlier Friday, between 2:05 p.m. and 2:15 p.m., two men were shot in incidents believed to be related along Mosher Street, at the intersections of Pennsylvania Ave and North Mount Street.

(photo of the police shooting is by The Sun's Jerry Jackson)

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

A 44-year-old man convicted two months of raping one woman and trying to rape another was sentenced today to life in prison -- with all but 50 years suspended -- after pleading guilty to killing two other women in 2003.

“The defendant targeted defenseless, vulnerable young women facing challenges such as
mental issues, addiction, and poverty," State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein said in a statement. "He believed that these women were expendable and that we wouldn’t pursue their killer with vigor because of their backgrounds. He was wrong on both counts. Nobody in our city is invisible, second class, or beneath our concern."

The killer, William Vincent Brown, from Gwnn Oak, dumped the bodies, and a third victim he tried to kill, in Leakin Park. The closure of this case helps shed light on a series of attacks that occurred several years ago. The Sun's Tricia Bishop documented the case in January, and her report can be found here.

More details from a statement issued by Bernstein's office:

Continue reading "Convicted rapist pleads guilty to two murders, sentenced" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southwest Baltimore
        

Fresh off the battlefield and fresh out of the police academy, Thaddeus Allen survived two tours in Iraq only to narrowly miss getting seriously injured or worse when a suspected drunk driver slammed into his cruiser on I-95.

It was just his third time out in a cruiser. He and his training officer had stopped behind a woman who ran out of gas just north of the Washington Beltway. The driver of a Ford Taurus hit the back of Allen's police car, forcing him and his partner to leap over Jersey wall. The woman wasn't hurt, and the driver of the Taurus was charged with drunk driving.

"We were taught that one of our biggest enemies are the other cars on the road," Allen said this week as he recounted his harrowing tale. "Most people don't move over or pay any attention, especially the drunks."

Read more for on the crash and Allens' reaction, and on how car accidents typically claim more lives of police officers than do gunfire.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

He rented a Mount Vernon carriage house under the name "Clark Rockefeller" but was quickly arrested and sent back to Boston on charges he kidnapped his daughter in 2008. Now, the man of assumed identities has been charged with murder in Southern California.

He is accused of killing a man he had rented a guesthouse from in the early 1980s. He's been under suspicion in the man's death for the past three years. In 2009, he was sentenced to five years in prison in Boston for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, who he had brought with him to Baltimore and who was found safe.

His real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. Here is a story from The Sun published in 2008, when he was arrested in Baltimore, but before authorities had learned his real name:

Continue reading ""Rockefeller" charged in California murder" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, North Baltimore
        

A 26-year-old convicted by a  jury on Friday of killing two 17-year-olds in a Baltimore park in 2008 is to be sentenced in May and faces two consecutive life terms in prison, according to the city State’s Attorney’s Office.

Timothy Crockett had been released from a federal penitentiary in Illinois, where he was serving time for a gun charge, two weeks before he gunned down Darrius Harrison and Djuan Anderson in Easterwood Park in June three years ago.

Witnesses told police at the time that they heard Crockett and an accomplice “plan and arrange” the shootings and then retrieve a gun. Prosecutors said that both victims had been shot in the head in the 3 a.m. attack.

More cases:

Continue reading "Man convicted in double murder" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, East Baltimore, Northeast Baltimore
        

Martin O'Malley, the tough on crime mayor who became governor, has not used his parole authority to release a convict serving a life sentence. The Sun's Julie Bykowicz there are 50 cases pending and that some lawmakers are considering stripping the state's chief executive of his power.

Julie wrote:

Lawmakers say their review of the parole process was prompted by O'Malley's inaction on commission recommendations through his first four-plus years in office.

Under state law, a lifer recommended for release by the parole commission may not be freed without the approval of the governor. The changes lawmakers are considering would not affect convicts sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Seven of the 50 cases the parole commission has asked O'Malley to review concern the release of a lifer, according to the commission chairman. The remaining 43 involve the commutation of a life sentence to a term of years, which would enable the convict to gain release through good-time credits or parole.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

She made it out of despair, poverty, drugs and crime. But if the feds are right, Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's fame was fleeting -- just a bit longer than her role on The Wire as a ruthless killer. The actress who captivated many on the hit show that portrays Baltimore's underworld was arrested Thursday in a sweeping drug sting by city police and the DEA.

The Sun's Justin Fenton, who accompanied the cops on the raids and 63 busts (picture of Pearson at left is by The Sun's Kim Hairston), and Mary Carole McCauley, give eye-opening accounts of yesterday's police actions and a portrait of an actress whose life seems to mirror they very show that gave her a break.

"I thought she was going to have a happy ending," said Pat Moran, a casting director. Pearson had been in trouble before -- she committed murder at the age of 14, and then refused to testify in a stabbing case, and now this.

She had written a book about her troubled life called "Grace Under Pressure," and she had participated in the Stoop Storytelling series in which locals recounted tales from Baltimore before a theater audience. Thursday's drug operation was dubbed "Usual Suspects."

Those who knew Pearson had hoped she would not be one.

Read an account of the drug bust and Felica Pearson's sad trajectory from the streets to the screen and back to the streets. Below is a statement from David Simon, the former Sun reporter who produced The Wire for HBO:

Continue reading "Snoop's comeback from the streets leads back " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

The near decapitations of three young children in a Northwest Baltimore rowhouse six years ago stunned the city, and it took two long, painful trials to bring the men responsible to justice. Policarpio Espinosa Perez and Adan Canela are each serving life sentences for killing their three young relatives.

At issue is whether the convicted killers should get a third trial because the judge who presided over their second trial in Baltimore Circuit Court failed to disclose questions from the jury, asked during the trial, to the defense attorneys.

Those defense lawyers argued before the Maryland Court of Appeals on Tuesday that they would've changed trial strategy had they seen the notes. An assistant attorney general argued that  defense lawyers have not shown what new strategies they would've employed.

More details:

Continue reading "Judges hear challenge to convictions in triple murder " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Northwest Baltimore
        

Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein is considering overhauling how his office deals with police misconduct. He pledged to make changes during his campaign; now, he's starting to implement his ideas just as police are dealing with a corruption problem in which 17 officers were charged by federal authorities with taking kickbacks in a towing scheme.

He has already abolished the controversial "do-not-call" list that his predecessor used to keep track of officers she deemed untrustworthy to take the witness stand. Putting a cop on the list was considered a career body-blow in that a cop who can't testify can't be the primary on an arrest. It effectively rendered many on the list to desk jobs.

And Bernstein is considering eliminating a division devoted to police misconduct. The former head of the unit told The Sun's Tricia Bishop that it was important to have a separate group of prosecutors handle cases against police because the office as a whole has to work closely with the department.

Read full details of the changes here.

The troubled history of the police misconduct unit:

Continue reading "City prosecutor considering changes in targeting police misconduct" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

A Parkville bar where four people were stabbed during a melee in the parking lot last month will remain open, the Baltimore County liquor board has ruled. But members warned the owners to shape up:

"It seems to us we have a problem at this location," said liquor board Chairman Charles E. Klein. But rather than suspend or revoke the Parkville bar's license, the three board members added a requirement for more security guards outside the bar when crowds leave at night. Klein also warned that if violent incidents continue, the board could revoke the license.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime
        

When the U.S. Marshal's Safe Surrender program rolled through Baltimore last summer, the city's law enforcement community jumped at the opportunity to clear their books of old cases. Tens of thousands of people were wanted on old arrest warrants; the amnesty program of seemed a sure way of helping out.

About a 1,000 people took advantage -- coming to a city church (at left, in a photo by The Sun's Kim Hairston) and meeting with prosecutors, who either dropped the cases or got the suspects together with lawyers and in front of a judge for an immediate hearing. It was designed for nonviolent offenders, many with cases so old that witnesses and case files had all but disappeared.

Now, there's a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the feds are pulling the plug on the program, which police departments all over the country had joined, resulting in 34,000 fugitive surrenders in 20 cities. Officials told the newspaper that Safe Surrender didn't fit the agency's mission of targeting violent offenders.

For more details:

Continue reading "Safe Surrender program ends" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

Baltimore police this morning announced several gun arrests, part of a campaign against violence just as state lawmakers continue to debate harsher penalties for gun offenders in Annapolis. Bill are winding through various committees but it's tough going for city officials.

A debate last month before a friendly house committee ran into harsh questions from some lawmakers who feared legal gun owners who make innocent mistakes -- like Ed Hale forgetting about his gun at BWI Airport -- could be sent to prison for long periods of time.

City leaders, including prosecutors and cops, say their proposals target violent illegal gun offenders on city streets, and won't touch a legally permitted gun owner who might forget to store his weapon properly while driving to a firing range.

Continue reading "Police make flurry of gun arrests" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

A man shot and made a paraplegic at an East Baltimore carryout in 1992 died in January, and the state Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide this week, making the two-decade old case the city’s 26th slaying of 2011.

There are several so-called time-delayed deaths in Baltimore each year and they’re added to the city’s homicide count when ruled homicides. In this case, a suspect had been arrested at the scene but found not criminally responsible of attempted first-degree murder. If he’s still alive, he cannot be charged in the death.

Detective Donny Moses, a police spokesman, said James Fields, Jr., 47, of Gwynn Oak, died Jan. 5 at Northwest Medical Center. He said a medical examiner ruled Tuesday that he died of pneumonia brought by a prolonged stay in bed — a direct result of the shooting 19 years ago.

For more details:

Continue reading "Man shot in 92 becomes latest city homicide" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, East Baltimore
        

Today's Crime Scenes takes a look at Ed Hale, the banking executive who got caught bringing a loaded gun to BWI, and was allowed to keep his permit after accepting probation before judgment, and Anthony McLean, who lost a bid before the state's second highest court to keep his permit despite having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime in 1983.

The column details the legal back and forth. Bottom line is that you have to be convicted of a crime for which the penalty is greater than two years in order for you to lose your permit. Hale's crime carried a maximum 90 days in jail.

When McLean was convicted in 1983 of breaking and entering, the maximum penalty was six months. But state lawmakers upped the maximum to three years in the 1990s. McLean argued the new penalties should only apply to new permit holders; he had a permit for years before the state police took away his permit because of the old conviction.

This morning, a reader posed this question:

I was wondering how Anthony McLean received his permit in the first place. As you know, Maryland is very strict issuing permits. My Father is a retired FBI Agent and received a permit. His friend who also was a retired FBI agent, was denied. I can understand how Mr. Hale was issued a permit, but you didn’t address if  Mr. Mclean had a legitimate need for one. I assume when you say permit, you mean a carry permit.

Continue reading "Man who lost court case explains his gun permit" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Note: this post has been updated. 

A 22-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 61-year-old grandfather, Baltimore police said.

Edgar Waylan Wilson was found Sunday afternoon by a relative inside his home in the 2800 block of Clifton Ave. in West Baltimore, according to police. A warrant was issued for his grandson, Jerrell Dixon, that day and was served on Monday, court records show.

Police say Dixon confessed to stabbing Wilson during a fight. He was ordered held without bond Monday, records show.

Relatives declined to comment when contacted by The Sun on Monday, but court records show Dixon’s relatives had sought intervention from the courts. In June, his 94-year-old grandmother wrote that Dixon “does not work, takes my credit card numbers and purchased $8,000 worth of … things” and said that he smoked drugs with his friends and “brings strange women in to spend the night without my permission.”

“He has refused to leave when I ask him, and I am afraid for my safety. I am 94 years old,” she wrote in court papers.

District Court Judge Catherine Curran O’Malley issued a temporary protective order, but his grandmother failed to show at a followup hearing.

The photo at left is a mugshot of Dixon provided by the Baltimore Police Department.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

A man who said a Baltimore police officer strip searched him on a public street and twice tased him while he was in handcuffs has agreed to settle a civil suit he filed against the city and is being offered $95,000.

The settlement is pending approval by the Board of Estimates, the city’s spending panel, which scheduled the item for Wednesday. Baltimore police and the city solicitor declined to comment. The amount is contained in court records and on the Board of Estimates’ agenda.

Donte T. Harris sued Officer Babatunda Orlsadelle after his arrest in April 2007 while walking to a store on Woodbine Avenue in West Baltimore. He said officers stopped him to look for drugs, but none were found. He was charged with disorderly conduct and disobeying a police officer; prosecutors did not pursue either charge.

Orlsadelle joined the city force in February 2001. A police spokesman, Det. Donny Moses, said Orlsadelle is currently assigned to the Northern District, but has been suspended from duty pending the outcome of an internal investigation since August 2010.

Details of the suit:

Continue reading "Cops actions could cost city $95,000 " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, West Baltimore
        

Baltimore County police have put an alert about a white pit bull that attacked an officer in the Towson area today. Police warn people that if they see the dog, do not approach it, and call 911 immedately.

Here is a statement:

On February 28, 2011 at approximately 12:30 p.m., a Baltimore County Police Officer assigned to Precinct 06/Towson responded for an animal complaint on Deanwood Road. When the officer exited his vehicle he was attacked by two dogs and bit multiple times. The officer used his pepper spray to repel the dogs and was also affected by the spray.
 
The officer who has been employed by the Baltimore County Police Department for 6 years was taken to an area hospital for treatment. One of the dogs has been captured.
 
Police are asking anyone that sees a white pit bull with an orange spot on its backside to not approach the dog and call 911 immediately. The dog was last seen in the area of California Avenue and Harford Road.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime
        

A Circut Court judge this morning upheld the firing of a Baltimore police officer who berated and pushed a 14-year-old skateboarder during a confrontation in the Inner Harbor in 2007. The ruling came after about an hour of arguments presented by an attorney for the police union and for the city.

The officer's lawyer argued that the police commissioner went beyond what was reasonable when he rejected an internal trial board recommendation that Rivieri be suspended for six days and lose leave time.

The trial board had found the officer not guilty of the most serious charges that included using excessive force and language. Rivieri was found guilty only of failing to write a police report, which his attorney described as a minor infraction. The attorney argued that the commissioner based his decision on parts issues that his client had been found not guilty of doing -- in essence conduct seen on the video.

But the city's lawyer argued that the failing to write a police report is not a minor infraction, and that Rivieri's failure to properly document his encounter with the youth was tantamount to covering up his use of force against a teenager.

There'll be more details later on the web and in The Sun's print edition.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, Top brass
        

Baltimore police are complaining about cuts to their pay and to their pension, and are loudly protesting City Hall. Baltimore leaders are cheering that they closed a $121 million budget deficit without laying cops off.

They point to New Jersey, where cops by the hundreds have lost their jobs to dire economic times, and police unions there say crime is soaring as a result. Today's Crime Scenes gets into the debate in more detail, and notes the release of the Maryland State Police annual law enforcement salary survey.

In the 1990, Baltimore police officers were among the lowest paid cops in the state, earning starting salaries of about $28,000. An academy graduate in the city now gets $42,290 a year, still in a low tier. They’re ahead of state troopers and cops in Anne Arundel and Charles counties but below police in Baltimore, Howard and Harford counties.

Above, the president of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police union, Robert F. Cherry, leads a protest outside City Hall. For more details: 

Continue reading "Fighting over police pay" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere, Top brass
        

The Baltimore cops called themselves the "untouchables group" and talked in thinly-veiled code, referring to alleged payoffs as "coffee," according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI. They complained about being broke and demanded expedited payments. They made disparaging remarks about the people they were supposed to protect.

Phone conversations and streams of text messages intercepted during a corruption investigation caught police officers in unguarded moments — raw chats laced with profanities and describing meetings in convenience store parking lots to collect money, sometimes with officers pulling up in marked squad cars.

Parts of the wiretaps are quoted in a 41-page indictment unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court. They are an integral part of an investigation that became public with the arrests of 17 Baltimore police officers charged with getting kickbacks for steering accident victims to a single car repair shop on Rosedale.

Here's one conversation (see full story for more):

Continue reading "Busted cops called themselves the "untouchables" " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Joel Kurz is a pastor who arrived in Baltimore a couple of years ago promoting a church called Garden Community, part of a push into urban areas by the southern Baptists. His blog posting last week accusing city cops of harassing him caught our eye.

Lots of people file lots of complaints against police, and it's never easy to decide which ones to write about. Kurz (at left, in a 2009 picture by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.) got some attention because he's a pastor, had been profiled in a front page Baltimore Sun article in 2009 and has no criminal record.

He's out in bad neighborhoods nearly every day, and he encounters police. He says that he knows he'll be questioned but typically he's not bothered. On Feb. 15, he said cops twice harassed and threatened him with arrest after he got pulled over for not wearing his seat belt on Park Heights Avenue.

A ticket, maybe. A full-scale search of the car coupled with what he said were threats and a full-scale, profanity laced tirade. Police aren't talking, as is customary, but did confirm the matter is being investigated.

He describes the encounter after the stop:

By this time another cop has arrived and is instructed to “watch me.”  A minute later I’m asked to step out and walk to the back of the vehicle where the officer asks if I have anything illegal, “drugs, weapons, guns, AK47s.” Of course I say no, at which point he demands that I do not lie to him and just tell him “now” what I have in my possession. I’m instructed to put my hands on my head as he spreads my feet and frisks me, hands in my pockets and everything. When I tell them what I do for a living, another cop barks, “I’ve personally arrested a ton of pastors.”

Continue reading "Pastor alleges police misconduct" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northwest Baltimore
        

Here's the video of Baltimore's police commissioner and the Maryland U.S. Attorney discussing the arrests of 17 city police officers charged with steering traffic accident victims to a specific auto repair shop in exchange for kickbacks.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

Baltimore’s police commissioner personally helped arrest more than a dozen city officers this morning who allegedly got thousands of dollars in kickbacks for steering accident victims to a towing company that was not authorized to do business with the city.

Federal authorities outlined a broad scheme in a 41-page criminal complaint and at a news conference in which 17 police officers conspired for two years with two brothers who own Magestic Auto Repair Shop in Rosedale.

The brothers, identified as Hernan Alexis Moreno Mejia and Edwin Javier Mejia, were also arrested, along with 15 officers who were lured to the city’s police academy under the ruse of and equipment inspection, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said. Two officers had not been arrested as of this afternoon.

Bealefeld, in a calm voice, told reporters at a news conference at the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office (photo above by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam shows Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein at the podium, flanked by Baltimore's FBI director, Richard A. McFeely, and Bealefeld).

that he thought for months about how he would explain the arrests to the citizens of Baltimore. He said he wanted the arrests done in a “very deliberate way” that was “meaningful and respectful,” but also sent a stern message to the 3,000-member force.

Continue reading "Bealefeld helps arrest fellow cops" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

When the news broke last month that a Baltimore police officer had been disciplined for failing to shave -- during the visit of the soon-to-be-president, no less -- it apparently wasn't the first time this issue has come.

The officer, who has since retired, has an ailment known as pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition nicknamed "razor bumps" that can cause infection and scarring "as a consequence of shaving." It's a condition that is most common in black males.

The 18-year veteran officer, Anthony L. Brown, alleges in his $17 million lawsuit that his supervisor handed him a razor and cream and ordered him to shave in front of his squad of officers. Maybe the city cops, or the city attorney's, should be aware of a similar case decided 20 years ago by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

The Daily Record reports in a story provided by the Capital News Service (full story here):

It has been nearly 20 years since the Court of Special Appeals took up [Donald] Boyd’s case and ruled that the University of Maryland at Baltimore Police Force’s no-beards policy discriminated against blacks. Still, beard bans persist across the nation and cops continue to clash with their agencies in increasingly expensive legal battles.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Baltimore County police  is unveiling the latest local law enforcement entry into high-tech distribution of crime. The iWatch program will allow residents to receive information through e-mail subscriptions and in turn they can provide the cops with crime tips and non-emergency complaints.

It goes beyond police, in that users will be able to file complaints about quality-of-life issues on everything from animals to abandoned cars. This service is in addition to the department's monthly newsletter and news releases on major crimes.

Police across the region are using social media, e-mails and text alerts more and more. Baltimore police have an interactive Facebook page, along with a Twitter alert system that provides breaking news alerts. The agency's spokespeople are visiting other departments to learn more, and are exploring a crime-tip-by-text or e-mail service. But there's a concern that the tips won't be read quickly enough for immediate action. One used in Philadelphia is only read once every 24 hours.

The police departments in Anne Arundel County and Howard County also have Facebook pages.

For more details on the Baltimore County iWatch initiative:

Continue reading "Baltimore County announces iWatch program" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime
        

UPDATE: About three hours after the police commissioner left the community meeting, the Northeast District had its seventh homicide of the year. It occurred in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood, an area of particular concern. There have now been 21 slayings in the city this year, one more than noted below.

At times, the city's top cop resembled a pitch-man selling 25-year lows in homicides and other glowing crime stats to people living in an area with a spike in kilings this year (see The Sun's homicide map).

At one point, the Northeast District accounted for one-third of all this year's slayings. Now, iit's slightly less, with six of the city's 20 killings this year. It's tied with the Southern for the most. So you might forgive the residents if they were a bit skeptical (I'll have more about the meeting in Friday's Crime Scenes column).

But they politely allowed Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to make his presentation during a packed meeting at Good Samaritan Hospital. The top cop is a bit frustrated that few people seem to know of the crime drops made in the past couple of years, even as his cops arrest tens of thousands of fewer people. It's targeted enforcement of gun and violent offenders over street corner sweeps.

Bealefeld pounded away that the image of Baltimore remains a deadly one -- "People are killed in the city every day," he quoted an oft-heard remark. He started at his audience and said bluntly, "It's a lie." The city went nine days once this year without a single killing, and non-fatal shootings are down from more than 750 in 2000 to 450 last year.

Yet Bealefeld lamented that more people know arcane stats about football and baseball players they follow than about the crime stats that impact the values of their homes.  "We don't know the stats that drives the engine that creeps peole out about the city," he said.

Still, Bealefeld acknowledged a problem in the Northeast and that it's no longer confined to one small area in the southern part of the district. "A lot more needs to be done in this area," he told the group. "It's unacceptable under anybody's standards. And it's moving -- it's moving east and west and we need to do something about it."

Residents peppered Bealefeld with questions but few demanded specific answers about the nature of the killings or what plans police had in place. The group appeared unanimous in its support of promoting the district's deputy major, Darryl DeSousa, to majoor, to replace the commander who just retired.

Bealefeld wouldn't give them an answer, despite repeated attempts, but said he will name a new district commander in a matter of weeks. After the commissioner left, DeSousa told his supporters, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Neighborhoods, Northeast Baltimore
        

Police and city officials have to fight crime on two fronts -- reality and perception. It hardly matters if the crime declines statistically if residents feel unsafe.

And perception can come from various places, such as the media -- shows like The Wire -- or a particular experience. I hear every week from people who think the police helicopter flying over their neighborhood is evidence of decline. One holdup on the block can mean crime is out of control, even if holdups went down 80 percent.

That brings me to Chiara Mapelli, a 15-year-old from Italy. Her family was visiting DC and decided to come up to Baltimore for a few days. But wrong directions on their GPS led them to East Baltimore where she, her sister, mom and dad were, according to her e-mail, "frightened of everything they saw."

I'm presenting her email below, knowing it will spark plenty of debate. I have no idea how they missed the Inner Harbor and ended upon east Lafayette Avenue, or if they actually witnessed three purse snatchings, or a rampant drug trade, or even "prostitution everywhere."

But does it matter? This was this girl's perception of our city and it was enough to send her family speeding back to DC's Georgetown neighborhood. Whether or not her account is accurate, it's doubtful that her next trip to the U.S. will include Baltimore.

Here is her letter:

Continue reading "A wrong turn, and a visitor's dim view of the city" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, East Baltimore, Neighborhoods
        

The trial of Cleaven L. Williams, a community activist charged with killing his wife outside a Baltimore courthouse, is expected to get underway this morning with opening statements. But a hearing on Monday offered this bombshell, reported by Tricia Bishop:

Four days before Cleaven L. Williams Jr. stabbed his wife seven times on a Baltimore street, he wrote a letter outlining plans to kill her, according to testimony he gave in court Monday. "I figured that I had a [sexually transmitted disease] and I contracted it from my wife," Williams said, explaining that he wrote the undelivered letter because he was upset. "I write a lot, that's my vent."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, East Baltimore
        

Baltimore police - out in force to watch over downtown night clubs - quickly arrested a man in a shooting on East Saratoga Street. We're awaiting more details of the arrest and to see what club to which it might be linked.

UPDATE: Police say the suspect and victim got into a "road-rage" dispute near a parking lot near I-83. The victim was hit in the elbow.

This morning's shooting is near where Officer Todd Strohman was shot back in November when he confronted a suspicious man on North Calvert Street. Just last week, the officer testified in front of an Annapolis Senate committee as part of the city's efforts to toughen gun laws (see article by Justin Fenton on why suspect was out on the street). A bullet remains lodged in the officer's chest, just above his heart. He returned to light duty last week.

Meanwhile, are are the latest details from Baltimore police spokesman, Detective Kevin Brown, on this morning's shooting:

NON-FATAL SHOOTING
200 Blk of E. Saratoga
2/13/11 - 02:15 Hrs

On the above date, time and location officers SWAT officers were monitoring area nightclubs for signs of disturbances.  While doing so they observed an individual begin shooting from his vehicle at another individual.  He was followed and his vehicle was stopped without incident. He was taken into custody and his firearm recovered. The shooting victim, a 26 year-old male, was located as he walked-in to an area hospital seeking treatment, suffering from a gunshot wound to the
arm. At last check he was in stable condition and expected to recover. No word yet on motive or suspect identity.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Downtown
        

An observant homeowner who spotted his stolen camera being sold on Craiglist led Baltimore police to an undercover sting, a take-down at a coffee shop in Canton and an investigation that closed a series of burglaries in the neighborhood.

Sunday's Crime Scenes column walks you through the investigation and profiles the suspect, who police said had decorated his apartment with looted items that he hadn't yet sold:

Inside, Layton wrote in court documents, he saw Driver's stolen X-Box hooked up to the television set. On a shelf, the officer said, he saw the victim's stolen bottles of gin and vodka, lined up in an "orderly fashion," as if they had been there for months.

The detective also saw a pile of jewelry, cell phones and computer equipment, and over the next few weeks, he painstakingly matched the items to four other burglaries in Canton between June and January in which thousands of dollars of items were reported stolen.

A license plate number etched on the back of a cell phone led him to the victim of one burglary. A number in another phone's directory labeled "Dad" led him to the father of another victim. A home phone number found on a portable computer drive led to a third.

Court documents reveal a series of burglaries that in some cases required several pages of police reports to list the missing items — laptop computers, video game consoles, expensive watches, guitars, iPods, smart phones, cameras and handbags.

And that's just the stuff you'd expect to be stolen in a burglary.

The list of missing loot includes steaks taken from a freezer along with a George Foreman grill. There's a stack of missing children's videos — unopened Blu-ray discs of "Wall-E," "A Bug's Life," "Cars" and "Monsters, Inc." — and videos for older folks, such as a boxed set of "Seinfeld" and the second season of "Big Love."

From one house, an engraved $1,300 Swiss Tag Heuer watch was stolen. From another house, a $2 box of Rice-A-Roni was taken from a cupboard.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Neighborhoods, Southeast Baltimore
        

From Baltimore Sun reporter Tricia Bishop:

The murder trial of Cleaven L. Williams Jr. — who's accused of fatally stabbing his pregnant wife outside a Baltimore courthouse in 2008 — began Friday morning with attorneys arguing whether the autopsy photos could be shown to jurors.

Veronica L. Williams was stabbed seven times in her face and neck, and the images taken by the medical examiner are described as graphic, showing wounds stretched wide to measure their depth.

"They're very shocking," said defense attorney Melissa Phinn. She contends that the photographs would prejudice jurors against her client, while prosecutor Kevin Wiggins said they are necessary to show "the extent of the injuries." The judge said he would allow them to be presented, with portions blocked out.

You may remember this case for another reason: the suspect was shot by a Baltimore police officer moments after the stabbing, and a witness urged the cop to fire again. The stabbing occurred just as the victim left court to obtain a protective order.

And later, a police commander was accused of sending text messages to the suspect, who was well known as a community activist and who went on police crime walks, as police were trying to serve an arrest warrant on him. The deputy major was later cleared but police studied whether the warrant for Williams had been handled outside normal procedures.

Reporter Melissa Harris, who is no longer at The Sun, wrote a long story on the Williams case.It includes this chilling account of the stabbing and the shooting of the suspect, picking up just as the victim was leaving court on East North Avenue:

Continue reading "Trial begins of community leader charged in wife's death" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, East Baltimore, Neighborhoods
        

"He smirked at me."

That's how Baltimore Police Officer Todd Strohman described the gunman just before he
pulled the trigger, putting a bullet into his shoulder, a bullet that will remain inches above his heart for the rest of his life.

The cop had another message for state lawmakers who make up the Senate's Judiciary
Committee contemplating tougher guns laws proposed by the city (see city's website describing proposed legislation): If the proposed laws had been on the books, the person charged with shooting him wouldn't have been on the street.

The audience applauded Strohman and the lawmakers wished him well. There was no sense
in grilling him on the necessity of enhanced gun legislation. The man charged in the crime had served two years of a 12-year sentence for armed robbery (the judge had suspended six of the years) and had been charged with five previous gun crimes. He had gotten out a little more than two weeks before the shooting on North Calvert Street.

"Seventeen days after he gets out, he shoots one of our cops," said Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Barksdale.

See more on the gun hearing:

Continue reading "City, county leaders press for tougher gun laws" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Kenneth Harris trial, Neighborhoods, Police shootings, Top brass
        

Baltimore leaders, including top cops, the mayor and the new state's attorney, are making their annual pilgrimage to Annapolis this afternoon to lobby for stronger gun laws. It's the sixth consecutive year of trying, and this time Baltimore officials are, so to speak, bringing out the big guns.

Scheduled to testify before a Senate committee are residents of crime-riddled city neighborhoods and a police officer who was shot on North Calvert Street. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has even unveiled a web site -- Safer City Baltimore -- to track gun legislation and read the text of the bills.

Last year's efforts failed, but bills actually got out of a house committee, and that in itself was considered a victory.

A proposal to extend the law making using a handgun in the commission of a felony to include all guns -- so that a person who robs a store with a rifle gets the same time as someone who robs a store with a handgun -- got widespread support. But a bill to extend being a felon in possession of a handgun to include all guns brought both bills crashing down. Opponents said it would unfairly punish felons who wanted to use rifles to hunt.

So now the city is back in Annapolis with new ideas. One proposal would create a minimum 18 month sentence for all defendants convicted of having an illegal, loaded firearm. Another would increase the maximum penalty for felons in possession of handguns to up to 15 years, but would give judges discretion by making it a 5 to 15 year penalty.

Just a few moments ago, city police announced more gun arrests on Twitter -- a handgun seizure on Gwynns Falls Parkway and .357 handgun recovered on Frankford Avenue in Northeast. In the picture above by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr., Rawlings-Blake talks about 76 illegal firearms that were seized in 10 days in July in Baltimore. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein and ATF Special Agent in Charge Joseph Riel are shown (left to right) in the background.

City leaders have had a hard time trying to understand why it's so difficult to get legislation passed to help them make Baltimore safer. The hearing is at 1 p.m. Check back to The Baltimore Sun later, on-line and in print, to see how the the city's bad guys with guns plays out in Annapolis.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

The Sun's Nick Madigan is reporting that the last of three defendants convicted in a racial attack on a fisherman in a South Baltimore park has been sentenced to 85 years in prison. But the judge suspended all but 10 years of the time.

Zachary D. Watson, 19, pleaded guilty armed carjacking, robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit assault and committing a hate crime to avoid a trial. Madigan wrote:

Baltimore Circuit Judge Lynn K. Stewart sternly warned Watson that she will make sure he serves all 75 years of the sentence if he commits any offenses during a five-year probationary period after his release. "I'll be around a long time," the judge said, "so when he finishes I'll be right here."

The attack on James Privott, who was 76 at the time, in Fort Armistead Park drew national attention when it became clear from police reports that his assailants had used racial invective during the incident. Privott, who was beaten with a hammer, punched and kicked in the assault on Aug. 18, 2009, told detectives later that, as far as he could tell, the attack was perpetrated by three men, later identified by police as Watson and his friends Calvin E. Lockner, 29, and Emmanuel Miller, 17.

In Watson's account to police after his arrest, he said that he and Miller had been standing some 20 feet away while Lockner, alone, pummeled the fisherman. Lockner, a self-professed white supremacist with an avowed admiration for Nazis and Adolf Hitler, was sentenced in September to 31 years in prison for his role in the attack.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, South Baltimore
        

The closure of the downtown prison known as Supermax has been hinted at for years and it happened slowly, with a dribble of prisoners, including five on death row, quietly moved elsewhere over the past two years. Most went to a new high-tech prison in Western Maryland.

The official end came Tuesday when the facility was turned over to the feds to be used as badly-needed pre-trial detention center. Finally, those awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore can be held in one place, instead of scattered about the Northeast.

At left, a photo the cells in Supermax, taken by The Sun's Doug Kapustin, during a rare tour in 2008.

But nostalgia aside, Supermax had a frightening 21-year history -- two made-for-TV escapes and complaints of confinement more suitable for a gulag than an American prison. Inmates were held in lock down 23 hours a day in cells with tiny windows. There as the infamous "pink room" that had a hole in the floor for a toilet, no windows, in prisoners were shackled at the ankles and wrists and left in their underwear.

The feds called conditions inhumane. So did prisoner advocacy groups and eventually even state officials. A former state prison official said facilities like Supermax are needed, but the one in Baltimore should have been built away from the city and officials should have done more to help the inmates.

Read more about the history of Supermax and a news story on it's transformation to a federal detention center. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown, Prisons
        

Baltimore citizens were outraged after discovering that one of the suspects charged with killing Johns Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn in Charles Village had violated his probation several times, but had never been held accountable.

The Charles Village Community Benefits District decided to act. The group brought back Court Watch, a program in which volunteers track criminal cases, write letters to judges describing the adverse impact of crime and attend court hearings and trials.

It's an effective way to at least keep judges and prosecutors aware that the community cares about what happens. "When they know you're watching, it makes a difference," said Stephen Gewirtz, a retired math professor who has assumed the responsibilities of Crime Watch.

Sunday's Crime Scenes column talks with Gewirtz and explores some of the cases he's following, including a serial burglar and a man who police said went on a carjacking spree in Remington and Charles Village.

Continue reading "Watching the courts" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, North Baltimore
        

Maryland State Police have an important, and sobering message for Super Bowl Sunday:

                             -Do not wear large pieces of cheese on your head while driving;
                             -Do not wave terrible towels while driving;
                                    and the most important of all advice which is-
                             -DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE.

Police are warning they'll be out in force on Sunday:

"For those who fail to heed the advice not to drink and drive, Maryland State Police will have special DUI saturation patrols on duty this Sunday. Maryland State Police Superintendent Colonel Terrence B. Sheridan has directed each of the 22 barracks to deploy additional patrols to specifically target drunk driving. Troopers on regular patrol duty have also been instructed to focus on drunk driving enforcement when not handling other calls for service."

For more:

Continue reading "Police: Don't drink and drive on Superbowl Sunday; keep cheesehead and terrible towels away from driver" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III were in Annapolis this morning briefing the city delegation on proposals for stricter gun laws.

City officals have been lobbying for years to boost penalties with not much success. Read the legislation -- Senate Bill 240 and Senate Bill 239. This year's proposals, according to the mayor's office:

The first bill would create a minimum sentence of 18 months for all defendants arrested with an illegal, loaded firearm. The second bill would strengthen sentencing options for felons in possession of guns by creating a tougher sentencing range of 5 years minimum to 15 years maximum, giving judges more sentencing options when faced with a repeat gun offender.

Here is a statement from the mayor's office:

Continue reading "Mayor, police commissioner lobby for gun laws" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

A federal jury on Thursday convicted the mastermind of a series of brazen robberies that netted more than $300,000 and left a Southeast Baltimore business owner zip-tied and duct-taped to a chair, the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Nikolaos Mamalis, 53, of Edgewood, faces at least 57 years in federal prison and could get up to life when he is sentenced in U.S. District Court in Baltimore in May. Four other conspirators pleaded guilty in the case and are to be sentenced over the next three months.

The guilty finding after a seven day trial brings to a close a complicated and violent scheme that led investigators from a city warehouse to a hotel in Atlantic City. The 54-year-old Southeast Baltimore vending machine owner, Constantine “Dino” Frank, died shortly after the robbery at his shop.

Federal prosecutors said Mamalis knew Frank and other victims and used his knowledge of their shops, homes and money they stored in them to plan the attacks. Police arrested them after learning through a wiretap that they planned to commit a home invasion in New Jersey.

Continue reading "Man guilty in robberies that left business owner dead" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Southeast Baltimore
        

Anyone who wants to know how drugs get into Baltimore, read Sun reporter Justin Fenton's story out of federal court -- "Mexican cartel on trial in Baltimore."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter M. Nothstein told jurors Tuesday that during the course of the trial they would hear things "you've only seen on TV and in movies."

Nothstein couldn't have been more right. A mobile home packed with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine crossing the country. Fine dining and fine hotels. A suitcase filled with $275,000 in a Baltimore hotel room. Another $335,000 in the trunk of a car. A corrupt cop and a stolen watch.

The details are in the story, and it's a tale using words not too often associated with Baltimore's street corner drug dealers. Here, we get words like "cartel" and "Mexico" and undercover DEA surveillance outside a Little Italy nightclub.

Said one suspect, according to the authorities: "My work is selling drugs. I'm a businessman."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Gangs
        

You might see it as Big Brother turning on Big Brother.

The proliferation of speed and red light cameras -- and more might be coming to Baltimore County -- is catching cops as well as citizens. And police departments in Baltimore and around the state are holding cops accountable for the tickets -- unless they're responding to an emergency call.

Many city officers getting snared are in unmarked cars, such as homicide and drug detectives, many of whom argue that they need to bend or break traffic laws to effectively do their jobs, even if it isn't evident that they're racing to a call for help.

But patrol officers in marked cruisers also are getting cited, and police commanders are checking dispatch logs to make sure they were heading to a 911 call before voiding the ticket. If not, the money for the fine comes out of the cop's own pocket. Last year, two cops were suspended for putting stolen license plates on their unmarked cars (either to confuse drug dealers or avoid the cameras) and a police officer speeding at 71 mph was killed when his cruiser slammed into the back of a fire engine.

Driving by cops has always been a concern of city police, who have instituted crackdowns in past years. Police tell me that city officers got into 41 accidents in January, 21 of which were deemed the fault of officers. That's down from 56 in January of 2009 (again, 21 officers were at fault then as well).

And even in emergencies, city police are under more restrictive driving rules than officers in most other jurisdictions. State law requires that drivers of emergency vehicles slow at red lights and stop signs before going through, and that they drive no faster than prudent so as not to endanger lives.

In the city, cops are required to come to a full stop at red lights (and then they can go through) and can't drive faster than 10 mph over the speed limit. The speed cameras don't go off unless you're going at least 12 mph over the limit, so you could argue that the tickets should stand regardless of whether there's an emergency or not.

The president of the police union, Robert F. Cherry, had this to say:

An officer might blow a light or speed without using lights and sirens for a variety of reasons, such as to investigate a tip that a guy on the next block had a gun or was selling drugs. In cases like these, the "emergencies" aren't always on dispatchers' official records.

"Maybe there's a reason why the officer wasn't going to a call, still went through a red light and was still doing his job," Cherry said. "The last thing we want to do is Monday-morning quarterback from headquarters or from the courts. I don't want to limit our front-line officers in making decisions when their goal is to make the public safe."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Baltimore's police commissioner and mayor are having a news conference (4:15 p.m.) to announce an arrest of a person they call a significant gun criminal. Police in Northwest Baltimore arrested the man, Michael Nichols, 31, Thursday evening.

He's at left in a police mug shot.

According to a police charging document, an officer got a call for an armed man in the 2300 block of Reiserstown Road. The man was wearing an Army camouflage jacket with a hat adorned with snowflakes and had just entered a location with an AK-47.

Police said the man jumped off a back second-floor balcony when the officer arrived but was arrested by a back-up officer. According to the court document, the man admitted that he had two guns in the house and thought the cops were there to arrest him for violating his parole.

Authorities then obtained a search warrant for the residence and confiscated several weapons. They include: a 9mm Luger handgun loaded with nine rounds; a High Point .45 caliber handgun loaded with five bullets; suspected marijuana; and suspected heroin.

The court document also says that the man told police he had a Tech 9 gun hidden in his mother's basement in a tool box on Bentalou Street. Police said they found the gun, loaded with 17 bullets, along with a box containing 28 rounds of ammunition.

At this moment, police and the mayor are giving more details (watch the news conference here). Check back to the Baltimore Sun for a more complete news story.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

The final police report on the death of Baltimore Police Officer Thomas Portz brought back some painful reminders of a horrific crash in which a cruiser crashed into the back of a fire engine in West Baltimore.

Understandably, it was particularly hard on the family. The officer's sister, Karen Portz, e-mailed me asking why we hadn't written more about her brother and the good things he did when he was alive. She asked that post her thoughts in their entirety:

I understand you have an article to write even though every time another person from the media brings this back up it rips back into us (his family) as if it is the day he died and we are just receiving that first phone call.

However when you say he was not responding to an emergency call as you put it you make it sound like he was not responding to a call. Tommy Portz is my brother. He is a son and a husband and a father. He is someone who you will never be lucky enough to meet or worse ever know.

He put his life on the line everyday because he BELIEVED in what he did. He moved from Long Island to a city filled with crime. He was offered numerous times to get out of the Western but stayed because of the bonds he had built with his district and on the streets. He talked to the businesses, he knew the owners. He played basketball with the kids in the neighborhood trying to show them the cops were not bad and were there to help them.

There are so many things you (the media) will never report about him that should make the front page.  Instead he dies and his picture is what is on the front page of the paper, my family is on the front page of the newspaper not for anything good. None of you cared about Tommy or my family before he died but now I can’t look anywhere without seeing him or us in print. My brother loved his job. He loved making a difference. Funny how no one will ever print all the good things he did.

For more:

Continue reading "A heart-felt plea from grieving sister of dead officer " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

From today's Baltimore Sun (reported by Yeganeh June Torbati):

Gun control policies should focus on restricting access to firearms for dangerous individuals or repeat offenders rather than making guns illegal, a prominent gun policy scholar told a group of public health students on Tuesday.

Daniel W. Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, touched on Baltimore police tactics and the Jan. 8 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., where six people were killed and 13 wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Too often, he said, the national debate on gun control divides into groups — those claiming that guns are not responsible for people's violent actions against those who say there are far too many guns available in America.

"This discussion has gotten us to where we are today, which is nowhere," said Webster, who has served as an informal adviser to Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. "We get in these silly sorts of discussions about guns are good, guns are bad."

Webster is well known around the Baltimore Police Department. Back in October, The Sun's police reporter, Justin Fenton, reported on a grant the city got from the federal government that will allow Webster to study the police commissioner's bad guys with guns strategy:

The $300,000 Smart Policing Grant will be used to support the work of the department's Violent Crime Impact Section, a plainclothes deployment of officers focused in East, West and Northwest Baltimore, and the gun offender registry, which helps keep tabs on people convicted of gun offenses.It will also fund an evaluation of the department's effectiveness in those areas

For two years, Webster and a researcher will compare crime statistics and police strategies to provide a template for other cities.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Top brass
        

The shooting of Baltimore police Detective Anthony N. Fata came just nine days after another officer, William H. Torbit Jr., was killed by fellow officers in a case of mistaken identity, and the night before the funeral.

It occurred in a city owned downtown parking garage a block of police headquarters, another crime near the harbor and another reason to stay away from Baltimore. Even the police are getting shot while parking.

But homicide detectives are now questioning how Fata, a 13-year veteran, was grazed in the thigh a bullet. There is some concern that the bullet came from the officer's own gun, and he made up an elaborate ruse to avoid either discipline or embarrassment.

Read more details of the case here. 

Continue reading "Doubts raised in shooting of detective" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown, Police shootings
        

If you haven't got enough of crime this week, check out the Midday with Dan Rodricks show on WYPR (88.1 FM) today at 1 p.m. I'll be on with Dan (also a colleague at The Baltimore Sun) to talk about the busy crime beat.

There's certainly no shortage of subject, and I'm sure the friendly-fire shooting of Officer William H. Torbit will dominate coverage. Among the topics -- the shooting itself and the independent review ordered by the mayor.

Here are just a few of the headlines:

Continue reading "Check out Midday with Dan Rodricks" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Police shootings
        

There's been so much death this week -- the funeral for the officer shot on Jan. 9, the death of a Baltimore County firefighter -- but I still didn't want to forget that a man trying to get into the city police academy died during a training run.

Gilnord Charles is the subject of today's Crime Scenes, but space didn't allow a photo. Here's part of that story and a picture provided to us by his wife, Danielle Charles. It was taken when Charles graduated in 2009 from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore:

He circled the track at Northwestern High School six times, completing 1.5 miles in 12 minutes and 28 seconds — four minutes under the cutoff.

Continue reading "Police applicant wanted to help people" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Two days after a Baltimore homicide detective was shot during what is being described as a chance encounter with a gunman in a downtown parking garage, police officials have still not located the shooter.

The detective – who was heading to his car to retrieve a pair of running shoes -- suffered a graze wound to his leg and has been treated and released from Maryland Shock Trauma Center. The shooting occurred Tuesday night in a parking garage on South Frederick Street, a block from the Central District station.

Police have declined to name the officer, citing a policy of not publicizing names of shooting victims who survive their wounds. But department sources have identified him as Detective Anthony N. Fata, a 13-year veteran.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown, Police shootings
        

A 30-year-old man dubbed the "preppy burglar" because of his collared shirt and glasses has pleaded guilty to breaking into houses in Howard and Montgomery counties. His crimes got wide-spread attention because one of the break-ins was captured on a home-security camera (see video here).

Jeremy Matthew Hall, of Silver Spring, was sentenced to serve 18 months in jail. His attorney told me he admitted to his crimes and made restitution. In one instance, he was able to retrieve two valuable guitars from the people he had sold them to and return them to the owner. The two men shook hands.

“I feel that the criminal law in this case was used by the lawyers to do substantial good, by virtue of this unusual restitution effort," Hall's attorney, Thomas L. Heeney told me.

Howard County resident David Irick had returned home one day last year to discover a break-n. He turned on his video from surveillance cameras he installed and saw the suspect knocking on his door and then emerging carrying computer equipment.

Hall was dressed in a collared shirt with rolled up sleeves and a red tie. Police at the time surmised that he dressed that way so that he would appear to be a door-to-door salesman or somebody conducting survey. Heeney told me his client was dressed up only because that's how he dressed for work (he wouldn't tell me where he had worked).

In court on Jan. 7, Hall made a full confession and said he had been addicted to prescription medication. "I have brought shame to my family, my community and to myself," he said.

Here is his statement from court:

Continue reading "Preppy burglar pleads guilty" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere, Howard County
        

We just got the funeral information for Baltimore Officer William H. Torbit Jr., who was mistaken for a gunman and killed by fellow officers during a fight outside a nightclub early Sunday.

A profile by The Sun's Justin Fenton portrays the officer as a tough but fair cop praised by both his colleagues on the force and the people he arrested along Pennsylvania Avenue. Here are details of the funeral as released by the Baltimore Police Department:

Posted by Peter Hermann at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Maryland State Police, investigating incendiary devices found in two letters mailed to state offices in Annapolis and Hanover is warning that the person who sent them could send more.

Authorities have made no arrests but they describe the letters complaining about terror warnings as identical, one a copy of the other, that were sent to the governor and the state's transportation secretary. Work who opened the letters were injured.

The Sun reported today:

"We don't believe that yesterday's event is going to end," Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, who heads the Maryland State Police, told reporters at the agency's headquarters in Pikesville. "We just don't know where this person is going."

Sheridan, whose agency is leading the investigation into the two packages found Thursday in Annapolis and Hanover, said he remained "very concerned."

And this just in from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A package ignited at a Washington postal facility Friday, a day after fiery packages sent to Maryland's governor and transportation secretary burned the fingers of workers who opened them.

Initial information indicated the parcel that ignited in northeast Washington about 2:45 p.m. was similar to the two packages opened in Maryland on Thursday, authorities said. The Washington postal facility was evacuated and no injuries were reported.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime
        

NOTE: An earlier posting here on police budgets didn't clearly describe the police pay cuts. Every city employee is seeing a $5 reduction in their checks per pay-period, as part of a plan negotiated with unions last year to contribute to a prescription drug plan. Police officers are seeing an additional 1.95 percent cut in their pay starting later this month.

It comes just after city police announced across-the-board cuts in crime not seen in more than two decades. At left, Robert F. Cherry, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 3, speaks at a rally in front of City Hall to complain about the cuts. Police officers and firefighters are behind him (photo by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.).

Here is the full story, with accusations being hurled back and forth by city and union leaders:

Baltimore police officers got what they described as a stunning note accompanying their biweekly paychecks Friday — a memo from City Hall informing them that their pay will be cut by nearly 2 percent over the next six months.

In addition, the officers along with thousands of other city workers were informed that starting Friday, their checks would be reduced $5 per pay period to share the costs of a prescription drug plan to help close a $121 million budget deficit.

While most city workers were prepared for the $5 reductions, police officers are taking a double hit — the cost of drug plan plus the 1.95 percent pay cut. Spread over six months, that last cut means the average officer will see about $205 less in his monthly pay starting Jan. 21.

In November, officers through their labor union overwhelmingly rejected the city’s one-year contract offer calling for a 2 percent cut in exchange for an extra five vacation days. The Fraternal Order of Police president, Robert F. Cherry, said he proposed a different, multi-year contract with a temporary pay freeze.

But the mayor’s office went to arbitration and won. Now, city leaders say pay cuts for officers that would’ve been spread out of a year have to compacted into six months. And the five extra vacation days are no longer on the table.

“We could’ve spread the pain,” said an aide to the mayor, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I think the rank-and-file members really deserve better than they got from the union leadership.”

Continue reading "Police see pay cut" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Explosive devices have been found in  two state office buildings in Annapolis, near the State House, and in Hanover, according to authorities.

Bomb squad technicians and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating. Details are still coming in, but it appears that a State House mail room employee was hurt while handling one of the packages.

State mail room offices have been shut down.

Keep checking the Baltimore Sun web site for updates of this breaking news.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Breaking news, Confronting crime
        

Several people have asked how they can volunteer to help search for Phylicia Barnes, the 16-year-old from North Carolina who went missing Dec. 28 from her sister's Northwest Baltimore apartment and is the subject of an extensive investigation.

One reader told me her 16-year-old cousin had disappeared 20 years ago and was found dead in Baltimore County. Baltimore police, along with the FBI and state authorities, have devoted more than 100 officers and others to the mysterious case.

Baltimore police spokesman Kevin Brown is advising this to anyone who wants to help:

"Currently, the best way individuals can help is to pass along information concerning her disappearance to those who may remain unaware through fliers and word of mouth. This, in turn, does two things; one, keeps her picture out there in the hope she is spotted or it spurs someone's recollection, and two, provides information on how to contact police with any tips that may be received."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Quote of the day from Baltimore City Councilman Ed Reisinger, from Laura Vozzella's column today:

"He made some wrong decisions with whatever he did. Anyone who's been arrested, especially when you're in the city of Baltimore -- you know what I mean -- are we going to disqualify them from employment?"

The councilman is not talking about just any employment, but employment as a councilman. He's talking about William "Pete" Welch, who wants to join the council vacated by his mother, Agnes Welch.

As Vozzella points out, he's got a bit of a past.

Continue reading "Should arrest disqualify you from City Council?" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime humor
        

The pace of slayings in Baltimore has slowed -- three to begin the year but nothing in the past few days. But police have kept up their relentless campaign to get guns off city streets.

Since last night, police have announced gun arrests in three parts of the city, starting in the Western where detectives with the Violent Crime Impact Section, targeting one of the more violent corridors in the city, made eight arrests Wednesday night and seized a .32 caliber handgun. The busts came while searching a house in the 700 block of North Fulton Ave.

In North Baltimore, police arrested two people and recovered a .40 caliber handgun from the 4000 block of Hamilton Ave. Detectives with a gang unit led the investigation.

Again in the Western, patrol officers stopped a car in the 200 block of North Carey St., arrested two people and seized a .38 caliber handgun.

And in South Baltimore, police raided a house in the 1600 block of Cedox St, arrested one person and seized a 20-gauge shotgun. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, North Baltimore, South Baltimore, Top brass, West Baltimore
        

The written word, whether it is in traditional print or on a computer screen, remains powerful.

And nothing could prove that more than what happened on Tuesday in the frantic search for the missing 16-year-old girl, Phylicia Simone Barns (at left), who disappeared without a trace from a Northwest Baltimore apartment on Dec. 28.

A comment posted on the bottom of a Baltimore Sun story read: "Humor me, somebody pop over to the 4000 block of Franklintown Road and look at the Southwest shoulder."

Cops, hunting down any and every clue, took immediate interest. Was this simply an obvious reference to Leakin Park being a notorious and popular dumping ground for bodies, or did this poster know something specific?

Hard to tell. The version that appears in public identifies the author only by a screen name, Cham101. Police sought more information on the poster from the newspaper, but as that was being worked out, police mobilized more than 100 police officers to search the area. An entire cadet class. More than 20 homicide detectives. A dive team. A helicopter. Officers from the Maryland Natural Resources police. Nine cadaver dogs.

They searched a section of the isolated park all day, giving up only after the poster had been tracked down, by this newspaper's chief police reporter, Justin Fenton. He reported back:

Continue reading "Internet tip leads police astray in search for teen" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northwest Baltimore, Southwest Baltimore, Top brass
        

I guess we can forgive Gregg L. Bernstein for anticipating a packed audience for his ceremonial swearing-in on Tuesday as the city's new state's attorney  -- the official one was Monday. He scanned the audience inside the grand ceremonial courtroom at the Mitchell Courthouse and proclaimed:

"What a crowd!"

It wasn't an impromptu remark. When we got a text of his speech, we discovered the crowd line had been scripted in. But it turned out to be correct -- he did play to a packed audience -- and that seems to befit the high expectations that with Bernstein the top prosecutor and Frederick H. Bealefeld III the top cop, something will change for the better in Baltimore.

(Bernstein is shown at left with his wife, Sheryl Goldstein, announcing his election victory. The picture is by The Sun's Lloyd Fox).

No doubt police and prosecutors will cooperate more and agree on a crime fighting strategy. Bernstein spent hours in a patrol car with Bealefeld in the opening hours of New Year's and saw first-hand how the city is policed. Bealefeld supported Bernstein from the start, and during the ride he called the prosecutor "the new sheriff in town."

In his remarks Tuesday, Bernstein said:

Continue reading "Bernstein takes over, announces agenda" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, State's Attorney Campaign
        

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III has been making the media rounds to talk up the crime reduction -- interview with Baltimore Sun, news conference -- and this afternoon he hit the radio talk show circuit, appearing on WYPR's Midday with Dan Rodricks.

Listen to the segment here.

I listened in the car, so no direct quotes, but Bealefeld's main thrust was going after gun offenders, and he talked about a fresh start with new State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein and how he hoped to do more with robberies and targeting offenders with firearms.

He assured some callers that he was not about locking everyone up -- his officers are arresting tens of thousands fewer people over the past several years -- but he does not apologize for removing gun offenders from the streets. He said a small number of gunmen are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in the city.

Continue reading "Police commissioner, mayor talk guns on radio" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Baltimore police can't seem to get a break.

Just as they bask in 25-year lows in violent crime, including homicide numbers not seen for decades, the New Year opened with three killings, including that of a youth and of an autistic man shot as he took his dog for a walk.

The victim, Hezikah Wilson III, was the 38-year-old brother of a Baltimore police officer who patrols one of the most dangerous sections of the city -- West Baltimore. The victim's brothers are at left, in a picture by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr. Frankie Wilson, a 15-year veteran of the city police force, is on the left and, and Archie Wilson Jr. is at right.

News of the death and the circumstances came as the mayor and police commissioner addressed the media to talk about the crime drops and their plans for the coming year, including pushing Annapolis once again for tougher laws on guns.

The Sun's Justin Fenton wrote:

Hezikah Wilson III didn't have an enemy in the world.

He didn't have friends, either. Aside from running an occasional errand, the 38-year-old autistic man rarely left the house he shared with his diabetic mother in Northeast Baltimore. He made sure she took her medication, and prepared her meals.

He also let the dog out, something he was doing Sunday night when someone shot him in the shoulder and killed him.

On Monday, as police canvassed Hamilton for tips in Wilson's murder, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told reporters at a news conference at police headquarters that Baltimore over the past decade had the largest drop in crime of any of the nation's 20 largest cities. Shootings have been cut by 40 percent, and the homicide rate is at its lowest point since 1989.

"We say this not to diminish the tough work ahead, but to say what is true and allow the people of Baltimore to acknowledge hard-fought progress," Rawlings-Blake said.

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told me while riding around the city in the opening hours of 2011 that this was a "new day" and a new "sheriff is in town," referring to new State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein.

The opening hours left the city facing an old problem, and once again trying to promote the good numbers even as people like Hezikah Wilson get gunned down while taking the family dog for a walk.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore, Top brass
        

Baltimore's top cop and about to be top prosecutor hit the streets early Saturday to survey the crime scene. They found little, which in their world couldn't be better news.

This was the upcoming State's Attorney's Gregg Bernstein's second ride with cops and he got a slow night, though he did see a few traffic stop and ran into a house where a man had been hit over the head with a glass bottle. He missed double stabbings in Curtis Bay and downtown, but experienced a night of unusually slow crime and even lower crowds for the all night party.

"There are more cops than people," Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III noted about 30 minutes after the fireworks had ended, as he walked the Inner Harbor's waterfront walkway. In police parlance, it's simply "the bricks."

The photo-op of the night?

Bealefeld and Bernstein pushing a broken-down car out of an intersection on East Madison Street.

It's certainly valuable for the incoming top prosecutor to get a feel for the streets and the cops, but Bernstein enjoys a close bond with Bealefeld, who took the unusual step of openly campaigning for him to unseat the sitting state's attorney.

Also in the car was Bernstein's wife, Sheryl Goldstein, who runs the mayor's crime office.

Bernstein didn't get too much crime to prosecute in the opening hours of 2011, But soon he'll be pouring over the files of these very same officers, deciding what and how and whether to prosecute the people they're locking up on nights like this.

As for Bealefeld, he's hoping for more nights this.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Downtown, East Baltimore, Southeast Baltimore, State's Attorney Campaign, Top brass
        

Turns out the Royal Caribbean cruise lines were bringing back more than vacationing passengers to Baltimore, according to federal authorities.

The Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office has charged crew members with trying to smuggle heroin and cocaine into Baltimore from the Dominican Republic. Court papers allege they were using a South Baltimore Wal-Mart to deliver the drugs that they had hidden in their waistbands and shoes.

The Baltimore Sun's Yeganeh June Torbati reports:

According to accounts by agents of the Department of Homeland Security filed in federal court, three employees of the cruise line — 35-year-old Gavin Excell and 27-year-olds John Swart Garth and Kishurn Neptune — obtained narcotics in the Dominican Republic during a stop of the Royal Caribbean's "Enchantment of the Seas" trip in mid-December.

When the ship arrived in Baltimore on Dec. 18, the documents state, the three men had planned to sell those drugs at the Port Covington Wal-Mart, near the cruise terminal, to Loxly Johnson and Shenika Nicole Graves, who appear to have driven to Baltimore from Virginia

 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown
        

Convicting people for rape in Baltimore is proving difficult even when there is DNA evidence.

The Sun's crime reporter, Justin Fenton, analyzed 85 sexual assault cases involving DNA over a three year period and found that nearly 40 percent have been dropped. About 26 percent resulted in a conviction, and the rest are pending.

This study comes after Fenton revealed that Baltimore police had led the nation in the number of rape cases deemed "unfounded." The department did a review and said that more than half of the cases classified unfounded over an 18 month period should have been pursued. Many victims complained that police pressured them into dropping the investigation.

But Justin's review shows that even when cases are pursued, often with what is considered lock-solid DNA evidence, convictions are hard to come by. Police say prosecutors are reluctant to take on hard cases, a challenge incoming state's attorney Gregg Bernstein will have to confront.

Read Justin's story on rape convictions.

Read the story on rapes being deemed unfounded by police.

See a full package of stories on the rape issue.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Nobody likes a parking ticket. Nobody thinks they deserves a parking ticket. And everyone thinks the parking agents should ticket somebody else.

I know I've pontificated lately here and in Crime Scenes. A man ticketed while double parking to throw a laptop computer in his house so he didn't have to walk home with it and risk getting robbed. Hundreds of parking tickets dismissed because agents weren't notified of court hearings.

People weighed in on both stories, particularly on the one on the man with the computer. He was either a solid citizen penalized for trying to stay out of harm's way or a scofflaw who felt the rules didn't apply to him.

Well, now comes Kashi Walker, seen in the picture. He's an associate minister for an East Baltimore church who, at the behest of police and fire officials, opened up his sanctuary for the relatives of the victims of Tuesday's carbon monoxide poisoning on Guilford Avenue. Two people died and three others were seriously injured.

He parked in a no-parking zone -- restricted on Tuesday's from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. to make way for street cleaners (the car is also shown in the picture). But the street just ahead was blocked by fire trucks, police cars and other emergency vehicles. He got a ticket anyway.

"It's a shame," he told me.

A spokeswoman for the city's Department of Transportation said that agents weren't out looking for parking violators at the scene of a tragedy. Rather, she said the agent had noticed that Walker had parked in that spot on Monday, and again Tuesday morning, and had returned there to see if the car was still there around 12:30 or so. She said the agent thought Walker was taking advantage of the emergency scene to park where he shouldn't.

Walker points out that even if his car was there all day Monday and Tuesday morning (he said it wasn't), it was perfectly legal during those hours. So why, he says, would the agents have marked his car for special attention?

Another good one for the judge. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore
        

Rowdy bars, copious amounts of alcohol and crime have been inexorably linked together on the pages of this blog and in the newspaper for years. Cops have been on a crusade to padlock clubs connected to shootings and drug dealing, and the club scenese downtown and in Mount Vernon have gotten much attention.

Now I see from my colleages over at Midnight Sun that some bars, starting New Year's Eve, can stay open beyond the 2 a.m. closing law. That's because of an exception granted state lawmakers at least seven decades ago. It applies only to bars in Baltimore:

"New Year's Eve is the only time of the year when extended hours are permitted, and the exemption only applies to bars that have six- or seven-day 2 a.m. liquor licenses. Thanks to the exemption, bars can open their doors on December 31 and not close until 2 a.m. January 2"

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

Five Maryland police officers died in the line of duty this year, the seventh highest number in the nation, and four of those were killed in car crashes.

The Baltimore Sun's transportation reporter, Michael Dresser, found that police fatalities across the country jumped 37 percent after two years of declines.

At left is the accident scene in October in which Officer Thomas Portz Jr. was killed when his cruiser slammed into the back of the a fire truck on U.S. 40 in West Baltimore. The photo was taken by The Sun's Barbara Haddock Taylor.

Dresser wrote:

Continue reading "Maryland ranks high in police officer deaths" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Police shootings
        

A city man, convicted in a killing he committed in York, Pa. while out on bail in a city rape case, was sentenced to death by a Pennsylvania jury on Friday, the York Daily Record reported last week.

Kevin Mattison, 34, who was already once convicted of murder in 1995 and got 10 years in prison, was charged in the summer of 2008 with rape based on a DNA hit. He was ordered held without bail in District Court. When the case was indicted, his attorney Margaret Mead successfully argued for bail and he was released on $50,000 bond on Sept. 26, 2008. Mead told The Sun in an interview Tuesday that there was no way to predict what would happen next.

York prosecutors say Mattison used a two-timed woman as an excuse to break into Agosto's apartment in the 600 block of West Philadelphia Street on Dec. 9, 2008. From the York Daily Record:

Continue reading "City man who killed while on bail for rape sentenced to death in Pa." »

Posted by Justin Fenton at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Baltimore County police are seeking help identifying two people (pictured at far left) who they believe have information in the whereabouts of a 48-year-old man who has been missing since Oct. 24. The missing man is identified as Kent Lafon Ridley (pictured on right), who lived in the 100 block of Wesley Ave. in the Wilkens area. He is described as a black male standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing about 130 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes, a light mustache and usually wears glasses.

Police said he was last seen by a relatives at his house.

Today, police said two people have been captured on surveillance camera at a food store in western Baltimore County. Police said they had used an Independence Food Card that belonged to the missing man.Anyone with information 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 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime
        

The suspect arrested by the FBI in the alleged bombing plot at a military recruiting center in Catonsville talked of waging war on the U.S. and only recently became radicalized. Today's Baltimore Sun has several articles on the plot and on Antonio Martinez's (photo at left from his Facebook page) transformation to radicalism:

* A 21-year-old Baltimore County man, whose Facebook postings about jihad gave way to discussions with an FBI informant about how to kill American soldiers, was arrested Wednesday after authorities say he tried to blow up a Catonsville military recruiting center using a car bomb supplied by undercover agents.

* Not so long ago, the young man accused of plotting to blow up a military recruiting station in Catonsville had a mundane job: selling children's clothes at Columbia Mall.

* Car Quest Auto Parts manager Will Eckenrode was beginning the day at his Catonsville store Wednesday, when he and other workers heard a loud bang and rushed outside to find FBI agents swarming behind his building.

* The suspect in the attempted bombing of the Army recruiting center in Catonsville apparently drew inspiration from an array of websites and radical Islamic leaders, including a U.S.-born cleric who has been targeted for assassination by the Obama administration, according to an FBI affidavit.

For more detail, read the criminal complaint filed by the FBI. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

We didn't write a lot about Patrick Dolan's death.

Sometimes, death on city streets seems overwhelming, and one slips by. I spoke to Patrick's family and friends over the past few days and found yet another sorrowful tale of a life snuffed out too soon on a Baltimore street.

Patrick lived in Pennsylvania but he grew up in Hampden and spent 17 of his 19 years in the Baltimore area. He attended Archbishop Curley High School and his grandmother lives on 34th Street. His extended family is one big Ravens booster club.

And that's how I discovered we needed to write more about Patrick. (See story in Crime Scenes) His cousin is co-founder of a Ravens booster club called West Wing, which put up a tribute page to the victim on their Purple Chaos website. A friend who knew the Ravens Lardarius Webb got him to sign a game ball and dedicate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game to Patrick.

The family buried Patrick in his No. 21 Lardarius Webb jersey and mourners attended a viewing in Hampden wearing Ravens clothes. Patrick was stabbed the morning of Nov. 30 after he got off a bus in Belair Edison and was approached by a man who asked for change. As Patrick took out his wallet, police said the man grabbed it. Patrick fought back and was stabbed.

He was the city's 200th homicide victim this year.

I spoke to Patrick's mother and cousins, who shared countless stories about a young man shouted  to anyone he saw wearing a Ravens jersey, once declined to attend a Ray Lewis autograph session because what he really wanted was for Lewis to tackle him, and how he cared for his sick little sister who still wonders why her big brother doesn't meet her at the school bus.

Webb's mother told me the football signed by Webb means everything to her family, and they have it on display in their Dover, Pa. home. I spoke with Webb on Thursday after practice and he told me he couldn't believe a fan was buried in his jersey:

“It got to me. I didn’t know whether to be scared, sad, happy, that he was being buried in my jersey. It was something new to me. … For the family, I hope this can lift them up in any way possible, to help them move on.”

Webb grew up in a small town in Alabama and he said violence there is nothing compared to what he's seen in this city since arriving two years ago. Here is some more from his interview: 

Continue reading "Buried in his Ravens jersey" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

Today's Crime Scenes is about guns.

I detailed one gun arrest that appeared significant -- the arrest of a man with a Ruger pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition -- to highlight the police commissioner's fight against "bad guys with guns." As of last week, city police have seized 2,043 guns this year.

The dangers of this campaign became evident this past weekend when a young city patrol officer was shot confronting an armed man on Baltimore and Calvert streets. Three other officers shot and wounded the suspect during a running gun battle shortly after 1 a.m. last Saturday.

This morning, the gun count went up as police Twittered a bunch of new arrests:

* A man arrested in the 3700 block of Gelston Drive in Southwest with a .45 caliber handgun.

* A man arrested during a search of a house in the 5300 block of Nelson Ave. in Northwest. Police seized a stolen handgun.

* A man with a 9mm handgun arrested in the 600 block of Cumberland St. in the Western.

* A drug investigation led police to an arrest of a man with a rifle in the 1800 block of Westwood Ave. in the Western. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, Top brass
        

Maryland State Police are asking for help in solving the slaying of a woman whose body was found by hikers on Nov. 30 in Calvert Cliffs State Park in Lusby. Sandra Renee Long, 41, was inside on the front seat of a silver Ford Focus.

Police have released photographs of the car and are asking anyone who saw it before 2:45 p.m. on Nov. 30 to call the Prince Frederick Barracks at 410-535-1400. Police have not said how Long may have died.

More details can be found here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime elsewhere
        

The family of Baltimore cyclist John R. "Jack" Yates who was hit by a truck and killed last year has settled its lawsuit against the driver and his employer. The settlement with Potts & Callahan Inc. was reached days before trial.

The case prompted concern and outrage from Baltimore bicycling community (picture of memorial by The Sun's Amy Davis). The Yates family alleged negligence because it appeared the driver of the truck made a right turn onto Lafayette Avenue and Yates got caught in the rear wheels. Police didn't file charges, saying the driver, who did not stop, did not see the cyclist.

I wrote about Yates back in August for a different reason. He had worked as a counselor for the Baraka School in Kenya, an alternative school for at-risk city teens. He had known another young man, Charles G. "Boots" Pratt, who was shot and killed in a South Baltimore housing project.

Pratt had been involved with drugs and was a gang member, police said. The two died just five days apart in August 2009, under very different circumstances, but their bond demonstrated some of the uncommon links found in this city. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown
        

There are some potentially explosive charges coming out of Northwest Baltimore: a member of an Orthodox Jewish civilian patrol group called Shomrim has been charged with hitting a 15-year-old and telling him: "You don't belong here."

Eliyahu Eliezer Werdesheim, a former Israeli special forces soldier, has been charged with first and second degree assault. His lawyer said Werdesheim was defending himself from an attack; police say the youth's wrist was broken.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Sun's Justin Fenton that police continue to work with the neighborhood group but "will not tolerate vigilantism from any organization." (A video of Shomrim can be found here)

The teenager is black, and the incident -- particularly the comments police attribute to the suspect -- could heighten tensions in the Park Heights area. African-American residents have felt for years that some of the Jewish police groups patrol their own neighborhoods but don't look out for the community overall.

Arthur C. Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, said he would demand that the incident be fully investigated to satisfy concerns. "It's vital for the sake of the community that both groups get along well, and for the most part they do," Abramson said. "Obviously, this incident, no matter who is right or wrong, exacerbates tensions, and we're not going to tolerate any cover-up."

Back in the 1990s, another Jewish patrol group, Northwest Citizen's Patrol, got into trouble for being partnered with a city police officer while forbidding women to join their group. The organization relented and also expanded their reach deeper into the Park Heights community.

The citizen's patrol group was instrumental in fighting to retain a Jewish police major to run the Northwestern District and protested when the commissioner at the time replaced him with a black commander. Those tensions have eased in recent years.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northwest Baltimore
        

An investigation by The Sun's police reporter, Justin Fenton, has led to this revelation from city auditors: More than half of about 100 rape reports that Baltimore police had originally discarded as false have been reclassified as crimes.

A complete package of stories on the rape issue can be found here.

This is the result of a review by police following Justin's articles that found a sharp drop in rapes in Baltimore -- disproportionate to that of other cities -- was a result of police too quickly dismissing complaints from women.

After the stories, city officials launched their own investigation and the results were revealed Wednesday at a City Council hearing:

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the audit, along with other comprehensive changes in recent months, "has forever changed and improved the way sexual assault cases are investigated in Baltimore, ensuring that all victims of sexual assault have their complaints investigated fully and are treated with dignity and respect."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

The entrance to the Northeastern District station on Argonne Drive is now called "Det. B. Stevenson Way."

Baltimore officers who turn in and out the parking lot will forever remember the officer who lost his life in September in a parking dispute in Canton. The 18-year veteran was off-duty and out celebrating his 38th birthday when a man hit him in the head with a chunk of concrete.

This afternoon, the officer's friends, family, colleagues joined Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III to dedicate the new entrance. The officer's widow, Ksisha Stevenson, got the first ride on the newly named street -- in a police car. Kshisa simply told the crowd that gathered, "We thank you for loving Brian."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Northeast Baltimore
        

Carl O. Snowden might not get a break after all.

A special prosecutor has asked that the director of the civil rights office for the Maryland Attorney General be sentenced again on a drunken-driving charge, saying the first sentence of probation before judgment was illegal.

It was Snowden's third drunken driving arrest; he received probation in 2003 and a 2005 case was dismissed. Changes to state law in 2009 mandate that a person can only get probation before judgment once every day years for drunken driving.

But that change slipped by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney, as well as the judge. Now, The Sun's Andrea Siegel is reporting that the prosecutors is seeking a harsher sentence. We haven't heard yet how Snowden's attorneys will counter.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

The last of 28 defendants accused of being members of the Tree Top Piru Bloods gang has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Keili Dyson, 28, and Keon Williams, 29, admitted to conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine. All 28 members who were indicted have now been convicted.

Prosecutors said that Dyson held the rank of OYG (Original Young Gangster) and that he met with other leaders to discuss pending acts of violence and discipline. On Oct. 18, 2007, authorities said he was found by detectives on a raid of a house on Audrey Avenue with empty zip lock bags used to package drugs. Police said he had cocaine in his pockets.

Prosecutors said Williams was overheard on intercepted phone calls discussing the distribution of crack cocaine along the Greenmount Avenue corridor.

Williams and Dyson each face up to 20 years in prison when they are sentenced in March. More than a dozen other gang members have been sentenced to 18 months to life in prison, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Gangs
        

Another crime, more questions about why a convicted felon is roaming the streets of Baltimore.

The Sun's Justin Fenton explores the criminal history of Franklin Gross Sr., the 29-year-old charged with shooting a young Baltimore police officer early Saturday on East Baltimore and North Calvert streets. It led to a running gun battle downtown.

Gross had been convicted of handgun possession (five years) and a separate armed robbery (12 years). But as Justin points out, the sentences began in 2006, when he was first arrested, and up to half the time was suspended by the judges.

That combined with "good-time" credits allowed Gross to be released in May, 26 months after he had been sentenced. So that's how he ended up downtown on Saturday, allegedly carrying a gun and spotted by an alert cop. Police said the when the officer confronted him, he pulled out his gun and shot him in the left shoulder.

Justin's story today goes through efforts by city and state lawmakers to tighten gun laws in Annapolis, and effort they vow to continue. 

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Downtown
        

A Baltimore police officer who confronted an armed man on a downtown street early this morning was shot and seriously wounded, and backup officers engaged the suspect in what the police commissioner described as a running gun battle up North Calvert Street.

Police said that at least three members of the tactical unit, among the best trained in the use of firearms, fired at least 20 shots along a single city block, hitting the suspect several times on a street crowded with patrons of downtown clubs and bars.

The wounded man managed to escape in a silver Toyota Camry occupied by two of his friends. The car crashed into a light pole at Calvert and Franklin streets and police found the suspect inside Mercy Medical Center seeking treatment for his wounds. The car was peppered with about a dozen bullet holes in the back windshield, trunk and bumper.

Police shut down numerous streets north of the Inner Harbor after the shooting, which occurred shortly past 1 a.m. at North Calvert and East Baltimore streets. A police helicopter hovered over the two crime scenes and police said they recovered a semiautomatic handgun and arrested the two occupants of the car and the man who they said shot the police officer.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Downtown
        

UPDATE BELOW: Police say stabbing victim died, brother arrested

Some crime updates from Baltimore Police:

MISSING PERSON
 
Raymond Burke, M/W/74, was found last night around 11:30 hrs by patrol units in the Northeast District, in the area of Pulaski Hwy and Moravia Park  Drive. He was discovered unharmed and is doing well. He had been missing since Wednesday.
 
STABBING
 
In reference to the tweeted stabbing within 4400 Blk of Belvieu Ave., information is still being gathered, to include the latest condition check. I will have an update on this case near noon.  I do know that the victim is an adult black male, born 12/27/48, and a person of interest (a relative) has been taken into custody.

UPDATE from police spokesman Kevin Brown: Please be advised that in reference to the assault reported on the 4400 Blk of Belvieu Ave., the victim, Robin Patterson (B/M 6/24/59) has died as a result of his injuries. His brother, Harry Patterson Jr. (B/M 11/27/41) has been charged with the murder (and lesser related), and is currently being held in CBIF. His photo is at left. It appears as if the incident stemmed from an argument between the suspect and his wife, in which the victim attempted to intervene and was fatal wounded.  No word yet on the cause of the argument, etc.  

Continue reading "Missing person found, arrest in homicide" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime
        

"The Wire" is now part of the curriculum at Johns Hopkins University.

The Sun's Childs Walker describes the course, focusing on one class taught by the show's writer and creator, former Sun reporter David Simon:

Peter Beilenson, an adjunct professor and Howard County's health officer, thought "The Wire" would be a perfect hook to get Hopkins undergraduates thinking about the complex web of problems faced by American cities.

Beilenson, who introduced the class this semester, was not the first person to think of building a college course around "The Wire." But he had one major advantage. As a longtime player in Maryland politics and health policy, he was able to line up many of the people who do the real-world jobs that the show depicted.

To talk about policing, he tapped former Baltimore commissioner Ed Norris (also, conveniently, an actor on the show). For a view of the prosecutor's office? Patricia Jessamy, the outgoing state's attorney. For the big picture on education? Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso.

And for the grand finale? Simon himself.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Trying to determine when someone gets released from prison in Maryland has always been a difficult task. Inmates typically get out well before their sentences end -- mostly through probation or parole. But they also get "credit" for being in prison and being a good prisoner.

It's an incentive plan -- be good, get out early.

But how those credits are determined can be a daunting task. The Maryland Court of Appeals confronted this issue last week and is the subject of today's Crime Scenes:

Just ask the judges of the Maryland Court of Appeals, who accepted a case in which an inmate claimed he didn't get enough credits to reduce his sentence. The judges made no secret of what they were getting into. The opening line of the opinion issued this week:

"This case is about the calculation of diminution credits, a topic that strikes dread into the hearts of many trial and appellate judges."

That very first sentence required a footnote from Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr.: "For example, Professor Ester promised me that, if I finished law school and passed the bar examination, there would be no more math. He was mistaken."

The case involves an inmate who claimed the prison system failed to properly calculate his credits. The court agreed, but the time time they ruled he had already been released on one drug conviction and re-charged in federal court on another drug charge.

He's got the moral victory, but now he's in a place where there is no parole, no probation and no "good-time" credits. Read the full opinion from the Maryland Court of Appeals here.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

UPDATE: Baltimore police are reporting another killing in Southwest -- a 28-year-old man stabbed in the neck this morning on the front steps of a house in the 1800 block of Eagle St. It's officially in the Southern police district, but the neighborhood is Carrollton Ridge, a hard-hit area of the southwestern part of the city. Police tell me they're investigating robbery, but it's unclear if this latest killing is related to the others.

Baltimore police are looking to quell an outbreak of shootings in the Southwest part of the city and say some might be related. The Sun's Justin Fenton takes a look at the violence and the department's efforts to avoid a late-year outbreak that could threaten the historic lows seen in homicides in 2009:

A series of shootings and killings in the Southwestern police district over the past few days — pushing the number of city homicide victims to 200 for the year — has police deploying extra officers and the commissioner pushing for greater sharing of intelligence among investigators.

Between Friday and Tuesday morning, three people were killed in the area just east and south of Leakin Park, as well as another three who were injured in nonfatal shootings. Anthony Guglielmi, the department's chief spokesman, said at least some of the shootings appear to be connected.

"We have to move as fast as these guys do," Guglielmi said, adding that police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III wants enhanced and speedier sharing of intelligence about these crimes within the department.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Confronting crime, Southwest Baltimore
        

General Growth Properties, which runs the major malls in the area, including Harborplace, Towson Town Center and The Mall in Columbia, are bringing in K-9 security dogs to help keep people safe over the holidays.

Pictured here is a German Sheperd named Bruno and security guard Dave Merow patrolling the Columbia Mall. The photo is by The Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.

While General Growth officials said no single crime or incident prompted the use of the K-9 unit, the new security plan comes after several high-profile crimes at Mondawmin this summer, including a robbery in which a gunman escaped with $100,000 worth of watches and jewelry from Elite Gold & Diamond.

K-9 security is a growing trend in the retail industry as mall operators have become increasingly concerned about crime. This is the first time General Growth has deployed K-9s in the Baltimore area, but the company has already installed K-9 units in Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

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

There are troubling allegations today that a civil rights official in the Maryland Attorney General's Office escaped serious penalties because a prosecutor (along with others) apparently didn't realize state law makers had toughened the law for drunken driving.

The story, reported in the Annapolis Capital {background story here] and today in The Sun, has officials scrambling:

For the second time in eight years, Carl O. Snowden, current director of the civil rights office in the state attorney general's office, received probation before judgment for drunken driving, and questions have been raised illegalities.

"I'm going to have to figure it out myself," said prosecutor Henry Dove. The Talbot County assistant state's attorney was assigned to the Anne Arundel County case because Snowden, a former Annapolis alderman and aide to the previous county executive, has long been involved in civil rights and politics in the county and had worked with the Anne Arundel prosecutor's office.

Dove said he had no idea that the sentence might be illegal until a reporter from another newspaper contacted him.

State law regarding the granting of probation before judgment changed in 2009. It increased to 10 years the period during which a driver cannot be granted a second probation before judgment in a drunken-driving case.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

Justin Fenton's story today on Wilbur Street is yet another demonstration of how we tally violence is convoluted, if not just plain wrong. Street was shot in 1982 but the bullet didn't kill him. He developed a seizure disorder and he finally died this year.

Wilbur Street is the city's 195th homicide victim of 2010.

So when we look back on the year and say that this many people were killed, let's remember that at least one -- and there's several every year -- are from violence that occurred nearly three decades ago. The number is misleading if you want to judge violence this year.

His shooter already has been convicted and served 15 years in prison. And Street's death has to be counted some place, and constantly adjusting numbers from years past doesn't make much sense. The name goes on the homicide board when it's ruled a homicide.

And just as Street's death gets counted this year, adding to the total, others do not make it. Killings that occur in the state-run prison system in the city are investigated by state police, and don't go on the list. Likewise for killings along highways investigated by the Maryland Transportation Authority police. Justified killings -- whether by police or civilians -- don't go up.

The city's homicide count is really a list of murders investigated by Baltimore police.

Two years ago, I did a column on this. The numbers are from 2008, but the idea is the same:

Continue reading "Today's murder, yesterday's shooting ... " »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

An alert from Baltimore Police:

On November 3, 2010, An 85 year old man was walking into his house in the 300 blk E Lafayette Ave. He was approached by a suspect who began to choke him and then robbed him. The victim was not injured during the incident but money was taken from him.
 
Attached are surveillance photos taken from the area.
 
The suspect is described as a B/M, 5'11, 180 pounds, 35-40 years old.
Anyone with information should contact the Eastern District at
410-396-2433

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, East Baltimore
        

James Kimble, 20, was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison for attacking a Baltimore police officer in Harford County -- an assault so severe that it left the officer legally blind and probably unable to work again.

The Sun's police reporter, Justin Fenton, wrote:

The doctors told Detective Jermaine Cook that the injury to his left eye was like placing a grape in a bag, slicing it in half, and then smashing it flat.

The beer mug slung at his face by a Joppa man in May had caused irreparable damage. Cook, a Baltimore police officer who patrolled the toughest parts of the city, is now legally blind and can't drive long distances or at night. He's had trouble taking care of his children without assistance and has seen his income — which used to include significant overtime pay — drop substantially.

He may never be able to return to work, said his wife Tuesday, reading a letter from Cook to Harford County Circuit Court Judge Stephen M. Waldron as Cook looked at the floor.

Prosecutor Daniel Ryden was even less optimistic about Cook's prognosis.

"The damage to his eye was nothing short of catastrophic," Ryden said. "He will never work as a police officer again."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Harford County
        

Baltimore police have charged an uncle with killing his nephew Saturday night in Highlandtown. Here is a release just issued by city police:

ARREST
 
400 Blk of East Street
11/13/2010 - 21:51 Hrs
 
In reference to the stabbing death of David Lawrence Hopkins (b/m 12/4/90), Dewayne Hopkins (b/m 12/23/65) [pictured at left] has been arrested and charged with murder yesterday evening. It appears that the incident stemmed from a family altercation. Suspect (uncle) victim (nephew). In the interim, please find attached his booking photo.

Meanwhile, here's some additional information on a shooting:

Continue reading "Police make arrest in weekend slaying" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, East Baltimore
        

Anyone who has staffed the phones at any city newspaper can recall a treasure-trove of off-the-wall calls. This one came into to our night reporter Jessica Anderson on Friday night:

Female caller: Hello. I live in Baltimore and I was just calling see if there were any shootings tonight.

Reporter: No, not that I am aware of. Have you heard of something?

Caller: No. I’m just trying to decide if I want to go out tonight.

Reporter: Well nothing yet but they tend to happen overnight. I think you are OK.

Lady: Oh. OK. Good!

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Crime humor
        

It might seem obvious, but keeping kids in school does translate into less crime. The Baltimore Sun's Erica L. Green documents this trend with a story that combines interviews with kids, police and school officials.

The dropout rate for city students has plummeted this year, along with the rates for juvenile-involved crime and arrests, according to figures provided by the city school system and law enforcement agencies.

The encouraging development, officials say, is due in large part to close cooperation between the leaders of the city school system, the Police Department and the state juvenile corrections agency. City officials and others are expressing hope that Baltimore may have begun to break a cycle that some call the school-to-prison pipeline.

Since 2006, the number of children killed in the city has plunged by 80 percent, and the number of juveniles suspected in killings has dropped by about the same percentage.

The numbers come on the heels of the city recently celebrating a historically low dropout rate of 4 percent, and a record 66 percent graduation rate that the Baltimore school system said is driven primarily by achievements of black males.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

The Baltimore Police Department just released this statement about two overnight violent crimes:

STABBING
11/10/10 - Approx. 18:60Hrs
4100 Blk of Amos Ave.
 
At approximately 18:55hrs officers responded to an area hospital for a cutting call for service.  Upon arrival they spoke to the victim, an adult black male (9/17/85) who advised he had been stabbed after an altercation over a debt incurred after a football game wager.  Investigation continues, to include cultivation of suspects. At last check the victim was in stable condition.  
 
NON-FATAL SHOOTING
11/11/10 - Approx. 0100Hrs
1200 Blk of Ward St. (Outside)
 
On the above date and time officers responded to the location for a shooting call for service.  Upon arrival they discovered the victim, an adult black male (11/3/88), who advised that he was driving through the location and as he stopped he exchanged words with a male standing in the block.  As he (the victim) exited his vehicle the unknown male pulled out a gun and fired, striking the victim twice (right hand and right leg). Victim was transported to an area hospital and is in stable condition at last check. At present, no suspects or motive.  
 
The homicide numbers are as follows:
 
2010 YTD: 191
2009 YTD: 193

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, South Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

Today's news brings us lots of crime, from a conviction of a former Frostburg student in a slaying to computers stolen from a private school in Baltimore County:

* Shortly after Tyrone Hall was sentenced Wednesday for the fatal shooting of Brandon Carroll and the wounding of Ellis Hartridge Jr., the families and friends of all three young men involved in the incident last April stood outside Allegany Circuit Court. Some cried openly; others seethed quietly. Neither side seemed satisfied with Judge W. Timothy Finan's decision to send the 21-year-old Glen Burnie man to prison for five years.

* The empty desks in the computer room, left with nothing more than dust and a few old cables, tell the story of the burglary as vividly as any anecdote. Thieves who broke into a private Christian school in Northeast Baltimore over the weekend seemed to know exactly where the most valuable items were, school officials said Wednesday, prompting the theory that the perpetrators are former students. The burglars made off with 17 new desktop computers that had been set up just two weeks ago, as well as sound and music equipment from behind a stage.

* Baltimore County police have charged a 17-year-old in the Oct. 31 murder of Dequan Burks, in Lansdowne. Sterlin Corday Matthews, of Baltimore, has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder in the shooting of Burks, 16, of Baltimore, on Halloween night.

* Baltimore County police have identified a man who was shot Tuesday night in Dundalk as 22-year-old Jean Hoffman of the 2000 block of Guy Way and said they were looking for three suspects. According to police, three men knocked on Hoffman's door and asked to speak with him. He went outside, where they argued, and Hoffman was shot once in the abdomen, police said. He was able to get back inside his home, and the three men fled.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

A bank robbery in Anne Arundel County on Wednesday brings this report from The Sun's Andrea F. Siegel:

Cash reportedly flew out of the window of a car chased by police Wednesday on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, after a bank robbery in Millersville, police said.
Around 10:30 a.m. a man went into the Washington Savings Bank in the 600 block of Old Mill Road, passed a robbery note, received cash and then fled onto Veterans Highway in a red Pontiac Firebird, said Justin Mulcahy, a county police spokesman.

That reminded of this gem published in The Sun in 1998 headlined: "Law and Disorder on the Interstate":

Continue reading "Bank robber may have tossed loot during chase" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Anne Arundel County, Confronting crime
        

Talk about turning the tables on the crooks.

State auditors have found that corrections employees in Baltimore have been regularly taking money from prisoners for their own use. The Sun's Yeganeh June Torbati reports today on a hearing in Annapolis where this practice was discussed:

Released last week, the audit found serious deficiencies in two accounts — a fund that contains inmate money, and another fund of public money used to finance small expenditures. The review found that the five Baltimore sites in the state prison system gave some employees easy access to blank checks and the signature plates needed to authorize checks drawn on the public account with no supervisory oversight; and perhaps as a result of those gaps, could not account for tens of thousands of dollars in missing funds.

The report also disclosed that some prison employees were drawing money from the inmate account to pay salary advances. While such advances, intended for newly hired employees awaiting their first biweekly paychecks, are allowed, prison workers were mixing the funds from the inmate and public accounts. There was no documentation to justify why some veteran employees were drawing advances.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Prisons
        

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III spent part of Tuesday evening handing out bags of meal to homeless men to raise awareness for St. Leos Church's Little Italy Hands and Hearts program.

The program, founded in 2007, gives out about 85 bags of meals, donated by nine Little Italy restaurants, every Tuesday at Baltimore Street and Central Avenue outside Baltimore Rescue Mission.

These photos were taken by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Confronting crime, Southeast Baltimore, Top brass
        

City work crews found the body of 21-year-old Derrius Currie on Saturday, inside a vacant house on West Lexington Street. It was the third killing in that block this year, the most of any block in Baltimore this year.

Several blocks have had two killings and at least twice two people have died in the same shooting on the same block. But I could not find a block with three violent deaths this year (though several neighborhoods have experienced more in a several-block radius).

I visited the block this morning and found the vacant where the body had been found, next to an empty lot filled knee-high with trash (photo at left), and that was next to another vacant building. Work crews for a private development company will soon be here to tear all this down and replace it with low-income housing, which residents said can not come soon enough.

I'll have more on this block in my Crime Scene column. And here is a story on the killing by The Sun's Justin Fenton.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Confronting crime, West Baltimore
        

Up in Harford County, Sheriff L. Jesse Bane is employing urban-style policing methods to combat crime in an area of Edgewood he has dubbed "a killing zone."

This year, two slayings and six shootings in the area have occurred, numbers that reflect violence that broke out here two years ago. Even with the the shift in strategy, the violence continues in one of Baltimore's northern-most suburbs.

And while the killings and shootings pale in comparison to Baltimore, to the residents of Harford County, this trend is disturbing. The Baltimore Sun's Jessica Anderson delves into the issue in a story today:

Edgewood is joining the list of communities far from the most dangerous neighborhoods in downtown Baltimore where residents and officials are struggling to get a handle on violence before it spins out of control.

The trend is frustrating residents like Shedrick E. Cain, who moved to Edgewood in 1990 and said the area reminded him of his "small, rural" hometown in Virginia.

"The population has grown. Crime can be just about anywhere. It doesn't matter if you are in the city or suburbs," he said. "It's individuals who make bad decisions."

Crime is down in Harford County, but the pockets of violence in and around Edgewood trouble some residents. The story focuses on Tamar Pair, who left Baltimore several years ago seeking a safer place to live. Shes in the above picture, taken by The Sun's Lloyd Fox.

In October, her 16-year-old son, Derrick Wingate, was shot to death in front of their Edgewood home. "I wish I could sell my house," Pair told Anderson. "I feel like if I didn't buy this house, it wouldn't have happened."

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Harford County
        

The ACLU in Pennsylvania has sued the Philadelphia Police Department over it's stop and frisk tactics, adding Philadelphia to a list of cities targeted for what civil rights groups call harsh policing methods that unfairly target minorities.

Read a copy of the complaint here.

Police officers in Baltimore and New York have come under fire for stopping and searching people on the streets, often times without arresting them or finding evidence of a crime. Supporters say the practice drives down crime, while opponents say it violates people's rights.

In Baltimore, stop and frisk was part of a zero-tolerance policing program that in the mid 2000s led to cops arresting more than 100,000 people, filling the jail to capacity and drawing complaints form citizens and prosecutors that many of the arrests were unlawful.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III has shunned the practice, promoting smarter arrests targeting violent gun offenders. His officers have arrested tens of thousands fewer people than his predecessors, and has driven down crime and homicide to historic lows.

In 2007, Bealefeld told The Sun that he found the volume of arrests in previous years "mind-boggling. ... Did we really accomplish a lot doing that?" He said that instead of filling the city's Central Booking and Intake Center "with a whole bunch of arrests for arrests' sake, ... we're going to be much more focused."

In June, the Maryland chapter of the ACLU settled with the city over this city's mass arrest policies, costing the city $870,000 and requiring a monitor to examine arrest data. New York City has received similar complaints, and now Philadelphia appears the next target.

The Washington Post reports on the Philadelphia suit in today's editions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that city officials are defending the practice:

City Solicitor Shelley Smith, however, said [Charles] Ramsey has beefed up police training and supervision, responded quickly to allegations of abuse and meted out discipline when warranted. Last month, Ramsey added more investigators to the Internal Affairs Bureau. "The Police Department and Commissioner Ramsey take seriously the need to protect the constitutional rights of citizens," Smith said. Yesterday afternoon, Nutter said he had not yet reviewed the suit. But he said the "stop and frisk" policy was legal and effective if used correctly. Since taking office in January 2008, Nutter has championed "stop, question and frisk" policing as part of a plan to fight crime and get guns off the street. Nutter stressed that overall crime, including violent crime, is down and said race is not a factor in who gets searched. He also noted that "stop and frisk" - in which police stop people suspected of criminal activity and pat them down for illegal weapons - was being used before he became mayor.

While Baltimore police are curtailing the practices, The New York Times reported in May that its department has more than quintupled the number of stop and frisks over the past few years. Last month, the group Center for Constitutional Rights, released a report criticizing the NYPD for its stop and frisk tactics. Here is there statement:

Continue reading "ACLU targets "stop and frisk" police tactic in Philadelphia" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Crime elsewhere
        

The Maryland Court of Appeals is to hear today arguments in a case that could open up police disciplinary records.

At issues is a claim by the ACLU and the NAACP that monitoring how state police are investigating complaints of racial profiling is impossible when authorities withhold the records.

The groups entered a consent decree to settle a lawsuit with the state, and have been told that all complaints lodged against troopers alleging they pulled someone over because of skin color were resolved in the favor of the officers. The groups want to see the records to see how the complaints were handled.

I wrote about this issue and another one that is tied to it earlier this week in Crime Scenes.

The Sun's Andrea F. Siegel previewed the case today:

The attorney general's office, which represents the state police, contends in its brief that the documents are personnel records, making them private and exempt from disclosure. The troopers' identities were not sought by the NAACP, but redacting the names does not protect the identity of the troopers, the attorney general's office argues.

"[R]ecords of investigations of complaints against state police officers and employees remain confidential," the office said in its brief.

"If the MSP were have its way, it could throw complaints of indisputably unconstitutional behavior in the trash without any investigation, and no one would ever know," lawyers for the NAACP wrote in their brief.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, Top brass
        

Baltimore's mayor has unveiled a new plan to more quickly deal with the thousands of vacant houses that pockmark the city's landscape, such as at left in this picture by The Sun's Jed Kirschbaum shortly after a fire ravaged a string of vacants in West Baltimore. The houses not only spread blight, but attract crime, and as we recently saw in West Baltimore, can feed the flames of fire consuming entire city blocks.

The Sun's Julie Scharper wrote:

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she would accelerate redevelopment of Baltimore's more than 30,000 vacant properties by cutting bureaucracy and speeding the sales of city-owned properties.

"Vacant houses are more than just an eyesore," Rawlings-Blake said at a Wednesday morning news conference. "Just ask someone who lives next door to one."

Vacant properties constitute one of the city's most pernicious problems, depressing home values and blighting the landscape. Officials have counted 16,000 unoccupied buildings, which harbor vagrants, attract vermin and pose fire hazards. The city owns 10,000 of the vacant properties, on 4,000 of which sit empty structures.

Last month, The Sun's Jessica Anderson brought us to Calhoun Street, where two simultaneous four-alarm arson fires on Sept. 8 destroyed two sides of a city block and taxed the Baltimore Fire Department to the point it needed unprecedented help from neighboring counties. Fire trucks from as far away as Washington responded.

The mayor's plan was already in the words when the fires broke out, but they served as yet another reminder of one of Baltimore's most persistent urban ills, and one that stands out to anyone who drives through these areas.

Here are the mayor's prepared remarks on her plan for vacant houses:

Continue reading "New plan to combat city vacants" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: City Hall, Confronting crime, Downtown, East Baltimore, Neighborhoods, North Baltimore, Northeast Baltimore, Northwest Baltimore, South Baltimore, Southeast Baltimore, West Baltimore
        

Baltimore police are asking for help locating more than $800,000 worth of computers taken from a stolen truck last month. Police sssued this statement today:

Please be advised that the Baltimore Police Department's Regional Auto Theft Task Force is seeking information on a notable truck/cargo theft that occurred on October 13, 2010. A tractor-trailer was stolen from the Eagle Trucking Co. (500 Blk of No. Dean Street) on that date and recovered a short time later within the vicinity. Its cargo, however, of 1,660 Compaq computers, were no longer present. We are asking anyone with information regarding the theft to contact the Regional Auto Theft Task Force at 410-887-6247.  As always, tipsters can remain confidential.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

A former city cop was sentenced to five years in federal prison for an assult. The Sun's Tricia Bishop reports that the cop had been convicted in state court, but that it was overturned. Federal authorities took over the case against Gregory Mussmacher:

"The power that accompanies a police officer's badge does not give the officer the right to violate the civil rights of those in his or her custody," Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil rights Division, said in a statement. "The Justice Department will aggressively prosecute any officer who abuses their power and violates the public trust in this way."

Here is a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice:

Continue reading "Former city police officer gets prison time" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Breaking news, Confronting crime
        

The real drama in the race for Baltimore State's Attorney ended in the primary, when Gregg Bernstein defeated incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy in a contentious race. Tuesday's general election was forgone conclusion; Bernstein was unopposed.

He's at left with his wife, Sheryl Goldstein, giving his victory speech. The photo was taken by The Sun's Lloyd Fox.

So the only question left is what he's going to do once he takes over. Baltimore Sun courts reporter Tricia Bishop brings us a preview today:

Bernstein has spent the past several weeks winding down his private practice as a defense attorney, which is how he has spent most of his legal career, and meeting with deputies and division chiefs from the state's attorney's office, to better understand and evaluate their operations.

That changes this week. Bernstein plans to meet with the office of 400 employees, roughly half of them prosecutors, and to examine financial information that has been unavailable until now, in preparation for his January inauguration.

He won't go so far as to say the office needs a complete overhaul — what it needs, he says, is a "new organizational structure" designed to "more effectively target and convict violent repeat offenders."

That means some people will lose their jobs, many others won't and everyone will be subject to professional training, Bernstein said. Employees will finally get voice mail on their phones and BlackBerries in their pockets, he added.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system, State's Attorney Campaign
        

It's Election Day, and that typically means a slow crime day. It was a busy weekend, and here are some additional headlines on the crime front:

A woman sentenced to stealing more than three-quarters of a million dollars from her employer.

Man pleads guilty to shooting a city police officer.

Linthicum man sentenced for burning his own home.

Trial starts in JROTC rape case.

Parkville man guilty of producing child pornography.

Posted by Peter Hermann at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
        

State authorities keep close tabs on convicted sex offenders, particularly around Halloween, when kids are out and going from house to house. Here are some plans that cops and other officials have to keep kids safe and predators in check:

Once again this year, the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation (DPP) will be monitoring certain sexual offenders and reminding them to stay away from children’s Halloween activities. Selected offenders have been sent letters (below) and window signs indicating that they have no candy. In addition, Parole and Probation agents will be conducting hundreds of home visits and working with local law enforcement in some regions across the state to ensure that certain offenders are compliant.

“The Division of Parole and Probation takes very seriously the business of protecting our communities,” says DPP Director Patrick McGee. “Parole and Probation will establish a reinforcing presence across the state during Halloween.  We will concentrate our efforts on Sunday, and will visit the homes of those offenders for whom this intervention is determined to be most appropriate.”
                       
Offenders are asked to keep their porch lights out, place “NO CANDY” signs in their windows, and stay away from children’s activities. Those found to be non-compliant could face sanctions for violating the terms of their supervision.

For more details:

Continue reading "Sex offenders and Halloween -- they don't mix" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Confronting crime, Courts and the justice system
        

From Maryland State Police:

No costumes, but additional troopers will be wearing their usual uniforms as part of extra Maryland State Police drunk driving patrols that will be deployed this weekend in every county in Maryland.  

Maryland State Police Superintendent Colonel Terrence B. Sheridan has ordered each of the 22 barracks to conduct drunk driving saturation patrols in an effort to reduce injuries and fatalities caused by drunk driving crashes.  “Our goal this weekend is to locate and arrest drunk drivers before they are involved in a crash that results in injury or death,” Colonel Sheridan said.  “Troopers will accept no excuses for drunk driving this or any other weekend.  Anyone planning to mix alcohol and driving this weekend should also plan to meet a Maryland state trooper who will not have treats, but will have handcuffs and will provide a free ride to jail.”    

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2008, 58 percent of all highway fatalities on Halloween night involved a driver or a motorcycle rider with a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher, which is illegal in Maryland and every other state.  Maryland law states a driver with a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher is driving under the influence and a driver with a blood alcohol content of .07 is driving while impaired.  Either charge will lead to an arrest and could result in a significant fine, jail time, and points on a driver’s license.   

Continue reading "Police hunting drunk drivers over holiday" »

Posted by Peter Hermann at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Confronting crime
<